Cabinet War Rooms and Notting Hill

Cabinet War Rooms and Churchill Museum

We have had a magnificent spell of weather in London these last few days. Saturday was a cracker, so after Megan had done some shopping on Oxford Street, Tim met her in Trafalgar Square for some lunch and then we headed to the Cabinet War Rooms and Churchill Museum.

The Cabinet War Rooms were amazing. The large underground system of meeting rooms, communications centres, offices, bedrooms, kitchens and dining rooms was the reinforced bomb shelter from which Churchill and his War Cabinet led Britain through World War II. It was very impressive. Dozens of people (Churchill, his family, his War Cabinet, military leaders and advisors and of course plenty of typists and office clerks) basically lived down there for months on end, working long hours, sleeping and not doing much else.

The whole complex remains almost exactly how it was during the war years, so it is easy to imagine just what it was like to live and work down there. You can see the 6 foot thick concrete slab reinforced with steel above the ceiling, which was (they hope) strong enough to protect the complex if it was hit during the bombing raids. Luckily it was never tested.

Connected to the Cabinet War Rooms, is the Churchill Museum, which was absolutely brilliant - we fully recommend it to anyone visiting London! One thing London does extremely well is its museums! We were fascinated to discover that Winston Churchill first became an MP at the age of 25, was a member of the government by 30 and a government minister by 33! He eventually retired as an MP at the age of 90, just months before he died. We also decided that we would both have got on very well with Churchill, as he loved drinking, casinos, horse racing, books and painting...

Waitangi Day pub crawl

After our museum visit, we wandered over to Parliament Square, where thousands of (mainly drunken) Kiwis had converged to perform / watch a mass haka to commemorate Waitangi Day. It has become an annual tradition for Kiwis and whoever else wants to tag along to do a pub crawl around the "Circle Line" (one of the underground routes) on the weekend following Waitangi Day, the highlight of which is the haka in Parliament Square. It was a perfect day for it too.

We had decided to save our livers and avoid the pub crawl, but we turned up to watch the haka. As it turned out, we couldn't see the haka. We are not sure if it actually occurred, but we did see a few people we knew - surprise, surprise - and thousands of very drunk Kiwis. Amusing.

Juno

After a few drinks at our new local, The Famous Cock, and dinner, we went to see Juno at the cinema. It was awesome - again, we fully recommend seeing it. We both thought it was great. We also saw Sweeney Todd last weekend and that was excellent too.

Notting Hill

Sunday was another beautiful day, so we made our way to Notting Hill to check out the shops and grab some lunch. There are plenty of little shops (many of them are antique or craft shops) along Portobello Road, which sell all sorts of crazy things. We also stopped by the travel book shop that appeared in the movie "Notting Hill" for a photo!

On Monday night we are going to the Emirates Stadium to see top of the league Arsenal play Blackburn and on Friday night we are off to Copenhagen for the weekend. Exciting times.

Sir Winston
Churchill

Megan in the
Cabinet War
Rooms tunnels

A bedroom

Communication
Room

Love the
old phones

Megan by
St James'
Park

Big Ben
looking
splendid

Drunken Kiwis
everywhere

Notting
Hill

Bookshop
from the
movie

Portobello
Road