London
A December business trip to London, with an afternoon stolen for the Natural History Museum — from a killer bird's skull to the great whale hanging in the hall.
The skull of a Phorusrhacos, an extinct carnivorous "killer bird", behind glass — that enormous hooked beak catching the low light of the case.
"Hope", the blue whale skeleton diving through Hintze Hall, shot straight up the spine into the museum's cathedral of iron and terracotta. (Lifted a stop-and-a-bit in post — it was darker than the eye remembered.)