My Weekend Off

In light of having come down with only-God-knows-what I decided to take it quite easy this weekend. And when I say quite easy, I mean I did little more than walk to and from the cafeteria on Thursday and Friday. I don't want you to get the impression that I was lazy, because I did manage to watch three seasons of QI, a British quiz/comedy show and read half of a book. As you can imagine, those activities were very trying.

Saturday, September 29th

Woke up feeling surprisingly well, rather early as well. Grabbed a hearty "English" breakfast from the cafeteria, walked to the Tube station and took the District towards Westminster. I think that it is worth noting that I was in a rather good mood, and you'll soon find out the reason. After about fifteen minutes of sitting on the Tube (by the way, riding it is no longer a novelty, it's more of a chore) I got off at Westminster, which is where you alight if you want to see the Houses of Parliament, Big Ben, and Westminster Abbey - the three things that everybody things of when they think of London. It just so happened that my excursion was on a Saturday and the tourists were as thick as ever. It's funny how you see the stereotypes ring true at tourist attractions. The loud and overweight American (with an American flag t-shirt), the Japanese tourists who look like they're on an elementary school field trip, and the French people, just being so, French. I'm slowly finding that tourists are far more entertaining than whatever they're gawking at.

Even though I've been in London for over a month now, I still don't know the city as well as I would like (in my defense, it is enormous), but I do know the Westminster/Whitehall area like the back...like the back of an overused simile. I took the shortcut towards St. James Park, it's this beautiful and majestic Whitehall street that is always deserted because people are scared of the security guards. Oh, now I should probably tell you where I was heading and I was rather looking forward to it. I decided after a week of being under the weather and spending less than 15 quid, I deserved a little treat, and that treat was the Churchill Museum and War Rooms.

The price of admission was 10 quid, but honestly I would have paid 20 quid for the museum, it was that well-done. I was wide-eyed and excited the entire four hours I was exploring the place. It was less of a museum visit and more of a religious pilgrimage. The war rooms (located underneath nearly two feet of steel and cement underneath various govt. buildings) were amazing. You have to realize, the entire complex, which was top-secret, was sealed off and forgotten about from 1946 until the 1980s, so everything is wonderfully preserved and authentic. I got to see the actual room, and the radio equipment, from which Churchill gave his wartime radio addresses that rallied the British people against Nazism. The bookworms have their Jane Austen and Wordsworth tours, the art buffs have their National Gallery, and the theatre nuts have the West End. But I get the Churchill Museum.

The enormous section devoted to the "Churchill Museum" was spectacular. I've been to the National Gallery, the National Portrait Gallery, The Imperial War Museum, The London Museum, The Docklands Museum, The V&A Museum, The Natural History Museum, Kensington Palace, Blenheim Palace, The Tower Bridge Museum, and The British Museum (sorry, that was intended to be more of a manifesto than showing off), and I have to say that hands down, The Churchill Museum is the best designed museum in London. The manner in which it is laid out, the artifacts, and the use of media couldn't have been done better. Surprisingly, it wasn't based on hero-worship, instead it was based on historical objectivity, which I think does a fantastic job of honoring the memory of the greatest human being of the 20th century. I'll summarize it for you. He was a war-hero when he was 25, he invented the tank (which brought an end to trench warfare), he was the only one that identified Hitler as a threat, he personally rallied the British people against the Nazis (supposedly 80 percent wanted to make peace with Hitler after Dunkirk), he won the war, he identified the Soviet Union as a threat to freedom in 1946, he won the Nobel Prize for Literature, he was noted as a brilliant painter, he was happily married for 54 years, he was knighted, and the U.S. Congress, NATO, and the U.N. all closed down on the day that he died. An amazing man, which is a bit of an understatement.

Sunday, September 30th

Okay, I'll admit that I took it easy today. I woke up rather late, grabbed some mediocre food from the cafeteria, and then headed for Kensington Gardens/Hyde Park. I basically just moved from bench to bench, alternating between reading a book and people watching. The people were far more entertaining than the book, and the book is good too. The families are just so picturesque, all the time. All wearing designer clothes that appear to have never been wrinkled in their entire lifespan, all with one or two designer children, but the thing that is a bit striking is that all of them seem to be smiling and happy. Perhaps it is because it is Sunday and the sun was actually out today, but I tend to think that the Brits just seem to be a happier people. I know they're miserable when they're working 55 hours at their desk job in Canary Wharf during the week, but with their families, these people are genuinely happy.