Quote: My absolute favourite place in London is the Victoria and Albert (V&A) Museum. I don’t care how many times I have been, I still go again every time I’m there and I will probably carry on doing so for a very long time.

The V&A is located on Cromwell Road, a few minutes away from the South Kensington underground station. Also, if you are heading to the museum from Harrods, it is a 5 minute walk up the same street so the location is very good. If you want to take the bus to the museum then you can get either the C1, 14, 74 and 414 which all stop right outside the entrance. In close vicinity is the Science Museum as well as the Natural History Museum.

== Opening times and admission ==
10.00 to 17.45 daily
10.00 to 22.00 Fridays (selected galleries remain open after 18.00)
Admission is always free although donations are welcomed
Some temporary exhibitions require an admission fee

== The museum ==
The V&A has had many different names over the years since it opened in 1852. Firstly it was known as the Museum of Manufacturers, then the South Kensington Museum and finally in 1899, it was renamed as the Victoria and Albert Museum. The museum is very large in size and the exterior is stunning. As you are walking up to the museum, you can’t miss it because of how big it is and also how nice it looks from the outside. Although you can enter the museum from an underground tunnel, I always choose to enter from the outside just so I can see the building again.

Inside the museum is just as impressive. The V&A is home to a very varied collection of exhibitions and although there are always some temporary ones on show, there are also a large number of permanent exhibitions. Different permanent exhibitions include; Furniture, Textiles and Fashion, Sculpture, Metalwork, Ceramics & Glass and Word & Image. Free maps are available as you enter the museum which I would highly recommend getting as the museum can be extremely confusing. The layout is not that simple and every time I go, I end up missing parts of it due to getting lost.

If you enter the museum from the tunnel, you will hit the sculpture exhibition, which is my personal favourite, Here, you can see so many different amazing sculptures from all over the world and of different things. You can see a sculpture of Einstein and Shakespeare’s head along with some impressive Greek and Roman Gods. Although I have seen this part of the museum so many times, it never fails to impress me and I always spend quite a lot of time looking around this area. While this section is fairly large in size, it could be bigger and I wish that this one was area that could be expanded as some other areas of the museum are huge in comparison.

Another of my favourite areas to visit is the fashion exhibition although I didn’t put my boyfriend through this the last time we went. What I love so much about looking at fashion is seeing how much things have changed over time. Some of the permanent items in this section include contemporary fashion and weddings. The V&A has an amazing wedding collection which includes a suit made for King James II to wear at his own wedding. Some of the pieces here are absolutely stunning although this probably isn’t a section which the men will enjoy so much. This exhibition dates from the Renaissance period up to the modern day.

As the V&A has so many different collections, it can take hours to get round but it really is worth it. As I said earlier, I generally tend to miss something each time I go so I always get to discover something new and interesting with each visit. Along with the exhibitions, the V&A also has a great shop which is very large in size. The shop has a great collection of books, prints and posters as well as other items. Jewellery can be purchased as well as home ware and strange items from British designers. The shop always has some really interesting items on sale which are constantly changing. Prices are also good as they range from quite cheap and reasonable to pretty expensive for the better and more impressive items.

== Overall ==
The V&A is definitely a place worth visiting if you are in London. As admission is free, it is a great cheap way to spend a day or only a few hours if you have been there before. There is so much to see at the V&A that there always seems to be something I haven’t seen before which is why I make a point of going every time I’m in London.
From journals London Pt. 1

Quote: Whilst visiting the museums in London I found myself in the Victoria and Albert museum and have to say that I was quite disappointed, however whilst I say that I must also add that I am not really very knowledgeable about the royal family so may have missed the point of this museum slightly. I’m sure that the way it was full of people means that lots of people do enjoy this museum.

The museum is located a 5 minute walk away from the South Kensington Underground tube station and is quite easy to find as there are a few other museums close by. The building is beautifully crafted and really does look spectacular from the outside. Inside the museum also has some charm, I really like the way that when you walk in to the museum you can see some of the exhibits.

The museum is free to enter and is open every day between 10 am until 5.45 pm (10pm on a Friday). The museum is split into ten main galleries; 20th century, textiles, theatre and performance, William and Judith Bollinger Jewellery, Painting, glass, furniture, ceramics, Asia, Baroque and Rococo and Architecture. The two galleries that I like were the furniture gallery and the Asia gallery. The furniture gallery had some lovely pieces of exquisite furniture and beautiful well-kept clothing. I thought that the fine detail on some of the clothes was amazing! It was all lit really well so that you could see the finer details on the material. The Asia galleries were also quite interesting; the best part was the japan part where there was an assortment of Japanese weaponry and armour.

My favourite part of the museum was the gift shop! I just adored some of the fabrics that some of the bags were made of although they were very expensive so I was unable to buy one. I would say that this gift shop is one of the most expensive ones that I have been to so I suggest that visitor’s take a fair amount of money and prepare to pay a high price.

I don’t think I would visit this museum again but purely on personal preference, others may love this museum.

From journals Museums and galleries in London

Quote: Growing up in London, all the major museums were places that we saw on a number of occasions, but of all of them, this is my personal favourite, and the museum that I’ve enjoyed re-visiting as an Adult the most.

Located on Brompton Road in London next door to the Natural History Museum and the Science Museum, The Victoria and Albert Museum is all about design, fashion and decoration. It holds collections of ceramics, jewellery, clothing and silverware, and as well as the things that are there all the time, there are also specialist exhibitions that are available for short times only.

The museum itself is free to enter, but some of the exhibitions which are brought in from elsewhere you do have to pay a small fee to see. Maps are provided when you go in and I’d strongly advise taking one as the layout here is a little bit muddling and although they’re not the best maps in the world, they certainly do help quite a bit.

Accessibility wise, the whole museum is wheelchair accessible, but if you use a stick be aware that it is pretty big, and the distance from lifts to where you want to be can be a bit daunting to be honest, also not all the lifts stop at all floors which makes it even harder as you sometimes have to walk from one side of the building to the other to get the right lift in order to get to where you want to be. Some of the top down display cabinets are also a little high too which means that if you can you need to be prepared to stand up from your wheelchair to see them clearly. I’ve often thought that a simple mirror placed above these displays would assist those of us who need wheelchairs to see them much more clearly.

The items on display here are quite varied and range from very old (like around 5000 years old!), to modern, and they come from all around the world making it even more interesting. Some are gathered into collections by type, while others are gathered by location such as Europe or the Far East.

There are so many different aspects to this museum and the layout is so confusing that it is hard to describe everything, but two of my favourite areas were the Jewellery Collections and the Fashion Gallery sections.

The jewellery appeals to me on several levels – firstly, they have some absolutely stunning pieces here, and it’s fascinating to look at them. But I also find jewellery interesting as I’ve made it myself at times over the years, so I know just how much effort really goes into some of the intricate bead work you see. One other thing I like about this section is that it really is well lit – you don’t get a bright room, but each cabinet is lit individually so that you can clearly see everything well.

I love the clothing displays very much and find it fascinating to see the changes in the fashions over time, and this is displayed really well as you do sort of get to walk from one era to the next coming forwards (or going back if you go the other way round), to see how things have changed in terms of fashions and materials etc.

As well as all the displays, there are two cafes and a shop. One of the cafes is outdoors and is lovely in the summertime, but we actually prefer the indoor one as it has more choice of food and drink, and the room you sit in is pretty beautiful in its own right, and has high arched windows and vaulted ceilings, and you do feel like you’re sipping your cuppa in a place of style sitting here. Don’t expect the food to be cheap, you can pay upwards of £4 for a sandwich, but with the lovely surroundings and the fact that the museum itself is free, I suppose they have to make their money somewhere.

The shop is full of most of the usual things you’d expect to find in a museum shop to be honest. There are a number of replica pieces for sale inspired by items within the museum, and they have a lot of books here too which is great. One thing I didn’t find which they used to do when I was a child was packs of colouring sheets of the various fashions through the ages. I was quite disappointed not to find these as I always like to take my young nieces and nephews something from our trips like this, and I know my niece would have enjoyed these as much as I did as a child.

I’d highly recommend this as a place to visit, there is so much to see here that it’s easy to forget the time when you’re wandering around. I think the biggest mistake that many people make however is trying to cram in trips to the V&A, Science Museum and Natural History Museum all in one day, and each of these places really does need a day to itself if you’re going to get the best you can from it I think.

From journals London Museums Big & Small

Quote: The Victoria & Albert Museum is located on Brompton Road, London, very close to South Kensington tube station and beside the Natural History Museum and the Science Museum. It was founded in 1852, named after Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. It is a museum of decorative arts and design, including collections of ceramics, silverware, jewellery and also collections by area, from the Far East, Europe and many other places.

Entry is free, although a donation is encouraged from each visitor and you are asked to donate £1 for a map (which you will need). There are always a few special exhibitions going on, some of which have entry charges.

I've visited the V&A on a few occasions now, and I still haven't seen all of it. It really is a massive building, and some of the galleries have so much packed in to them that you can spend all day in one section of the museum. There must surely be something for everyone in this museum - the exhibits range from ancient (up to 5000 years old I believe) to contemporary art.

On my visits, I've spent most time in the "materials" galleries, that is silver, ceramics, jewellery and the like. I visited the jewellery collection with my mum last year, and it was quite stunning. All the items are displayed in well-lit glass cases (the room itself is a little dim so as to give the best effect to the case lighting), and they are fascinating and beautiful. The items are laid out so as to tell stories of jewellery fashions and manufacturing changes through time.

Similarly, the fashion gallery is dim while the clothes on display are well-lit. As with many of the V&A collections, this is a walk through time where you can easily see the change in fashions and materials used.

On this year's return visit, my parents and I visited the newly reopened ceramics galleries. This was the main reason for our visit, as my mum is very interested in ceramics/china, and the galleries had been closed for refurbishment on our last visit.

The ceramics galleries render you speechless. We came out of the lift, rounded a corner and were confronted with floor to ceiling china. In addition to the main collection which is on show and fully labelled, the V&A utilises "visible storage" for the ceramics collections. This means that everything they have is effectively on display. There are ceiling high, unlabelled yet fairly organised glass cases which hold the bulk of the collection which is not officially "on display" - although it is technically, it is not nicely presented and labelled.

There are several rooms to the ceramics galleries, covering British, European and Asian ceramics, and then there are further rooms which are dedicated to modern, pottery and studio ceramics. Further to that there is a room of contemporary ceramics, which is a very impressive high ceilinged room with a hole in the middle through which you can see down 6 floors to the main atrium of the museum (don't worry, there is a fence around the hole). These contemporary arty ceramics were on the whole a bit weird, some were ugly and some were pretty or funny. My mum was in seventh heaven through her visit, I don't think she'd imagined that so much china could be seen in one place.

I've passed through other areas of the museum which I've never actually stopped to look at... Sculpture, the Far East, Medieval art - which is one that I think warrants a closer look on a future visit. I've also been to the contemporary Europe galleries, and last year we visited Performance, which was something for my dad after all the jewellery and silverware we had been looking at. Performance is an interesting look at the history of performance, including circus, theatre, opera and rock and pop music. There is memorabilia from through the years, and plenty of costumes on display.

The museum shops are well worth a look. The main shop is located just inside the entrance and the bookshop is further in, also on the ground floor. There are a lot of items for sale inspired by the museum's collections, and of course lots of books so you can learn more about what you have been looking at.

There are two cafes in the museum, one in the lovely central garden - well, lovely on a sunny day! There's a pretty pond which kids are allowed to play in, you can sit at a table or on the grass and have a drink and something to eat. There is also one inside which offers more choice than the garden cafe, in terms of hot meals and snacks. I've visited both, and I think the prices are a little high and the food is sometimes a bit more fancy than you might want. You can't just get a cheese sandwich here - it's mozzarella and pesto on ciabatta. Sandwiches average around £4-5. There is also a good selection of cakes and drinks.

The V&A is fully wheelchair accessible, although sometimes you have a long walk to get to a lift. The way the floors are laid out (not every floor is fully in use), most lifts don't go to every floor but only to a few (for example, 1, 3, 4, and 6). This can be irritating when you are on one side of this large museum and the lifts you need are miles away!

I'd fully recommend a visit to the Victoria & Albert Museum. It's a really interesting place to visit, and there are so many things to see that you will be spoilt for choice. It's location is easy to get to, and with its proximity to the Natural History Museum and the Science Museum, you could have a day out where everyone in the family gets to visit somewhere they are interested in!