Day two, and it's not Black Friday

No waking-up-at-6am-to-shop for us today... although given that I didn't really fall asleep until 7:30am, I could have! This time zone thing is a killer. I slept mostly from 7:30am to 10am.

Then Bryan made breakfast. Eggs and bacon (or sausage) and toast and tomatoes. The kid can actually cook! :)

We let the "grownups" go off on their own today, and Bry and I went to the Imperial War Museum to see the Ian Fleming/James Bond exhibit. It was REALLY well done. I hadn't realized how much Ian Fleming had used his personal experience in Naval Intelligence as influence on his Bond adventures. It was also interesting to see the gadgets and memorabilia from the movies, and how the films had differed from his original stories. (Many of the oddest villains were not written by Fleming at all -- like Jaws, Scaramanga, and Drax.) I bought some goodies and some Christmas presents at the shop! :)

The Imperial War Museum is a huge place, full of moving exhibits and interesting artifacts. Today, however, it was also full of kids on school trips. OMG! I have never seen so many people in there before! We did our best to go in the opposite direction from the student groups. We walked through the exhibit commemorating World War I. The opening wall of the gallery has pictures of the last 3 British WWI soldiers who were alive at the start of 2008. It was very moving. The exhibit also has personal effects, letters, and information about a wide range of personalities who were involved the war, including Harry Truman, Winston Churchill and Edith Cavell (and a lot of non-famous figures as well).

Then we walked through the D-day experience. Again, really interesting and sobering stuff. Bryan and I are both well-versed in WWII history, given the house we grew up in. ;) The D-Day exhibit explores the preparation, planning, and execution of Operation Overlord. There's an Enigma machine, maps, guns, photos, artwork... it was really neat.

At that point, we were just exhausted, and we hadn't eaten lunch. We took the tube back to Embankment and got out so we could go see Trafalgar and Big Ben. We stopped for a snack and took some pictures, and then got back on the tube at Westminster. Lovely, rush hour on the tube! Worse than rush hour in DC!

Tonight we're going to dinner with Betty over near the Tower Bridge. Indian food, yum!
(pictures later, time to leave for dinner)

Comments

Anonymous said…
GAH! Bond!

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