See here, I simply have no time for lost fathers.

I woke up today, being a Saturday, with the entire day open to anything I wanted to do. The day before was a long day trip to Dover, and I was still exhausted from that. I fancied a day out in the city, by myself. Most of this trip I am always with at least one other person. It felt really nice to just go out there and do whatever I wanted!

So I asked myself what I really wanted to do. I have relatively little time left here in London. I needed to do something I've wanted to do since I got here before time runs out. Naturally, my choice was to go to the Sherlock Holmes museum!



There it is you guys! The actual home where Sherlock Holmes lived, right there on Baker Street.


Yes, I do speak of Sherlock Holmes as if he actually once upon a time existed. All of the museum's descriptions say things like "This is where Holmes slept" or "This is the parlor where Holmes and Watson received their clients." They had everything so carefully decorated with objects fans of the books would know; I was able to really come into this world Doyle made for his readers-for me.

I suppose my love for Sherlock Holmes started long before since I could remember, The Great Mouse Detective being my favorite Disney movie, besides The Lion King of course. I decided to actually read some Sherlock Holmes stuff late jr. high, early high school, and was delighted so that I enjoyed reading them as a teenager as much as I loved to watch the Disney movie as a child (confession, I still love that movie).

I first read The Hound of the Baskervilles. I found the book in my house in some cedar chest. I was automatically attracted to the deep red hard back cover. This was around when my love for reading was really starting to come alive and I was just discovering what I enjoyed reading. I decided to give Holmes a chance.








The next book I read was The Sign of Four, my all time favorite Sherlock Holmes book. It was violent. It was creepy. It was more than I ever thought Sherlock Holmes was, a very sexy literary character :)






My mom then gave me my own copy of the complete Sherlock Holmes works, including all the short stories. Then my sister Bree gave me my own pocket edition of The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. I really started to take off there as an avid Sherlock Holmes fan.



This gun's owner was a man Holmes pursued. As Holmes is brilliant at everything, he was able to draw his own gun before the other man was.

This is more than a spot of blood upon a wall. Holmes was able to crack the case of a murder when he noticed that is was merely a finger print of red. Holmes concluded that it was highly unlikely that one, measly, finger print would remain if someone really did get murdered. A red herring!

This a copy of a Napoleon bust Holmes broke open to reveal a hidden black pearl.



A letter written to Watson from Sherlock Holmes himself that Watson describes in one of the stories.

See that book that says A Dictionary of Biography? Holmes uses this book quite frequently to identify important people in his day as part of his research.



In a few of the rooms, they had wax figures of some characters appearing in the many stories. This particular man appears in the story The Man with the Twisted Lip. A well to do wife had Holmes try to find her missing husband. Holmes was able to find her husband, pretending to be a beggar to get more money :)


This is the story of a woman who is hired as a governess under suspicious circumstances. If she were to be hired, she would have to wear her hair a certain way. She asked for the help of Holmes because she felt uneasy about her decision, claiming something was going on in that home that she wasn't aware of. They found out the man who hired this woman hired her because she looked like his daughter. He had his real daughter locked up in the house.

This is the story of The Speckled Band, a story of a murder who killed people via a venomous snake.

I don't quite remember this scenario. I can only say, this man is dead.

This is from The Red Headed League. This man was hired under suspicious criteria.

He simply had to copy the encyclopedia. He later found out they were forging things with all of his handwriting.


This is a photograph that was going to be used as blackmail in A Scandal in Bohemia. Holmes had to find it before it would get into the wrong hands!


Once again, I don't recall what this is from. But it looks very exciting! I think I vaguely remember something like this though . . . .


Meet Professor Moriarty. He was introduced at the very end of the Robert Downey Jr. movie. He is Holmes's arch-nemesis. He is, as Holmes coined, "The Napoleon of Crime!"


You might be more familiar with this "Napolean of Crime" as Professor Ratigan from The Great Mouse Detective. I have here a you tube link, just a taste of this delightful movie with a very similar speech to Holmes's given by Basil about Ratigan. I love this movie! So so so much!


So this was the museum trip of a lifetime for a Sherlock Holmes geek like me!