More Art Deco and Mail Rail!

Hullo!! We are on our last adventure day in London. Sigh. Today we took the tube in and got off at Westminster Station.

There's Big Ben!

We just missed the bus we were going to catch so we decided to walk...

There's the London Eye.

And the Houses of Parliament....

We have to go that way!

We went under Waterloo Station...

And saw a defibrillator station... interesting. Later we saw a mini ambulance on a bike!

This church has a lovely spire... we'll show you another one later... that doesn't.

Oh look, way down that street.

It's the boomerang... or the vase... depending on your fancy.

We're going to the Imperial War Museum!

As we waited for it to open, we saw this little piece of history. It's a chunk from the Berlin Wall!

That's pretty cool.

We had a poke around in here.

The airplanes were pretty cool!

And went through some of the displays.

Alright, that's enough of that. As we were heading off to catch a bus, we saw St. George's Cathedral... notice anything missing?

It's got no spire! And it could really use one!

A church without a spire just looks weird. Did it get bombed during the war?

We learned it did get bombed, quite badly. But it didn't have a spire before the war either. The architect had drawn one up but they ran out of funds when the place was built originally... and when it was rebuilt after the war.

We caught the #1 bus!! And took it across to Aldwych at which point things slowed to a crawl... slower than a crawl. We all got off the bus and started walking... And traffic was all gummed up. Don't know what was happening but it was a nightmare!

We saw this along the way... don't ask what they sell in here... Sullivan and Gilbert would be appalled.

And stopped at a Starbucks to have some sustenance. All that walking needs fuel!

There was a beary pretty Christmas tree here too...

And then we saw this... the Senate House! It's part of the University of London, but during the war, the Ministry of Information was in there.

In 1984, George Orwell describes the Ministry of Truth building and it sounds a lot like this place. His wife worked for the Ministry of Information during the war... It's another gorgeous art deco. 

The inside was kind of "meh" though.

On the other side we saw this amazing door knocker.

It's pretty cool, don't you think?

We went by the Daimler building again, this time during daylight hours... It's white with green trim. We didn't see the green trim the other evening.

Still gorgeous although those nighttime shots were pretty cool.

And yes we are doing a lot of walking! Finally... we got to here... The Postal Museum!

Given the number of letters and cards that stuffies mail out... this is an obvious place to check out.

They had a cute gift shop...

With mice ornaments! What's with the mice this year????

Their museum was pretty cool and we learned lots of neat stuff about the postal service. Like, it was Henry VIII who first created his very own post system to send missives around his kingdom. And that the first pillar boxes were green!

Over time, it expanded... and became a postal service for regular folk too. But it was confusing cause the cost depended on how many pages you were sending and how far it was going. Until they came up with the Penny Mail... you could send anything under 14g for a penny (those were the days). And then they came up with the first stamps!

The postal service also handled telegrams and telephone service as well, in the early days.

They had whole systems to deliver the mail fast and efficiently - motorbike messengers, railway systems and eventually trucks.

In the 1930s, they got a new CEO who started a massive PR campaign, with lots of colourful and fun posters....

Oooh... do you see the kitty???

That's Tibs!! He was a real cat! He was known as Tibs the Great, and served as the official mascot and pest controller for the British Post Office Headquarters for 14 years (1950-1964). When he died, get got an obituary in the Post Office magazine and even had his low "salary" debated in Parliament!

They even have a pillar box from King Edward VIII. There were only 160 or so of these put out during his short reign (he abdicated in the mid 1930s). London still has 17... but we didn't come across one on our travels. 

Ah... this is cute... it says Tibs kept the postal building mouse-free for 14 years. I sent this pic to Beanie Mouse and he says... "yeah, they all ended up here!".

And... we're not done yet! Across the street is Mail Rail!!

It's part of the entrance ticket!!

To move mail around London, Royal Mail had a whole network of underground mini-rails. And now... you can ride some of the little mini-trains!

That's one coming in now!

But we're taking the green one.

No bags or backpacks allowed. And we can see why... it's pretty tight in here!

There are some stuffies manning the control station. Wonder if they were left behind on a train at some point?

And, we're off!

It's pretty freaky...

There's all sorts of tunnels down here...

We went by old platforms where they used to move the carts off the mail rail and send it up conveyors to the sorting facility above.

Those are old trains down below...

And we got spit back out where we came from, having gone in a big circuit!

They also had a bit of a display down there... which was kind of cool

It was pretty cool!

And now... we're off. Just saying "bye" to Tibs....

There's a cool mural across the street. The one thing though... at the museum... they didn't really talk about the future of paper mail... is it going to be like those instruments at the musical museum? Defunct?

And then we went here to catch the #63!

This stop had a fancy live display of buses coming but... they never came! A lady already there said she'd been waiting for 15 minutes with no bus! So we started walking. We learned later the #63 was on diversion because of "unsafe traffic control during construction". Whatever that means... they could've said that on the live display!

We went here for dinner, near King's Cross station!

And had a very large stiff drink...

With butter chicken! It was scrumptious although the service was a tad slow... So far on this trip, we have eaten Spanish, Italian, Turkish, Lebanese, Persian, Indian, Thai and Japanese!! That's pretty good!

Then we caught the Piccadilly Line which was like sardine-ville.. although we did get a seat! Yay...