Portsmith, museums, and vets

Wow was today an adventure! Where to begin...

Breakfast was at the hotel. It was great! They had everything you could want, hash browns, eggs, yogurt, cereal, and tons more. We made sandwiches with the lunch meat they had, snuck them out, and took with us. After we had breakfast we went to see Winston Churchill's underground bunker he is used during the second world war. On the way we made a brief stop at Big Ben. 

Hes was big, and his name was Ben. The bunker was a vast array of rooms, passages, and doorways. Surprisingly enough, the bunker was not fully bomb proof. A direct hit would have taken out Churchill and his entire war cabinet. Inside the bunker there were rooms for each of the members. There were rooms for eating, cooking, cleaning, and all of the other basic essentials. There were also rooms for communications, planning, maps, and dozens of other rooms for various other military purposes. All of the rooms were fairly small, with the exception of the meeting rooms, and Churchill's personal room. Churchill originally did not want to use the bunker. He wanted to be outside to show the country that he was not afraid. But after a bomb took out half of his house and study, he was left with little choice. The war cabinet would stay down there for weeks at a time, only coming up when it was absolutely safe.
An adjacent building was a museum just for Churchill himself. Inside were memorabilia from his life, quotes throughout the years, as well as a giant projection table that contained facts, quotes, and pictures from his entire life. While most of it was based on WWII, some of it talked about what he did before and after the war.
After his bunker we went and visited the Imperial War Museum. Inside the museum were various weapons of war, espionage, and tales of death, and survival. There was a section on the Holocaust, both world wars, and the cold war. Off hidden away in a corner, ironically, was the espionage part of the museum. Inside was details about the secret spies, and the missions they carried out to get intelligence back to their country. Among the artifacts were hidden weapons such as the .22 pipe and the dagger pencil. Another interesting artifact was the enigma machine. For those that don't know, the enigma was the secret device the Germans used to encrypt, send, and receive secret war communications. The enigma was one of the most technologically advanced pieces of equipment of the time. Imagine bringing, say and iPhone 6 or a Galaxy 7 edge back in time to 1995. That's how far ahead of time it was.

After the museum, we hopped on the bus for a two hour ride to Portsmouth. Once we arrived in Portsmouth, we went to the D-Day museum. Inside we say a video about the preparation before the invasion. After that we got to talk to a veteran who landed on gold beach. He shared where he was, what he did, and what he did after the war. He shared an interesting story with us. 

After the war, he became a guard at a pow camp. One day, one of the prisoners said that someone he knew found an unexploded bomb. Him and a police officer over to where the bomb was. The officer picked up the bomb. It was rusted all over. The officer said that it was completely harmless. He picked it up and and disintegrated in his hand. It was not a bomb, it was filled with mustard gas. Both him and the cop spent the next four weeks in a hospital recovering from the mustard burns. He survived D-Day, over a year in Germany, and ended up in the hospital from a canister that a cop said was harmless. 

After that we went to the cost to see the view. There we met a few native girls who started talking to us about the trip, where we can from, and what we had seen. They talked about th  town and said they liked that we were here for the history. 

Then we had dinner, which was awesome. We had a beef pie type thing. It was awesome. Then we had dessert, which was sticky toffee pudding. Best desert ever! 

Finally, we got on the ferry, which we have been on since around 10:30. We will be on until 5:45, which means we have to get up by 4:40 to eat and be down before we dock.

I'd also like to point out for anyone that didn't see, that last night Muhammad Ali died. I know it doesn't relate to the trip, but it is an important part of world history, and I wanted to ensure that everyone remembered that that happened while we were in Europe

I'm going to try to add a lot of pictures tomorrow of I get a chance, and Internet access. Currently, it is 2:32 A.M. And only my room is awake, and the pictures finally uploaded themselves. So I'm going to go get my 3 hours of sleep, and I will talk to all of you tomorrow. .  Not worth it to sleep, so it looks like I'm staying up all night. Gotta Love Europe!