Of Bomb Shelters and Art Deco

 Hullo! After the essential Starbucks visit, we are off for an adventure day in London!

We got off at Russell Square and headed off.

Some places are beary well-decorated for Christmas!

OK... ready? We saw something cool on the bus the other day, and came back to investigate!

It's just down here, near Goodge Street station... Do you see it?

It's this thing!! It's one of the deep bomb shelters that the Brits built during the early years of the war! They were over 100 feet deep and could hold 8000 people with dedicated canteens and medical posts.

They weren't really used as civilian bomb shelters though because by the time they were done building them, the Blitz was pretty much over and Germany had moved ton to Russia.

But this particular one DID get used later for Eisenhowers command post! Hence... it's called The Eisenhower Centre.

But today, they're just used for data or achive storage. This one had a sign up high saying "Iron Mountain" - probably data storage.

There's a war memorial in here too!

There are pretty cool! There are 8 in total, and sometimes... if you're lucky, the one down by Clapham gives tour!

We're not at Clapham Common though... and this wasn't actually the exact thing we saw from the bus the other day. This is the East Entrance to the complex. We saw the West Entrance! Let me show you!

It's not far but we saw this cool deer made out of wood, in a furniture store window...

It also had towers of old books as decorative props... Um... for a book lover, that seems a bit scandalous!

It's over there!! We had seen an outdoor food market and then a weird brick thing.

That's it, in behind the tree and the blue tent, all covered in graffitti.

I wonder how many people miss this as they go by?

Right. I'm starving, let's check out these food stalls!

There was a stall selling paella! This looks good!

It was chicken and chorizo and quite yummy!

Then we got back on the Northern Line and went up a few stops...

It's a beary deep tube line... and they have elevators that take you up and down, but there's also these spiral stair cases that go up... if you want to do 100+ stairs!

We got out here, at Mornington Crescent Station and... yowza!!

We saw this!!! This is the Carreras Cigarette Factory (or used to be). It is outstanding art deco!!

Beanie told us we should check this one out! And he was right... wow...

It is beary spectacular and well-kept too.

Even the railings are nifty.

It has kind of an Egyptian vibe going on too.

When it was converted to offices in 1961, the Egyptian detailing was lost, but in 1990, there was another big reno, and they restored it!

Including the two cats!! Aren't they gorgeous?

Well, we think they're gorgeous. Other stuffies of the rodent variety might not agree.

This is amazing... and definitely worth a trip out here.

Gorgeous!

I'm glad we came out here. 

Then we went to catch a bus and we saw this thing, across the street from the tube station!!

It's a music venue called Koko but when it was built in 1900, it was called the Camden Palace. It is definitely NOT art deco... but more Baroque Pastiche style...

Then we went to The British Library (again) to see if we could find a spot to sit down and do some work (it was starting to rain)...

But they were full up... so we found a Starbucks near Tavistock with excellent wifi and electrical plug-ins! And watched it rain... and happily blogged.

When we headed out... we came across this building less than a block from Russell Square tube station! 

It's the old Daimler building and is another gorgeous art deco!

It looks quite pretty at night, all lit up.

And then we headed home. We love this vintage signs!