London - Part 3, the rest of the museums

 For Part 1 see here and Part 2 see here, just in case you missed them :0)

On our trip to London  we visited 9 museums in 5 days.

The Imperial War Museum and the Sherlock Holmes Museum were the first two.

David (6) wanted us to go and and visit the Transport Museum, no. 3.

It isn't huge but is really well laid out and interactive for children. There is a great history of the underground railway and how it was built. 

This was the first train. Imagine a steam train underground? It was apparently not the most pleasant of journeys!

Of course there are also some more of those iconic buses.

As well as some newer models.

Is it just me or are bus drivers getting younger these days?

Museum no.4 was the Churchill War Rooms, the underground bunker from where Churchill and his Cabinet planned their tactics in WWII.

The war rooms aren't the grand looking building in the background, but are all underground.

This is quite an amazing museum as you are walking around the actual place where all this planning took place.

The maps on the walls are the actual maps used.

This one below had hundreds and hundreds of tiny pin holes going across the Atlantic as it was used to keep track of ships.

This was Churchill's bedroom. Complete with cigar on the bedside table.

The boys were rather fascinated by this typewriter! 

Museum no.5, continuing our military theme, was the HMS Belfast, one of the gunships used in the D-Day landings. More about this one tomorrow, which I promise will be the last London post! (Just be thankful that I haven't shared all 400 photos I took, although perhaps it feels like that!)

Museum no.6, visited on the same day as the ship above, was the Maritime Museum in Greenwich, home of the international date line.

The boys and I visited museums 7, 8, and 9 on our own on the day that my husband was at his conference. 

Museum no. 7 was the Natural History Museum. 

At the back of the dinosaur section is a huge animatronic T-Rex. It wouldn't keep still for me to get a decent photo!

Right across from the Natural History Museum is the Victoria & Albert Museum, no. 8. 

The V&A, as it's known, was a bit too 'arty' for the boys so we didn't go round the whole museum, but I did want to pop in and see the costume displays.

My favourite was this beautiful wedding veil from the 1900s.

Our final museum, which sits right next door to the natural History Museum, was the Science Museum, no.9.

This one is for my North American friends and shows how much light is given off by countries at night. I couldn't actually get a photo of the UK because of the way the globe was tilted.

By the time the Science Museum was closing I was pretty tired - negotiating my way across London by public transport with 4 boys and then visiting 3 museums (we also visited the Albert Hall that morning, and the Albert Memorial across from it). I was more than a little glad when my husband came to meet us when his conference was done!

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