National_Geographic_Traveller_UK_June_2017

WHAT’S NEW // SMART TRAVELLER
Geek
WEIRD SCIENCE
out
Put on your spectacles and let your
inner nerd run wild at these new
scientific attractions. Going geek
has never been so cool
THE MOONLIGHT SWIM
WHAT: Swim five feet beneath the ‘moon’.
WHERE: At a lido in Rennes, Brittany, during
the packed-with-surprises Tombées de la Nuit
(Nightfall) arts festival in July.
HOW: Book tickets for Museum of the Moon,
a touring event by British artist Luke Jeram,
who created the 1:500,000-scale lunar model.
It measures 23ft in diameter and features NASA
imagery of the satellite’s surface. my-moon.org
IMAGES: ALAMY; MUSEUM OF THE MOON; SCIENCE MUSEUM
Cocktails in code
Are you a player, keen to show off your mad Sherlock
skills? Well, there’s a secret underground bar with your
name (in code) on the door. The latest immersive cocktail
experience comes from Lollipop, the team behind East
London’s Breaking Bad cocktail bar and The Bunyadi
naked restaurant. Here, The Bletchley recreates a secret
World War II code cracking room. Slip in through a
secret door and, once you’ve entered data detailing your
personal taste preferences into a cipher machine,
you receive a unique code that you then transmit,
via radio, to a team of backroom mixologists, who
will decode the perfect bespoke cocktail for you.
You don’t need to be Alan Turing to tackle this
mission, but if you like a bit of retro dress-up, this
can’t be beat. And for those late to the party (you
need to book well ahead), this London
pop-up’s shelf life has been extended at
least until July, and there’s even firm talk
of it being recreated on foreign soil.
Where? Clue: you won’t need D-Day
Landings to reach this capital city.
thebletchley.co.uk SARAH BARRELL
TOP THREE
Scientific trips
THE RESTAURANT
Is this the best class,
ever? Cocktail lessons
given by Todd Maul,
the geek-barman at
Café ArtScience in
Cambridge,
Massachusetts, now
include the food
design innovations of
partner organisation,
Le Laboratoire. It all
adds up to some
highly unusual drinks.
lelaboratoirecambridge.com
THE MUSEUM
If you want to see how
Major Tim Peake
returned to Earth after
his six-month mission at
the International Space
Station last year, then
head to London’s Science
Museum, where the
Soyuz TMA-19M descent
module — complete with
scorch marks from its
re-entry through the
atmosphere — is on
display until September.
sciencemuseum.org.uk
THE HOTEL
The about-to-open
Hotel EMC2, in
Chicago, headlines a
huge zoetrope, a
19th-century
animation device, plus
a typographic quote
by Leonardo da Vinci
in the lobby. And that’s
before you enter the
rooms… Beds feature
Serta cooling
technology mattresses
as standard.
hotelemc2.com
June 2017 27