March 26, 2003

The Un-Routine Continues

The weeks here won’t stop passing by. We’ve now moved beyond the halfway mark of our stay, though I remember walking into my flat for the first time as if it had been an hour ago. But I don’t sense that too many in our crew are getting nostalgic just yet. Most are thinking instead about the four-day break beginning at the end of this week, when many of us will hit the travel circuit. I’ll do my best to bring you a snapshot from each destination next time, keeping in mind that travel-journalling is a family affair.

There’s one other thing that stops us from looking backward in time much: the daily routine, which is to say the unpredictable and all-consuming blend of sights and sounds offered by a fascinating city at an eventful moment in history. Not much of a routine to it, on second thought. Which brings us to this past week.

Tuesday we made our way to Westminster to see the Cabinet War Rooms, the underground facilities from which Churchill and Britain’s other movers and shakers directed World War II. This top-secret site was particularly crucial

during the intense German bombing campaigns (the “blitzes”) that devastated London and other British cities in 1940 and 1941. Walking through the cramped corridors – tracing the path that Churchill must have taken hundreds of times – would seem compelling enough. But the War Rooms have a special resonance because their appearance, down to the smallest detail, has been preserved since 1945.