Day #44: London

Today dawned cloudy and rainy. Oh well, I am in London after all... I started the day by queuing up, as the Brits would say, at the half price ticket booth. London is famous for its theatre, so I wanted to see a show while I was in town. I had never seen the Phantom of the Opera, so it seemed like a good show to get tickets to.

After securing my front row, center stage ticket to the Phantom, I walked around the heart of historic London, ending up at Westminster Abbey. Here's a picture of it.


I had heard how many famous British people had been buried here, but even I was surprised at the names. Elizabeth I was a big one, along with GeoffreyChaucer and, my personal favorite, George Frederich Handel. And that's just the beginning! After touring through Westminster, I met a friend of mine, Fiona, who was a student at Governor's School in 2006 for lunch. She's doing a semester abroad in London and it was good to catch up with her.

After lunch, I trudged through the rain to the Churchill Museum and Cabinet War Rooms. The Imperial War Museum has preserved the underground complex that Churchill ran the war from. Its an impressive group of rooms showing the sparsity and tight quarters the British had to endure during the Blitz and the later V2 rocket assault.

But the highlight was the Churchill Museum, taking his life from beginning to end it shed a lot of light on the man who was uniquely prepared to lead Britain through World War 2. It has a lot of great multimedia exhibits, including several excerpts from his greatest speeches. It also filled in a lotof background on Churchill I did not know. For example, Churchill was elected to Parliament in 1900 and served nearly continuously as an MP until shortly before his death in 1965. During that time, he switched parties twice, from Conservative to Liberal in 1904 and back again in 1920. Perceived a a rabble rousing crank in the 1930s with his constant warnings about Hitler, Churchill finally had the people's attention when the Nazis invaded Poland. The rest, as they say, is history.

Here's one of my favorite bits of Churchill memorabilia on display in the Museum. It is a sign from his last re-election campaign in 1959. No words are needed, the profile says it all.


I spent so much time in the Churchill Museum, I had just enough time to dash into the National Gallery to see a handful of Rembrandts, a Vermeer, and a smattering of Monets before it closed.

Then, after dinner, it was time for the theatre! As I mentioned above, this was my first time to see the Phantom of the Opera and I thoroughly enjoyed myself. Its an entertaining plot and the music is pretty good too.


After that long full day, it was all I could do to ride the Tube back to my hostel and collapse into bed!