48 hours in London

For the month of August, I held my first choice, mainly because I wanted the layover that was on the last trip of the month.  I was not real happy about the other three trips, so I dropped and or traded them for other trips.  I ended up flying a couple of Honolulu trips, a Buenos Aires trip, and a couple of London trips.  This blog is about my first London trip, which was a 48 hour layover.  Normally, we have 24 hour layovers, but we have a Tuesday trip that lays over until Friday.  I was fortunate enough to pick up one of these for August.  It was a treat because it was on the 777 (we call it the big girl plane) and I don't get to fly it that much.  I was also flying position 6, which is the easiest position on the plane.  All you really have to do it stand there and look pretty and pour wine for people.  The purser and the galley in first class were very nice as well so it made for an enjoyable trip.

We arrived on Wednesday morning, and after a short nap, I took the train from Victoria south to the charming town of Redhill to visit my friends Amanda and Aaron.  I went to college with them back in Jacksonville.  You may remember a previous blog entry about how the Icelandic volcano kept interfering with my plans to visit them this spring (although we did finally connect).  It's a quick train ride south, only taking about a half hour.  The last time I was in London and they came to visit, they took the train into the city, so this time it was my turn to go to them (plus I wanted to see their flat and meet Wolfgang, their adorable dachshund).

They met me at the train station and we stopped at the local Sainsbury to get dessert for dinner that night (we ended up with sticky toffee pudding).  The town of Redhill is very quaint and small enough that you can walk anywhere.

I found a new best friend in "Wolfie".  As long as you throw the ball for him and pet him, you have a friend for life.

  

We picked up our dinner at a local Fish and Chip shop.  Aaron claims it is the best fish and chips in the UK.  It was pretty good, I have to say.

I caught the 9:07pm train back to Victoria and took the tube back to the hotel.  It was nice going to sleep and knowing that I would not have to set an alarm for the morning.

I slept surprisingly well and decided I would spend the next day in the city and do a little exploring.  I wanted to go to the Cabinet War Rooms.  I visited the museum once about 12 years ago, but in 2005 they opened the Winston Churchill Museum as an extension, and I wanted to see the new exhibits.

The War Rooms are one of five parts of the Imperial War Museum.  The structure was engineered as a bunker and became operational in 1939 as Britain started facing attacks and bombings from Germany.  The underground complex is reinforced with a slabs of concrete three meters thick for extra protection.  The bunkers never took a direct hit, so it is unknown if they could have survived a bombing.  After the war, the bunkers were left largely intact and in 1984, were annexed as part of the Imperial War Museum.

example of the three meter thick slab of concrete reinforced by steel girders

The rooms were small and primitive and living below ground was not much fun, but vital to maintain an active government in the uncertainty of war.  People could be assigned duty down in the bunkers for weeks at a time without seeing sunlight or hearing from friends and family.  They had a sign that posted updated info  each day to give those down below an idea of weather conditions above.

chart of air raid signals so those below ground who know of attack on the surface

There was not much in the way of indoor plumbing.  There was just one working toilet that was reserved for the prime minister.  Everyone else was expected to use bed pans.  Even the canteen had a pump to drain the water from the sink back up to the surface.

note the bed pan below the bed

kitchen pump to send the debris from the sink back up above ground

The bunkers had an elaborate communication area known as the Map Room.  This portion of the bunker was staffed 24 hours a day and became the center point for contact during an attack.  There was even a special phone with a built in scrambler that allowed Churchill to talk directly to Roosevelt without fear of being tapped by the Germans.  The wall of the Map Room even had some graffiti that had been drawn of Adolph Hitler.

The Churchill Museum opened in 2005 and sits off one of the hallways of the bunker.

The highlight is a sort of 15 meter long smart board that sits like a table and allows you access to hundreds and hundreds of documents from the Churchill archives.  His early life is also profiled and I was interested to learn that his mother was an American heiress and part of the Roosevelts.  That made Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt cousins.  The only conflicting information I found was on Churchill's policies on British controlled Palestine.  As I learned at Yad Veshem in Israel, most of the world turned their back to the Jewish situation before and after the war.  England was no different, denying thousands of Jews the right to immigrate to the UK and after the war, making it harder for them to emigrate to Palestine.  The Churchill Museum indicated that Winston was a huge Zionist and big supporter of the founding of the Israeli state.  Two differing opinions on one scenario.

As you exit the museum and go above ground there is a memorial built to the victims of the 2002 Bali night club bombings.  I have bittersweet memories of that event, characterized as the Australian 9/11, because I was vacationing in Australia in October 2002 and I remember the day we climbed the Sydney Harbour Bridge, they were lowering the Australian flags to half staff in memory of those who were killed. 

I stopped at Trafalgar Square for lunch and did a little people watching before making my way to St. Paul's Cathedral for an Evensong service.  I got there a bit too late because the first 25 folks to arrive get to sit under the nave next to the choir, so I had to sit under the dome like everyone else.  On the way to the church I passed an interesting sign announcing free beer with a haircut!  Sounded tempting.  If only my hair was a little longer!

It was raining as I left the church, so I decided to scrap my plans to go see a show and head back to the hotel and call it a night.