The Culture Vultures swoop in on London pt1

A couple of weeks ago ma&pa came down to visit along with Colin&Sue & by the end of it I felt my brain had grown a bit bigger at least!

Our first stop was the Cabinet War Rooms where Winston Churchill had been during the blitz with the rest of his government. I'd seen quite a few posters advertising it & had really wanted to go & boy I wasn't disappointed. It was really interesting. 

It was hard to believe that people had been in this rabbit warren underground, living down there in the narrow corridors & no daylight, they wouldn't have even known if there was any London left as they were climbing the stairs to get above ground again.

In the middle of the war rooms was the Churchill Museum all about Sir Winston Churchill & his life which was a bit confusing to get around (so confusing we lost dad! Don't ask!) but pretty interesting. Mum even learnt how to do her emails! :P

Running through the middle of the room was a long interactive table detailing what had happened & when during Churchill's life. As you touched certain dates things would show up on the screen & one time when I looked up the table was covered in poppies, I tried to run over & grab a photo but was too late. So I then started the task of trying to figure out what date would set off the Poppies again (it was 11^th Nov 1918 by the way!) & finally got my shot.

Once I managed to find dad (he was almost at the end of the whole museum & had to walk him back to where we'd been waiting!) we carried on our tour walking round following the audio guide (seeing as he walked off, dad was made to go round the bits he'd already seen again like a naughty child!).

It's really worth a visit if you're looking for something to do indoors & if the weather's a bit crappy. They've even got a great little war-time cafe too, yum!

Once we'd met Adam after work we headed to the RCA for the David Hockney exhibition 'A Bigger Picture'. I was pretty excited cos I've always liked what he does (especially the photo montages) so was interested to see his new work. The show was all based around the Yorkshire countryside & how it changes in each season, there were lots of trees, woodland & country roads. His work consisted of some beautiful charcoal drawings alongside some lovely softer countryside scenes that were then contrasted with really vivid oil paintings that were huge. We were all just about to get tree'd out when we walked into the next room to find 32 prints of images he'd drawn on his iPad & wow! If anyone had said to me “come see this artist who draws on his iPad” I don't think I'd have been interested but there they were in all their glory. It was like a breath of fresh air to the show. They looked almost like pastels & the colours he'd used were stunning (I think you get the message I liked them & I could go on forever but I'll save your eyes & stop there!). There was also a video he'd done where he'd strapped 9 cameras to the front of his jeep & driven down country lanes, the effect was a bit like a kaleidoscope, the images from each camera didn't quite match & it was mesmerising. All in all it was a pretty darn good show!

We stopped off for dinner at Fire&Stone where Adam discovered his most favourite pizza ever (a roast lamb dinner on a pizza base anyone?!) we headed home to try on a few secret wedding things that fitted amazingly (huzzah!) before calling it a night & dreaming of weddings in brightly coloured forests.

I won't bore you with the next day (that's in the next post you lucky souls!).

Ttfn x