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Published: August 12th 2007
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For my last day in London (for now), I started with a walk over Westminster Bridge, which runs across the Thames from Waterloo (by the London Eye) towards Parliament. The weather was
beautiful. I spent some time taking pictures of the sights in that area and watched Big Ben chime 9 am. My goal was the Churchill Musem and Cabinet War Rooms. (See, I told you he'd be back!) I got there a little early, so I stalked some pelicans and swans in St. James Park and tried to peer down Downing Street, where Number 10 is the residence of the Prime Minister. (They've blocked off the entire street in recent years and have armed guards and big gates at each end, so I couldn't actually see Number 10.)
I loved the museum. Before my visit, I honestly didn't know that much about Churchill - I just thought of him as the third guy with the cigar in the pictures with Stalin and Roosevelt or Truman. Now that I know more, it's really hard not to admire him.
The underground shelter became operational one week before WWII broke out. After the war, everyone turned off the lights and left.
They've recently restored the rooms to coincide with how they looked during the war, using period photographs. Included in the admission was an audioguide (slathered in a giant History Channel sticker) that really made the place come alive. The first stop was the Cabinet Room, about which Churchill famously said, "This is the room from which I will direct the war." All the important British ministers made the decisions here under clouds of cigar smoke.
The audioguide also described the living conditions - officers, secretaries, telephone operators, cooks, etc., all working underground and sleeping in shifts in a bay of bunks on the low-ceilinged floor below. There were only chemical toilets (not flushing), so the whole place was kind of smelly. The typists got sunlamp treatments for vitamin D deficiency because they rarely went out into the sun. People did leave and go outside for shopping or to even sleep at home, but most of their hours were spent underground, because if something was happening when your shift ended, you stayed and worked. Churchill apparently hated the place, and he would go up on the roof to watch the bombs falling, ignoring the threat to his safety.
One
London Eye from the side
Tom tells me that when they first put it in, it was horizontal hovering over the river, and then they hoisted it upright by pulling back and tethering it. Only it didn't go as planned at first, so there was a big horizontal wheel over the Thames for a while. room had a door that always locked with a little sign that said "occupied." This led many people working there to believe that it was the only flushing toilet in the place, reserved for the exclusive use of Churchill. In fact, it was a Transatlantic Telephone room that enabled Churchill to speak to Roosevelt using a scrambled line.
Further down the hallway are the Courtyard Rooms. These were bedrooms for Churchill's private staff and a bedroom and dining room for Churchill's wife, Clementine. I also really enjoyed the Map Room. One giant wall-sized map was used to keep track of convoys moving across the Atlantic. It's riddled with pin holes. A line of brightly colored phones was available to the duty officers. In 1980, they found an envelope, forgotten in a drawer, in which the Chief Map Room Officer had hidden his personal ration of sugar cubes. Churchill also had a bedroom in the bunker, but he only ever slept there three times. He did use it for his daily nap, though, and there is a cigar on the bedside table. Churchill also used the desk to broadcast wartime speeches on the BBC.
To the side of the
Cabinet War Rooms in the Churchill museum, chock full of Churchill artifacts, including letters, photos, clothing, cigars, the flag that draped his casket, his books, and his dismally poor report cards from school. In the center is the giant Lifeline, a long table of screens that you can touch and see what Churchill was doing that day - very unique.
I really, really enjoyed these museums and highly recommend them. I purchased a book there of all the naughty things Churchill said, things like, "He is a modest man with much to be modest about." Also, when proposing a toast to Stalin at Yalta in 1945, "To Premier Stalin, whose foreign policy manifests a desire for peace," followed with a whispered aside that the interpreter couldn't hear, "A piece of Poland, a piece of Czechoslovakia, a piece of Romania..." The man was brilliant and poked and prodded the English language into submission. I also like, "Trying to maintain good relations with a Communist is like wooing a crocodile. You do not know whether to tickle it under the chin or beat it over the head. When it opens its mouth, you cannot tell whether it is trying to smile
or preparing to eat you up." He also said, "We are all worms, but I do believe that I am a glow-worm," and "I am ready to meet my Maker, but whether my Maker is prepared for the great ordeal of meeting me is another matter." You can't say the man wasn't opinionated.
I emerged into the sun (no vitamin D deficiency for me!) and walked up Whitehall past all the government buildings. There was quite a crowd around the horse guards. I snapped a photo and headed up to Trafalgar Square and the statue of Horatio, Lord Nelson. Kids were running everywhere, climbing on the lions at the foot of Nelson's pedestal and kicking their feet in the fountains. It was great.
My next stop was the National Portrait Gallery. I started with the Tudors, went through the Stewarts and Hanoverians and a virtual who's who of British history, all the way up to Paul McCartney and works by Warhol. I never thought a museum of portraits could be so interesting. (Did I mention it was free?)
Afterwards, I reserved my spot on a bus back to Cheltenham that evening. (Tom was staying an extra day,
so I had to get my own ride home.) They sent me my ticket as a text message - so I just had to wave the phone at the bus driver to board later. Craziness. I then hiked over to Piccadilly Circus. With the bus ride ahead of me, I wanted to finally get my hands on my own Harry Potter book. I could have picked it up at any Waterstone's with my receipt for a reserved copy, but I wanted to get it from the one where we watched the madness Friday night.
That done, I decided to go to Harrods. Now that I've been to Harrods, I don't ever need to go back. It was a huge madhouse and ridiculously expensive. The oddest thing was the Egyptian-themed escalator and the live opera singer singing off the balcony over it. At the bottom is a shrine to Diana and Dodi al-Fayed, which includes the engagement ring he bought for her the day before they died and the wine glass from their last dinner. It felt... odd. I much prefered the exhibit of Diana portraits in the National Portrait Gallery - they seemed less clingy. I can't quite describe
it.
At this point I was pretty worn out and needed to pack, so I headed back to my room in Waterloo. I heard that the floods had been bad in Cheltenham, and there was a rumor that there was no running water, so I went ahead and took another shower and packed. I lugged everything to Victoria Station and bought 4 liters of water while waiting for the bus. Once on the bus, I sat back, opened Harry Potter, and tried to inch away so that the woman next to me wasn't actually sleeping on my shoulder. I think the bus went a different route than usual - everything was flooded, and we passed a gas station that was completely underwater. The sunset was beautiful, though.
Once I saw the situation at home, and considering how difficult it had been to get out of town on Friday, the whole trip was pretty naive and crazy to have attempted. Somehow, though, nothing really went wrong. All in all, I adored my few days in London, and I'm hoping to get back soon.
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