V-Day in London

After watching a few episodes of the new show Paradise, I headed out to meet an old colleague and visit some museums. I walked over to Tower Hill and got on the tube to St. James Park. This park was lovely and is right next to Buckingham Palace:



I strolled through and made my way to The Churchill War Rooms, which is a part of the Imperial War Museum. It’s an underground complex that was a command center during World War II. It’s located beneath the Treasury building and was reinforced with steel, so that it could survive a bombing. It’s also where they have an incredibly well-curated biographical museum about Winston Churchill. Here I learned his mother was actually American! Indeed, its Valentine’s Day, but I learned about the victories of war!

At the entrance, I met my old colleague, Rupinder. She wanted to visit the war rooms with me and we found that we were quite compatible museum partners - equally enjoying but not lingering. As such, we were thoroughly informed with our audio guides, but also efficient in navigating the many rooms. Here’s a map when it was functioning as the command center - there are way less rooms now due to the museum:



Here are various cabinet rooms, meeting rooms, and the center of it all, the map room:







Here’s Winston Churchill’s bedroom and office:



I also enjoyed the museum which was created by combining a lot of rooms. Here’s a hat display as he was famously known for his headgear:



As we exited and walked through the Westminster neighborhood, we saw Big Ben - and I could just hear Chevy Chase’s voice from the movie, National Lampoon’s European Vacation, “hey kids look, it’s Big Ben!”



We also saw queuing for photos in iconic telephone booths, walked by Downing Street, and Dover House with these tough guards that bite:



We walked up to the Soho neighborhood and ate on Carnaby street at an Indian restaurant called Dishoom. We shared hearty briyani, lamb curry, chaat, and yogurt:



In walking around the neighborhood, we also walked through the lovely Burlington Arcade full of shops:



We had actually visited the arcade between two exhibits at The Royal Academy of Arts which is in Burlington House in Piccadilly. It’s an old private mansion that has several royal societies, like geological and chemistry, but it’s really known for the arts and their exhibitions:



The rooms were impressive and beautiful:





We first went to “Brasil! Brasil! The Birth of Modernism” where I learned about several pioneering artists that had Afro and indigenous influences while being exposed to art movements in Paris and New York. I particularly enjoyed this painting by Djanira da Motta e Silva:



Then we visited the smaller, but packed, “Michelangelo, Leonardo, Raphael” where they were extra precautious and our bags had to be screened. On display were highlights of the museum’s permanent collection which included Michelangelo’s “Taddei Tondo” or “The Virgin and Child with the Infant St. John” - its apparently the only marble sculpture of his in Great Britain:



Here’s a drawing by Raphael of the backside of the famous David sculpture by Michelangelo in Florence:



Also on display was Leonardo da Vinci’s largest drawing nicknamed the “Burlington House Cartoon”, but is really titled “The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne and Saint John the Baptist”:



And with that, and appropriate for Valentine’s Day, Rupinder hugged me goodbye and said her signature sign-off from our conference / video calls, “I’ll love you and leave you….” A selfie of us in front of a whimsical art piece:



I rested in the permanent collection which had replicas of Raphael’s tapestries and Leonardo’s Last Supper, before I headed back to Jessica’s neighborhood and picked us up a bottle of white wine. Nixon was happy to see my return, considering he was not happy at all when I was leaving this morning. But he’s having fun here with my Popeye (a Hearst brand) toy that I brought from the US!



Jessica made a delicious dinner which included salmon and vegetables and paired with the white wine, we binged through more episodes of Paradise…



What a lovely day as the sun was shining, the conversations were marvelous, and I got to explore museums I had never been to! Indeed, it was a victorious Valentine’s Day!