Day 17, Monday 27 August
Plan for the day was to the South for the Imperial War Museum and then make our way back to the apartment via a gallery in The Strand.
Imperial War Museum
We took the underground to the Elephant and Castle Station and walked to the museum. The museum is in the former Lambeth Mental Hospital building on the South side of the river and at the front has the barrels from two World War I battleships. Inside in the first main display area is a collection of military equipment including tanks, rockets, airplanes and mini-submarines.Cath wanted to go through the Holocaust exhibition so we headed there and ended up spending three hours going through it. It tells the whole horrible story very well using a range of media from photographs, film, artifacts, models and lots of material to read. What it did bring out was the system wide infrastructure that was used to achieve the objectives of the Holocaust.
We definitely needed a lunch break after that so found a quiet corner in the cafe for lunch and then did quick tours of the rest of the museum. While it tells the military history of the UK it also has interesting displays about the effects on the daily lives of citizens.
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| Front of the museum with two enormous gun barrels from WWI battleships. |
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| The main large display area at the museum. |
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| Focke-Wolfe and P41 Mustang |
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| Spitfire |
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| German V1 rocket |
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| The only Handley-Page bit was this walk through section of a Halifax bomber from WWII. They have whole one's at their other aircraft museum. |
Courtauld Gallery
Catching the underground to Temple Station we walked to the Courtauld Gallery. It is a great little collection covering the renaissance, impressionist and post-impressionist periods. It is a very focused collection and is in about ten rooms with each painting given plenty of wall space in the well lit rooms. The gallery is in Somerset House on The Strand which is an interesting building itself but provides a great space for the Gallery.I loved the impressionist paintings most and the French mush be really peeved that Courtauld had the good taste to buy paintings like The Card Players by Paul Cezanne and At the bar of the Folies-Bergere by Rodin etc along with a lot of other great paintings. The museum was peaceful and quiet and it was great to be able to walk up and look at the paintings in detail and also to be able to take photos.
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| At the bar of the Folies-Bergere |
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| One of the great exhibition rooms |
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| One of the rooms with the impressionist paintings. Notice the crowds! |
We walked back to the apartment and caught up with emails before heading around the corner to a great little Italian restaurant for dinner.
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