Manchester/Scotland 2025 - Manchester Museum Dinosaur Collection

 

I saved the best exhibition hall for last, and that is the Dinosaur hall! And I wasn't disappointed either. Although the collection was small, the main central piece was stunning! It made me felt like I was in a scene from The Night at the Museum. I was kinda surprised that there weren't more people here. Perhaps dinosaurs were pretty common in western museums? 

So here is the main piece. I think it's a T-rex from the built of it. And his name is Stan. Google says he is a cast, so perhaps just a replica? So although Stan is a replica, there are other real dinosaur's remains at the museum. 

But whether it's a replica or not, I was still fascinated by it. I always thought T-Rex were smaller.... This one was huge! And his posture looked like he was walking inside the museum hall itself, which made it kinda life like.

Here is the front view of Stan, doesn't he look like he is walking? 

Apart from Stan, April was the other dinosaur that was quite famous here. April is a complete real skeleton remain, and I guess it should be more famous than Stan who is a replica! If you search dinosaur of Manchester Museum, April would appear as the main star. But due to the size of it, I guess everyone likes a T-rex better :P

They also have dinosaur eggs on display, which wasn't very impressive cause they just looked like bird eggs. But it's cool they have them. The potential of cloning these to become the real thing! That alone made this special :P

They also have just a very limited asteroid on display. Compare to the Natural Science Museum in London that has a whole hall of rare rocks, this was a rather small collection. But asteroids are still cool in my book! Imagine, something from outer space! Seriously, I don't know why people don't visit the museums more and be fascinated by all these things! It's almost as closed as you'll ever get to a real life alien!

To end our museum visit blog, here is me with a selfie with Stan :)

Manchester/Scotland 2025 - Manchester Museum Egyptian Collection

 

Moving on to the Egyptian Collection. There was a room dedicated to these, and I it was the first place I went in search of in the museum. We did visit all the other exhibit, but mainly just walking pass them. But we lingered here cause I have a fascination with mummies and Egyptian stuff. I recall the first real mummy I saw was at the British Museum in London. The second one was in Taichung Natural Science Museum. So here is my 3rd one. I'm turning 50 soon, and I hope I will get to visit Egypt and see the pyramids one day in my current life time! For me, there is just so much places on Earth that I want to visit and see!

I guess mummies are just coffins. And I am always visiting graves and cemetery, so I guess it's only natural that I love mummies. I don't find it frightening or eerie in any way. I find that it's just so well cared for. So much thoughts given to the dead in their culture.

I also find it strange that United Kingdom has so many mummies in their museums. I would have thought the British Museum was the only one. I guess they took back a lot from the past during their 'exploration'. Fun fact, there is an Egyptian exhibition happening from now till 31-Aug-2026 in Hong Kong museum, and I am wondering whether I should go pay it a visit. Problem is, I am only free after May, and June to August is the Typhoon season in Hong Kong.....

Back to the Manchester Museum, above are mummies for animals, maybe pets? At first I thought these were organ jars, cause they often separated out the organs of the dead and put them in separate jars. But after reading the description, and maybe by the hint of the head-likeness of the animals, I should have guess too, lol. I just find these so cute!

Of course there were also text and mention of the book of the Dead etc etc etc. I didn't spend much time reading the details as we were slight off our timezone, having just landed in the morning. But looking at these beautiful artefacts made me somehow happy :)

Look how beautiful these are. yeah, I think the southern hemisphere of the world has cooler civilisation stuff, temples and stone art like these are mind blowing. I  just feel that I'm too whitewashed with western culture and civilisation from my early education that I missed out a lot learning about these cooler ancient civilisation. 

Love the drawings on these tablets. 

Kind of reminds me of Angkor Wat and all the beautiful carvings there. It's like so much dedication was put into these things, and such a wonder that it lasted till today. There is just something about being there with these pieces that made me feel happy, being connected to another civilisation through what they have left behind. Every time I travel, I'm always learning little things here and there about different culture, different people and their different lifestyle. It's just fascinating for me. 

I leave you here with a photo of a collection of Shabtis. These are figurines that, like the Chinese who uses paper figurines, are servants one sent to the after life with the dead. Ok, maybe the Chinese have non-paper version too, aka terracotta soldiers! Lol. I hope to see those in 2026 in Xian! Hmmm, I kinda wonder, why are my travels often related to the dead? From mausoleum, to cemetery, to mummies, to catacombs! I seems to have a morbid love for the dead!

Manchester/Scotland 2025 - Manchester Museum

 

We next headed to the Manchester Museum. It was free to enter, and I was expecting a smaller scale museum as compared to the British Museum. The building looked fantastic from the outside though. I've done some researched about the place and basically has two exhibition that was on my To-Do list: Dinosaurs and Egyptian Mummies! These where items hard find in Museums where I came from :)

The museum is about 3 storeys, and run across maybe 2 or three buildings joint horizontally together? And the grand central piece was this whale skeleton hanging in the middle of the hall. I can't remember if Singapore National Museum used to have one of these too. But it's always such a wow factor when I see giant skeletons in museum. Hence that's why I love seeing dinosaurs in museums! There is a current dinosaur exhibition at the Singapore Science Center, but you have to pay to go in. Here in Manchester, I can see them for free, so yeah..... I think I'll pass for now on the Singapore exhibition. 

Here is a close up of the skeleton taken from the 2nd storey. Didn't realise that it's mouth part is so long!

The Manchester Museum was kind of a generic museum. It wasn't really a natural science museum, but it does have a section on the animals and birds found in United Kingdom. And along with the animal skeletons and taxonomy display, was a cabinet of humans skeleton, showing the evolution of our skulls as compared to apes and our ancestors. I was rather fascinated with it. Here was a cabinet that relates to us! It's like seeing your family member's bones in the museum!

At the taxonomy section, there were animals found in United Kingdom. But what caught my eye was how they displayed the animals, along with some popular stories or legends. So here we have wolves with Little Red Riding Hood, and bats with a Vampire, lol. Or Nosferatu. Interestingly, in 2025 I also managed to visit Transylvania, now known as Romania, and actually visited Bran Castle. More on that another time.

I am also fascinated but all things surreal, and saw this in one of the small room in between the halls. The room was closed, with a clear glass window where you could look in. But the words on the glass caught my eye " The centre for the Study of Surrealism and it's Legacy"? How cool! 

This is what the inside of the room looked like, and I love it too. It's like a slice of life of how a scientist or a professor who is studying surrealism's work place would look like, whatever that may mean :P

I also saw this poster which I thought was interesting and educational! It's a nice way of telling people no food and drinks inside the museum, but in a very subtle way, and full of information too! Well done museum!

Manchester/Scotland 2025 - University of Manchester

 

The beautiful museum building to the right, and lovely blue skies ahead. Our initial target was to visit the Manchester Museum, but as we walked further to explore the beautiful building, we found that the University of Manchester was just next to it. And since the gate was opened and there wasn't any signs that says you can't enter, we decided to walk in and explore. This would be my 2nd entry to a British education center. I've previously visited Oxford before, like 14 years earlier.

Above the grand entrance to the university? Actually I have no idea how big is the place. I suspect we only saw parts of it. And perhaps the whole city of Manchester is the whole campus. It was those opened city university with faculties spread almost everywhere around the area. Perhaps this was just an original smaller part of the campus. 

Walking in, it was indeed like what you would imagine an old university would looked like. Instantly you are transported back in time. I think I really like the lack of colours in my surroundings. It's just so peaceful and blended nicely with the nature inside. 

So like in Harry Porter movies, and probably in every schools, there is the concept of houses? And each house has their own slogan and mascots and badges. I guess this may be one of them?

Here is a more close up look of what one of these badges looked like. The colours are really nice. And I guess those words are latin? 

Inside the compound, Wow! A very conducive environment for studying, or getting inspiration for greater things in the universe! I came from a rather modern university in Singapore, and we don't have such grand old buildings like these in our campus. I also stayed at a place called Sheares Hall in campus, which has since been torn down. We don't seems to treasure history that much in my university. It was big and grand, but it wasn't as beautiful and elegant as this here.

A different view. You could almost imagine carriages and horses riding up the path to deliver some students to the school. So beautiful! And what a lovely day! 

One of the houses was covered in crawling plants on its facade and that made it looked even more interesting. The super huge glass windows reflecting the sky and sun light also adds to it's charm. I really like this whole segment of the campus.

There was also a clock tower-like building inside the ground, and you stepped closer you could see....

Years and names of previous people who have probably worked or studied here? I wasn't paying much attention, but I thought it was a  nice touch. In Easter Confucius schools, there are always tablets and name scrolls of previous scholars. 

One of the building has a purple sign outside. Those signs usually indicate what faculty this building was. I again, wanted to go in and take a look, but I chicken out. This was my first day in the UK, and my courage needed some warming up. So we didn't enter. It was probably an office building or something. 

Here is another faculty building, which was just a random townhouse building along the road outside. The sign says "The Confucius Institute of the University of Manchester"!. Ha!  I thought that interesting. Recently I've also been following Inverness City Centre's Facebook page since I will be visiting it later this spring, and I was also surprised when I saw an announcement for Taiji lessons on the page! Chinese are everywhere! I hope that means I would be able to blend in there :P

A small corner view of the old building with it's church-like windows. I just love the colour scheme of this photo, just so natural. And the leaf-less tree branches above, framed with the bushy paddy like plants below really adds a nice touch, don't you think?

The next two photos were not taken at the ground area, but from the museum building next to it looking out. Isn't it lovely? It I have a room in my house that looked out to a view like this, I would be sitting in a chair next to that window daily. The sunlight shinning in also add such warmth to the whole place.

Here is another window view outside. When you visit a museum, don't forget to look out it's windows when you are inside. Usually the view outside is quite something! That is something I've learned while travelling around. Museums are usually situated in nice central location, and usually have multiple levels as well. So always try looking out from their windows, or if you are in Scotland, look out from their rooftops!

Wefie of us outside the glass-vine building :)

Manchester/Scotland 2025 - Manchester City Walk

 

Once I got my MUST-VIST task out of the way, the rest of the day was free for us to roam. And since we have almost half a day left, I decided that we could try and walk down the main road and see if we can reach the Manchester Museum for a visit. The museum was also free to enter, and they have two things I wanted to see there, the Egyptian collection, and their dinosaur collection. So off we went walking down the main road, looking at the sights along the way on a beautiful spring day. It was the start of spring when we visit, around early April 2025.

Above is an alley at the city, a very modern and slick look. I kinda like countries that has modern clean line buildings, yet coexist with old grand buildings as well. You could see the old clock tower behind in the photo. The smaller roads were pretty free of traffic, but the main road we had to use traffic lights to cross the road.

Just right outside the library was actually where all the administrative buildings of the city was. We saw the court building and the security guard or police working there were rather friendly. At first I thought he was gonna come and tell us we can't enter the building (we didn't, I was just standing there taking a photo), but he was just walking towards us and smile at us as he walks by, which was nice. 

When walking towards an attraction, we didn't quite paid attention to all the buildings around us, so it was nice when we back track and have the time to enjoy the sights. Upon arriving in Manchester, I was kinda on my guard as my friend has warned me of crimes in the UK. The news didn't helped either. So I was kinda cautious about taking photos of my surroundings, especially since I just got a new Google Pixel phone that costed me a bomb! But after a while, I stopped caring and started taking more and more photos.  Above, a gigantic warehouse building or a railway. We don't get to see giant buildings like these much where we came from. 

We walked past St George's House. I think it was a hotel that looked rather fancy. I wanted to go in, but was also kinda intimidated by the richness of the entrance and a doorman in front. So we just walked pass after snapping some photos. It looked so grand. If I was in an Asian country, I would be more thick-skin and just walk in. But in western countries, I was more cautious. 

Above is what would be our center of the city since we stayed nearby the hotel here, at Portland Street. Interestingly there is a 24hr Genting Casino just next to our hotel.... Perhaps a lot of Malaysians are in Manchester? But I like the above circular building. It reminds me of buildings in the States, even though I've never been to the States ....

There were trams running along the city streets too, and it was fun to watch them since we also don't have these where we came from. But it does make crossing the road a bit challenging as I wasn't used to their traffic flow. We didn't take any trams while we were there. In fact, the only public transport we took was the airport bus to town, and of course the trains to visit our friend and for leaving Manchester as we made our way to Edinburgh. 

Before coming, I've seen advertisement on how Manchester is a vibrant city with it's own art scene and theatre. Well, above is the theatre showing Mary Poppins. It looked like an old cinema from my hometown. Perhaps it is grander inside? I've never seen a play inside a foreign theatre before. Hmmm, maybe I should consider doing that one day when I am back in Europe? Hahahaha. If yes, I would target France!

An old clock tower building that is red in colour. Why do people like red coloured buildings in the past? 

Above was a emerald looking building which I took on our walk back after visiting the museum. I absolutely love the colour of the building and though it looked magical! I love minty mint and white combination. I have no idea what building it was, maybe a cafe or a shop?

Lastly, a park we walked past with lots of sakura looking trees in full bloom. There were many students around this area. I later found that there were like 3 universities around the area, and that Manchester was like a university town. Everyone was very young and friendly and light hearted. The museum was just further along the park.