London for a Day

Yesterday found us back in London for the day and night. We spent the morning at The Cabinet War Rooms Museum. If you are ever in London, it is really worth a visit.

The museum takes you on a guided audio tour through the rooms that Churchill and his various strategists, advisors, cabinet members, secretaries, typists, etc, used as their war command center throughout World War II. The rooms are located deep underground near 10 Downing Street, and are fortified with concrete and steel, to protect those within from bombs.

What I love most about this museum is that on the day the war ended, people who worked in this space literally turned out the lights, locked the door and left. And everything that was down there just stayed as it was.

Some of the rooms were later cleared out before the space became a museum in the 1980's, and so these rooms have been faithfully recreated to match photographs, but one room in particular, The Map Room (my favorite), is exactly as it was the day the war came to an end. Even down to the sugar rations of one officer that were found in a desk drawer.

I just love to think of that when I look at this room, that everything here is just as it was on that historic day. The string on the maps, the push pins, the books and phones, the strategic logbooks, the code scramblers, the desks, chairs, everything, still somehow holding all the fear, the effort, the tension and finally, the elation and relief that this room once contained.

It just really felt like stepping back in time, being in these rooms, imagining all that had gone on in them for so many years, while bombs exploded above them, and the city crumbled while still struggling to stay alive.

Pretty amazing stuff.

After visiting the War Rooms, we did what anyone would do, and we went to a fantastic wine shop. Berry Bros & Rudd. Talk about stepping back in time: this shop has been there for 312 years. In the same space. I have included a link to their website on the left-hand side of this blog in the Sites I Love, Things I Mention section. Take the virtual tour of the shop, because you can see the underground cellars, function rooms and classrooms that you cannot go to when you just pop by the shop.

Today, I am back in Paris, and will be here until Wednesday. Already, it feels like the time on this trip is flying by. I am in a very large business hotel which I booked through Priceline. The room is clean and a bit spartan, almost like a very nice dorm room, but this view from my window....what can I say?