"We are all worms but I would like to think of myself as a glowworm" - Winston Churchill

Today took us to the newly opened Churchill Museum and Cabinet War Rooms. What an experience! As you enter the underground area you quickly realize above all else, that Winston Churchill was indeed a legend. This museum opened in 2005 and it contains the actual areas, hallways and chambers where Churchill and his cabinet directed the War. Many objects still remain intact. During the tour, air raids are going off so one can literally experience what it must have been like to be there in the 40’s. It houses the maps used, the clothing worn, gas masks nearby, anything and everything that went on during the war years is encased in this museum. It even has a hand printed list of the different London bombings and how many fatalities at each site, etc. Probably the most interesting was the room with actual speeches.


You stand before a picture with a date and place where he gave the speech on that certain day and then his speech comes on. You hear his voice (stronger at the beginning of the war) and how his voice reveals the stress he is enduring towards the end of the war. Each speech is highlighted with an oft quoted quote of his. You can feel how he is trying to encourage his people, not to give up, to endure to the end. It really is a very moving experience. As you leave the underground bunkers you can truly feel what it must have been like for Londoners to experience the blitzing that took place. I hope I will never have to go through something like that.

The Churchill Museum is right next door to 10 Downing Street---home of Prime Minister Tony Blair. I don’t know if you are getting the news like we are over here,
but he is BIG news right now. The Prime Minister is appointed by the Queen and in a nutshell the Labour Party is demanding for him to name a timetable for when he will leave office. At the beginning of the week they were hoping he would leave by May 2007. As of yesterday it looks like more MP’s (Members of Parliament) are asking him to resign by March 2007. There is so much news coverage about it that I fully expect something big to happen before we leave London. As we walked by, you could see all the police guarding the street, crowds are gathered outside the gates, a helicopter is flying over head, news people are gathered all around awaiting the announcement of his departure. WHAT pressure! Breaking news! He just came on the telly and said that he wasn't going to announce his departure date right now. This will be his last conference (Labour party) but no annoucement yet. He quoted Churchill that this last week has been one of his "darkest hours".

We headed home and decided to eat at a place near our home, Yo!Sushi. This is George Jetson’s idea of a sushi restaurant. You sit at a table and on this track are different colored plates and bowls containing different kinds of sushi and food.
The moving track goes slowly by your table and you select a dish as it goes by you. Indecisive people would not do well here!!!! You grab your dish, eat it and grab another or two that move by. Each color of dish has a price. It doesn’t matter what’s on the dish-if it is on a hot pink dish it is 4 pounds, etc. We started out with edamame beans, then 2 california rolls on a plate, 3 potstickers on a plate, 3 chicken sticks on a plate, 3 fried shrimp on a plate and 2 salmon rolls. I am not talking large portions here. We could have continued eating but we looked at our pile of colored plates, added up the poundage and decided we had better save our appetite for dinner. I think the concept is great, but the portions were so small that a lunch to fill up one person would be around $20.00.

Tomorrow will be a say good bye to London day with no planned visits. On Saturday we are taking a tour to Bath, Stonehenge and Windsor Castle. Print this post