May 13 2012

Another great day in London! And such beautiful weather (happy since we hear it is rainy and windy in Scotland!)anyway, we headed out early on the "tube" to Hendon where the Royal Air Force Museum is located. Awesome museum! There are several buildings, and while we started out in the main part of the museum which was Bomber Hall, we quickly found out that my Dad's plane, the Bristol Bleinheim IV bomber was located in the Battle for Britain Hall. It was so incredibly moving to be able to look in and see where he sat and the museum volunteer even let us into a roped off area above where we could take photos right down into the cockpit! We toured around this building for quite awhile and sat and watched a 15 minute video titled "the Finest Hour" about the Battle for Britain - it was terrific and says so much about the strength, courage and steadfastness of the English spirit!

We then went back to Bomber Hall and spent a lot of time looking at the various fighter jets and bombers from WWI to the present as well as some Helicopters. We were able to take in a lot of information about the Halifax bomber that was brought out of the North Sea and is being restored. This is the kind of plane that Sergeant Barrie was a rear gunner for and went missing in a week after he rescued my Dad from his burning plane! Great bookstore where we found more information on the planes we were interested in.

We then headed for lunch in that cute little town and then caught the tube back into the city and made a beeline for the Churchill Cabinet War Rooms on Parliament Street. Spent two hours there- unbelievable that all those people spent so much time down there and ran the war from there! Winston Churchill - so much I didn't know about that fascinating man who lived until 1965 and remained a member of Parliament until about 6 months before he died.

Having a Pimms after a big museum day:)

We ended Mother's Day with a Pimm's Fruity drink at our hotel and then had a great pizza dinner at an Italian restaurant followed by my favorite Tartuffo dessert! Tomorrow we catch the early train to Edinburgh so I will end this note with a quote from PM Churchill that I thought was particularly appropriate for Mom's Day: "There is no doubt that it is around the family and the home that all the greatest virtues, the most dominating virtues of human society, are created, strengthened, and maintained." Amen.