One of the best museums in London...

On Thursday of my stay in Europe, Phil headed off to work and I made my way over to the Canary Wharf stop of the tube. After getting off at the Elephant & Castle stop (how British does that sound?), armed with my trusty street map of London I began my walk to find the Imperial War Museum. I had wanted to see it when Phil and I were in London three years ago, but alas, not enough days to squeeze in one more museum.

After a few stops and starts, a couple of "just where am I?" moments, after ducking in to a bus station when the sky opened up and began to pour (seriously...you'd think I'd be carrying the umbrella I had stuffed into my suitcase now that we were in London), I finally made it to the museum. The building is on the grounds of a really nice park that used to house a famous insane asylum called Bedlam. (No, I'm not making this up.) They actually used to chain the really crazies and put them on display for people to line up and watch. Truly. The picture below is the front of the museum. I'm sure the gun display wasn't there when it was the insane asylum. (Although that is an interesting thought.) And why are we all milling about out front? More on that in a bit.

And the inside? What a fantastic museum. Four floors to wander around in to my heart's content. Read every single plaque and display? Why yes, I could because Phil wasn't with me. (One of my quirks if I'm at a museum that really interests me. Did he know that before he married me? Probably not.) Covering every war and military action that Britain has been in since WWI, I was in museum heaven.

From planes, rockets, and tanks...

to walking through a London street during the Blitz of WWII as well as a WWI trench...

to a display on the Winter War between Finland and Russia in WWII (just for you, dad)...

to Vietnam, the Persian Gulf War, up to the very latest happening in Iraq and Afghanistan. Even a whole wing dedicated to the "Secret War"- spy stuff with MI5 and MI6. And that wing was where I was when an alarm siren started going off along with an automated voice over the loud speaker asking everyone to quickly make their way to the nearest exit. My first reaction was to wonder if this was part of the exhibit. Do I try to find the nearest exit? Deciding that was the best option, I soon found myself swallowed up in the mass exodus of people making their way down the stairs and out the front doors.

As were shuffling along, I heard people wondering out loud what was going on. Then I heard a female voice directly behind me say, "Oh...it's probably just a bomb." Uh...after turning around to get a good look at the lady behind me (after all, I was just in spy world...had to memorize what she looked like in case I needed to report her to the authorities) as well as wondering where the heck she was from that a bomb was a common occurence, we made our way outside. Turns out it was just a very small kitchen fire in the museum cafe. After the all clear, I made it back upstairs to where I left off and continued on.

All in all, six glorious hours of examining every inch of the museum. I'm sure Phil was glad he had to work. I took the tube back to our apartment and then later met Phil for dinner. We walked to a pub called The Cat and the Canary (again, how British sounding is that?) where I had my perennial British favorite- fish and chips. So good. We went to bed early because the taxi was picking us up at 5:15 am to take us to the train station. It's on to Paris...