Day Twelve- Men Do What They Do Best

The Mandarin Oriental Hotel

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They should use my photograph in their brochure. Cassie's and Tyler's room is in the tower shaped room on the top floor on the left. My room is in back facing a wall.

One of the Army of Doormen

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This is a rare shot indeed - only one doorman working at this point. The others were probably opening tins of caviar for someone just inside the front door. These guys were great. Everytime we returned to the hotel they greeted us profusely, then took stuff from us and carried it up the steps. I wish they would have hefted my tired butt upstairs by the end of this day.

Another Dude with a Mid-Life Crisis

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I'm not sure what was going on here as we walked along Hyde Park toward the MINI showroom. This guy was seems to have forgotten to set the handbrake and was running after the slow-running sports car. At first he went to the other side of the car to hop in, then remembered it was a non-British version with the steering wheel on the "correct" side of the road.

The Beauty of the London Tube

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This was one of the cleanest and most modern Underground stops we went through while in London. During the middle of the day we had to wait a seemingly long time for a train to pass through. By now it was just Tyler and I heading for Lambeth North station to visit the War Museum.

Cultural Difference

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As Tyler and I walked the two blocks from the Lambeth Underground stop to the museum we passed a crew trimming branches near power lines. In the USA this usually requires a group of at least three - two flagmen holding-up traffic and a guy operating the lift of a bucket truck who actually lops of the branches. Maybe a few other guys standing around watching. In London, this guy was by himself attached to the tree by a belt. It must save the City of London government millions.

The Imperial War Museum

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My favorite museum anywhere. You can keep your Prados, Louvres, Vatican and Tate Galleries. Give me a good war museum. The only disappointment is that it only features military stuff of the Twentieth Century. I would really enjoy a military museum depicting the many many wars of England.

World War II Era Kitchen

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A long-running exhibit in the museum tells the story of what happened in the UK during World War II. It's mainly what happened to the civilians who had to face the constant threat of imagined invasions and very real air raids. You are given the chance to walk through the re-creation of a typical home during the war years. It looks very much like my Grandmother's house in New Jersey back in the 1960's.

British Living Room of the Period

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I remember that game on the floor. My sister and I were playing it 15 years after the war ended. When I was a kid in the 60's WWII seemed like it happened centuries before.

Old Mailbox

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The old mailbox looks just like the new ones in England.

Great Advice Even Today

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You had to know a mailman would actually bother to take time and study this exhibit. The most interesting thing about this exhibit area was learning about the fact that London area kids were shipped out into the countryside and even over to Canada to live as foster children while their parents remained in London to wait out the war. More than a few kids came home as orphans.

British Nazis

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In the early years of Hitler's rise in Germany he had disciples in other countries besides Germany. In the US and in England pro-Nazi groups formed. This is the uniform of one the few party members. They pretty much disappeared once the Germans started bombing England. Many believe that the Duke of Windsor who was forced to abdicate the throne as Edward VIII was a sympathizer. None of that was mentioned in the museum.

The Enigma Cypher Machine

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This was actually one of very first electronic computers. The Germans came up with this little device that sent specially encrypted messages to their military units. To keep the Allies from breaking their codes they used a series of cylinders inside that were reset frequently to confuse them. Early in the war Polish codebreakers were able to figure out how these things worked and passed the info onto the English. Throughout the war the Germans thought all their military secrets were indeed secret, but in fact, the Allies were reading all their messages. The trick was too not let on to the Germans that they knew all this lest they change their methods. Therefore the good guys couldn't just react to every single German advance. They had to chose their spots and to figure out clever ways to convince the Germans that they were just lucky or had discovered the information through some other source. The Germans also had no idea that every German spy in England had been discovered, arrested, then released to send back erroneous information back to Hitler.

World War I Exhibit

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Tyler and I also took a walk through the trench system of a British regiment serving in France in World War I. Even this simulated micro-re-creation depressed me. That had to be the scariest war ever. No wonder so many wacky nihilists and existentialists of the 1920's were shaped by that conflict.

One of the Lucky Ones I Suppose

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This guy at least had a little place to hide from the continuous bombardments and gas attacks of that war. What they can't depict in the museum would be the horrible smells of death, no bathrooms, mustard gas and the body odors of thousands of guys crammed in together into a tiny ditch. I'm sure it was noisy as hell too.

Over the Top Lads

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The last tableau you see are the Tommies climbing up and out of the trench to counterattack the Krauts. They probably preferred running into gunfire rather than just sitting around waiting from death coming from above them.

The Entry Hall of the Imperial War Museum

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There were plenty of things for kids and old men to play with inside the museum. In the central hall there are a nice collection of tanks, missles, aeroplanes, guns and submarines to crawl around on or to shoot.

Enjoying the Gigantic Bed

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Once Tyler and I returned back to the hotel we kind of putzed around before deciding to go back out. The kids wanted to clean-up. I went to Gail's room and waited for Cassie and Tyler to tear themselves from their suite and join us.

One Kid Ready and One to Go

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Who would've thought Tyler would need more time than Cassie to get ready for dinner? So we waited and waited and played with my camera.

Finally Figured-Out Who to Use the Camera's Timer

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Once I discovered how easily I could set the timer on my Panasonic, put the camera down on a table and then hustle back to the bed for a group shot, we spent the next half hour taking pictures of ourselves. This should've been our Christmas card this year.

I Deleted the Twenty Other Shots of the Exact Same Thing

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Check out the cool complimentary slippers on the floor. I took home two pairs.