London Monday: Frigid temperatures, Galleries, Parliament, and Downtown

So Monday, we got to Westminster Abbey in the morning only to find it closed because the Queen was giving a speech there for Commonwealth day. So we called an audible and ended up going down to the Churchill war rooms. They were fabulous! These are the bunker offices that Churchill used during WWII during the blitz that have been restored. There's also a museum on Churchill's life. We spent about 4 hours down there. It's really, really a neat place!

Pieter wearing a Churchill bowler and cigar at the museum

From there we did a walk of the standard London sights (Westminster, Big Ben, Parliament, the Thames, London Eye, 10 Downing Street, Horse Guards, Whitehall etc). So speaking of the weather, it was freakin' cold. It was snowing and there were icicles on all the fountains. 

 

Freezing by the Thames and the London Eye

10 Downing Street

Horse Guards

War Memorial

Whitehall

Double decker bus!

Churchill

We got lunch at a Tesco Express (grocery store) and then tried to find somewhere to get out of the cold to eat it, not an easy task! We ended up at Leichster Square with the Lions and went into the National Gallery. We had to sneak the food into the National Gallery Cafe to eat it, since it was too cold to eat outside. We ate our sandwiches in the Espresso Bar, but didn't buy anything because a single 2.5" cookie was like 3 pounds there ($5). This whole time though, we though we were in the National Portrait Gallery. So when we finished, we went upstairs to start at the Tudor portraits in room 1 like the guidebook says. We see room number 34 and a bunch of Raphael era paintings and that's when we realized we were totally off and were in the wrong museum. We had a good laugh about it. We decided to see the 4 Impressionist rooms since we were there anyway :) Favorites were a Monet from his winter period and a Van Gogh Sunflower.

Then we actually went to the real portrait museum, which is super awesome! Basically, anyone who's anyone and British has their portrait there starting with Henry VIII, to Amy Winehouse with Darwin, John Locke, George Washington in between. The new Kate Middleton portrait is there and it doesn't look as bad as I thought it would from the news stories/pics, but her smile lines are REALLY deep and she's not smiling. Pieter loved seeing all of his political thinkers and was bummed that Paul McCartney was the only Beatle there (entitled "Mike's Brother). 

After, we went to Parliament. Anyone can go watch the House of Commons debate Parliament. I don't think they mean for it to be a tourist attraction, but it was cool. We watched for about an hour. Much more interesting than watching Congress. Then had excellent Indian food at about 9:30, since everyone eats late here and called it a night.

Oliver Cromwell statue outside of Parliament

Parliament at night