The weather was cloudy and cool, but that wasn't such a big deal as we were planning on spending it inside museums.
I had been told about plenty of nice art museums in London, but I had my sights set one place as my top priority: the Imperial War Museum, which is arguably the most important military history museum in the world. After that we were going to head to the National Gallery, a prestigious art museum.
Our first task, though, was to find our venue for Les Miserables, which we were heading to that night.
We took the tube to Piccadilly Circus, the center of a ritzy shopping neighbourhood.
After walking down Shaftesbury Avenue, which is the main theatre district in London, we found our place.
Descending back down into the tube, there was a huge poster:
We already have discovered it! Boo yah!
Eventually we found the Imperial War Museum, with the help of a little old English lady who suddenly gave us directions without us either asking or telling her what we were looking for. At least she didn't try and hustle us into a carpet shop afterwards.
You know you're at the right place when you see two gigantic cannons aiming straight at your head. This ain't no Rembrandt gallery!
This museum is absolutely enormous. We spent over an hour in the first room, a collection of large military equipment from around the world.
On the right side of this first picture you can see a big green rocket: it's a V2 rocket, hundreds of which rained down on London during the Blitz. A product of Hitler's secret weapons program, they were essentially the first cruise missiles. While they didn't cause huge amounts of casualties, they were terrifying and unstoppable. I had heard about them, but couldn't believe the size of the real thing.
The museum gradually became quite busy, and so we moved on to the third floor where a massive Holocaust exhibit was set up. I don't know for sure, but I think we probably spent somewhere between two and three hours in it.
Suddenly it was 2 in the afternoon, and so the National Gallery wasn't looking too likely.
We spent another hour on the bottom floor of the museum, which is set up like a giant maze and covers every major conflict of the 20th century. There were also two floors of exhibits plus a special D-day room that we skipped. Again, I can't tell you how huge and impressive this museum is. I could have spent all weekend in it.
As it was, we had to rush to get out of there in time to go for supper before the play. In hindsight we should have been a bit more disciplined with our time. It's not that the museum wasn't worth it, but we ended up spending practically the entire day inside one place!
Lindsay spotted the Rainforest Cafe, a restaurant which is set up to feel as though you are actually dining inside a rainforest. It comes complete with palm trees, crawling vines, fake thunderstorms, and animatronic apes and elephants.
We ate our supper beside two gigantic elephants who would start stomping and trumpeting every 20 minutes. It was pretty funny. (We have video of it on Lindsay's camera.)
For dessert we ordered a sundae that was almost as big me.
We had a bit of extra time before the play, so we wandered the shopping streets.
Les Miserables was great. While I probably had a bit more fun at the Lion King, this one was a completely different genre and I enjoyed it in a different way. I've heard that the London theatre scene is second-to-none, and I have no reason to doubt it.
Anyway, spending the entire day at the IWM meant we had an extra full schedule for our last day...
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