Discovering Orcs Nest - Quest for the Unusual Games

London is brimming with pubs and restaurants and events, lots of things for couples to do, but heading out every other day is quite an expensive affair. What are the fun things we could do at home, that doesn't really burn a hole in the pocket?
Ram loves playing games. But games involving some amount of creativity and strategy as opposed to just luck. So I wanted to get an interesting game, board game or cards. But where? Argos?

London has a few 'specialist' game shops. One of them is the Orcs Nest, near Holborn. Walking into the place was quite intimidating to me, it looked like a shop for serious game geeks and I felt like a lost puppy. The nest is tiny, but full of stuff, stacks and rows of board games, cards, books and magazines. A wide selection of RPG, miniature and cards games. Dungeons and Dragons and a dozen in that league.

It was interesting to see that most games have a 'Cthulhu' version!  I was happy to find some that were more 'beginner friendly'. Games involving medium amount of strategy, that did not go on for hours. Party games, and games for couples. The lady behind the counter was very helpful in suggesting and recommending games according to my 'specific' requirements.
I picked up 'Gloom'. Only because the cover said 'The sky is grey and the tea is cold, and there is a new tragedy around every corner'. And it didn't disappoint. Super fun game, (although I lost both times), but I think i'm getting better at the devious plotting. The artwork is fantastic, the cards are transparent which i thought was very cool.

I'll definitely be back here soon enough, to pick up even more wicked games.

Discovering the Hunterian

What's super awesome about the city are the free museums. I'm trying to visit as many as I can on the weekends. This Saturday we went to the Hunterian Museum. I had read about the museum on TimeOut, and it sounded interesting.

As we entered we were confronted with enormous glass displays of the weirdest specimens in jars. Animal parts to human, random stuff like an ox heart or a lizards intestines. Dissection of diseased body parts, bones affected with cancer, cross section of a foot! monkey heads, wooden planks with the nervous system, and even a skeleton of an Irish giant! What freaked me out was the foetus in different stages, looked almost alien like.

There were some sections that were truly morbid. Two headed creatures, animals with four legs, John hunter might have been a genius no doubt, but he surely was a freak. And apparently this was not even one fourth of his entire collection. The Historical Surgery Instrument display is totally worth the visit to Hunterian. There are instruments dating back to the 17th century. Some more recent used by the Japanese during the world war.

The collection is so extensive, after a while we were just skimming through the sections, but I can imagine how fascinating it would be for students of science and biology. Or perhaps Dexter.

It's definitely worth a visit once, and when it's free, why not?

 how glorious it must have been