Imperial War Museum

Today we didn’t have too much of a plan but Jared had seen two well reviewed museums so we decided to start the day at one of them.  We ended up spending about 3-4 hours in the Imperial War Museum exploring all the exhibits.  It was 5 floors of war history and very cool.  They had extremely well done exhibits on World War I and the Holocaust along with others.  It was interesting reading about the wars from the viewpoint of the British instead of USA for once (in both instances I didn’t realize how long the USA wasn’t involved in either world wars - well I’d learned about World War I at the museum in KC).  The vehicles and items scattered around the museum were actual recovered items from various wars which also was pretty neat.  There was only one mention of 9/11 which I found surprising.  A piece of one the planes recovered was in the museum, but it was the only place that war or terrorist attack was discussed though it did bring up how many “wars” today are from the inside.

After the museum I found two stores I wanted to stop by - a 5 story book store and a rubber stamp store that was on a “unique shops in London” list I found.  Foyles is the main book store here, but their main location is the 5 story one.  The Harry Potter section of course was my favorite with a number of companion-type books I didn’t know existed that it was hard not to go home with (but books add to our luggage weight too easily).  Jared even found some comedic cookbooks based on Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad, and The Walking Dead he enjoyed flipping through.  From there we just walked a few blocks to the stamp store.  It was little but very cute and I would definitely enjoy having one nearby like it!

After the exploring we grabbed food at the Cuban restaurant we’d tried to get seats at the night before and headed back to the hotel.  Up bright at early today (our earliest at 6am) to catch an 8am bus for our day excursion out to Stonehenge and other sites.  It’s expected to be a long day, but should be our last long day, so it’s going to be fun!