A large red brick building, with six stone columns in front, and a large copper dome, now turned green, at the top. In front of the building are two large cannons.
Back when Terry and I were first married, she was corresponding regularly - via Braille, and later cassette tape - with Viv Booth, a friend in England. Viv came to L.A. to visit us not long after we were married, and we went to England to visit her in 1983 - our first major trip together, other than our honeymoon in Hawaii. Unfortunately, not long after that visit, Terry and Viv lost touch, and didn't communicate with each other for almost 40 years.
Then, earlier this year (2022), we looked up Viv on the Internet, and she and Terry started corresponding again - via email this time. So of course, we made arrangements to meet while we were in England.
After a hearty English breakfast served up by Lucia's father, we went to meet Viv, who came up from her home on the Isle of Wight (an island in the English Channel, just off the southern coast of England), along with her sister-in-law Jane, and three nieces and nephews - Kelly, Michael and Cyrus.
(I can't believe I didn't get a picture of Viv and her family. Shame on me.)
At Viv's request we met at the Imperial War Museum (w):
A large red brick building, with six stone columns in front, and a large copper dome, now turned green, at the top. In front of the building are two large cannons.
After some confusion in which we were all trying to find each other - Viv made a comment about the blind leading the blind - we went to tour the museum. At first, I was reluctant, because I don't believe in glorifying or romanticizing war. But I discovered that the museum was nothing like that. According to the guidebook, "The Imperial War Museum was founded during the First World War to make sure that we never forget what it is like to live in a world torn apart by conflict," and its mission is to record "the way in which war continues to impact on the lives of service personnel and civilians."
And indeed, there was nothing glorious or romantic about the exhibits. Here are some pictures:
A car destroyed by a terrorist bomb in Baghdad. It's barely recognizable as a car, being mostly a twisted tangle of rusted metal.
Terry standing in front of a large olive green tank.
A backyard bomb shelter, made of corrugated metal. Terry has just stepped inside, while Jane looks in from outside.
Remember the movie Dunkirk? It told the story of the Dunkirk Evacuation (w), in which over 300,000 Allied troops were rescued from the beaches of Dunkirk, many of them by civilians in fishing boats, like this one:
A plain wooden boat, with three seats, and two oars crossed on the bottom. Terry is standing next to the boat, touching the side.
Standing out in front of the museum was a very interesting exhibit - a piece of the Berlin wall. Like an idiot, I neglected to get a picture of it, but here's one I found on the Internet:
A section of the concrete wall, about three and half feet wide and twelve feet tall. A street artist has painted a face on the concrete wall. The face is pale blue, with a mouth so grotesquely wide open that it takes up most of the height of the wall segment. The inside of the mouth is painted red, with white letters outlined in black, reading "Change your life."
I'm fairly certain that the graffiti was added after the wall fell.
After the museum, we all went for dinner at La Ballerina, an Italian restaurant in Covent Garden (w), after which we went to Lucia's flat, where we spent the rest of the week:
Lucia's apartment building, made of orangey-red brick. Someone's motorcycle is parked in the driveway out front.
A view looking down the street, lined with other similar buildings.
A map showing the approximate location of Lucia's neighborhood, on the south side of the Thames, not far from Tower Bridge.