London: Westminster and War Cabinet Rooms

Ground zero of Look Right World

Look, kids, it's Big Ben!

Some of the Houses of Parliament

The Churchill statue at Westminster, which I have never

cared for; makes him look like a gorilla in an over-coat

Oliver Cromwell...cultural tourism enemy #1;

should be "slighted," I think, just in fairness

War cabinet room; all original; the Imperial War Museum

has done a wonderful job of retaining and preserving all the

original material; all of it

The prime minister's room in the "bunker"

The Cabinet War Rooms are wonderful, but
the Churchill Museum, adjoining, surpassed
anything I could have wanted...beyond
Blenheim and even Chartwell; the photo is
of the signatures of those participating in the
the first meeting between Churchill and
Roosevelt, aboard the USS Augusta
in Placentia Bay, Canada, 1941, which
I particularly rever for Harry Hopkins'
signature; Hopkins was Roosevelt's
trusted "deputy president"--"the man who
came to dinner"--and who was his emissary
to both Churchill and Stalin in those dark
years; perhaps my favorite book of the era is
Robert Sherwood's Roosevelt and Hopkins:
An Intimate History

We spent a bit more than a week in London, camped at the Crystal Palace Caravan Park, taking the bus/underground into the inner city every day. We got to know route #3 pretty well. I won't do a day-by-day account, but rather focus on specific places and happenings.

Our first day we just reacquainted ourselves with Westminster for a while, and then I did the War Cabinet Rooms/Churchill Museum. (Vicki sat in the gift shop for three hours, reading everything they had; what a good wife I have!)