Churchill War Rooms

Day two arrived, and I set off for my visit to Churchill War Rooms.  

The sign on this building says Great Scotland Yard, but this is a hotel and not a police station.

 

I don't remember what this building is, but soldiers on horseback pop out of the two arches, so that's kind of cool.  

I loved London.  The buildings are all old and interesting, and there are monuments and statues everywhere--even in the middle of the street!  

I passed Downing Street, home of the Prime Minister.

You can't go down it; there's gates and guards. 

They certainly don't have arches and columns like this in my neighborhood at home.

I must be getting close now; there's Winston Churchill.  

And there's Big Ben again.  (FYI, the clock tower is actually named the Elizabeth Tower.  Big Ben is the name of the bell behind the clock.)  

A little graffiti next door to the entrance of the War Rooms.  

Methinks someone was not best pleased with Her Majesty's treasury department.  

This is Clive Steps, which you'll recognize from movies like Operation Mincemeat, and other WW2 movies.  The entrance to the War Rooms is under the little dome on the right.  

The underground war rooms are not as deep as you might assume.  They reinforced the ceiling with 6' of concrete.  

This little closet like cubby is where Churchill would telephone the US president.  

The door to #10 Downing Street during Churchill's time.  It was upgraded after an attempted bombing later.

One of Winston Churchill's paintings.  

His boyhood toy soldiers

And his medals

lots and lots of medals

A copy of a portrait of Churchill.  Not the portrait.  

A recreation of what the furnished sleeping rooms would have looked like during the war.  

Even Clementine, Winston's wife, had a room here for when she visited.  

I took lots and lots more photographs there, but these were some highlights.  

Bus Tour of London

There's 4 lions around Trafalgar Square.  

Each lion weighs seven tons.  

Okay, believe it or not, we're still on day 1 in London.  I booked myself a "see London by night" bus tour.

So I walked to the tour start point.  

What I didn't realize was that "night" doesn't start until much later than the 7:30 slot I booked.  However, I was glad for this as I was walking back to my hotel after 9 pm that it wasn't dark.  

Now you get a bunch of random images of buildings and statues whose names and significance I have forgotten already.  (Remember, this was still my travel day from California.)  

Oh, wait, this one I know.  

This is the Victoria & Albert Museum.  Another place on the "Must see next time" list.

Royal horse/carriage stuff building.

My first glimpse of Big Ben.

The London Eye.

This is the memorial to the Great Fire of London.  

We crossed Tower Bridge.  Tower Bridge and London Bridge are parallel to one another, both crossing the Thames.  

On the other side of the moat, you see the Tower of London.  Tower, singular, is really a misnomer, as there are several towers within the complex.  

Very cool.  We'll see more of it on another day.

One of the City of London dragons.  

The face on this arch looks like it belongs in a Lord of the Rings movie.  

Statues and memorials everywhere.

I think this one is Eros.  

And up close

 On the walk back to the hotel, I passed the Brazilian embassy.  

I'm glad I did the bus tour.  It was a nice way to get a quick overview.  

National Gallery

The National Gallery and the National Portrait Gallery are different things.  Disappointed to find the NPG closed for construction, I popped into the NG shortly before they closed for the day.  

Here's the entrance

It's hard to convey the size of some of these paintings in a photograph.  

Some of them were quite huge. 

I didn't have very long there, so I didn't get to see even half of what the museum has on exhibit.  

My intention was to pop back in and finish up another day, but... 

the days got away from me.  

Still, it's a lovely museum, and I'll add it to my "next time" list.