I recently I started a new series on LandLopers, the Interactive Travel Guide. The idea is to highlight one city or country every week and then get the best recommendations from you all. By the end of the week, we hopefully will have created the best tips not from guide books, but from real people.
To continue this social media experiment, this week I want to highlight London.
London is a remarkable city, extremely modern but with hints of its long history found throughout the metropolis. One of my favorite activities is to visit the Imperial War Museum.
The Museum is tucked away in a SE London neighborhood off Lambeth Road and although it has a fairly intimidating name, this museum is easy to get to and thoroughly enjoyable.
The Imperial War Museum, to be technical, is a system of museums throughout the United Kingdom including the Churchill Museum and Cabinet War Rooms and the HMS Belfast. For the purposes of this post though, I want to focus on the IWM London.
What is most interesting is that the museum building was formerly the central portion of Bethlem Royal Hospital, or Bedlam. The museum, which opened in 1920, has been housed in its current location since 1936 and the collections encompass all military campaigns involving Britain and the Commonwealth since the First World War.
Some of the highlights include a remarkable collection of war time posters with such classic taglines as “Keep Calm and Carry On,” a current exhibition about life in the trenches and a jaw-dropping collection of war machines.
Plan on spending at least a few hours here as some of the permanent exhibitions are quite thorough and well worth the time. Also plan on visiting another IWM facility in London, the Churchill Museum and Cabinet War Rooms located near Westminster.
NOW it’s your turn. Please comment and tell us your favorite thing to do, see or eat in London. If you haven’t been yet, please let us know what you would most like to do.
