Hello and welcome to the final independent travel podcast of the week.

And I'm delighted to say that I'm in Manchester, which is always a good thing, but even better,

I'm at the Manchester Museum, which has been closed now for the past 18 months.

But it reopens tomorrow to great celebration.

And even better than that, I'm with the director.

Esme Wilde in her office and she is going to tell me about what's changed at the museum and indeed if you've not been here before, what might appeal to you.

So, Esmey, first of all, congratulations.

Secondly, I've been for a sneak preview, and it was great, but you've got everything here.

You've got Egyptian golden mummies.

You've got stuffed animals that the Victorians love.

You've got a whizzy South Asian gallery,

and you've also, I've just been to meet some harlequin frogs from Central America.

So hang on, what's this museum all about?

Yeah, quite. What is going on?

We're really good to meet you, and we are really excited about reopening.

So Manchester Museum at the University of Manchester is often called a kind of encyclopedic museum.

So it's like a kind of from A archaeology right the way through to the zoology and it's got natural sciences and human cultures all under one roof we have and we one the largest university museums in the UK and that's about four and a half million objects

from all over the world it's it's a lot yeah and our mission is to build understanding between

cultures and a more sustainable world.

And that's what we hope we'll do in our four walls and beyond sometimes.

Can I pick you up on a couple of things then?

People are hearing four and a half million objects and they're either thinking, that is absolutely amazing.

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