Imperial... not to be confused with "imperious"

 Today was the day we visited the Imperial War Museum and the Tate Modern.  I'm not sure why it's still called the Imperial War Museum.  There hasn't been a British "Empire" for how long now?  Nearly a century?  And most of the exhibits in this admittedly wonderful museum deal with wars that have happened long after the Empire, bless it's dear Victorian heart, had long since gone out for afternoon tea.  Oh well.  More on the museum later.

Before we got there, we were treated to this rare and amazing sight.  It's a Tube station, in the middle of the day, with not a single soul on it but us.  Blimey!

 And here is the Imperial War Museum in all its neoclassical and becannoned glory.  Gotta have a dome.  It's not an important building unless it has a dome.

Those may look like toy planes, the kind you find hanging from the ceiling in a young boy's bedroom.  But they are real (a Spitfire on the right, Fokker on the left, and I can't remember what in the middle--maybe a Mustang), and this is an impressive entry to the museum.  To the left is a little cafe where they serve war-time food (shepherd's pie, bangers and mash, soup and a roll, etc.) in enameled tin dinnerware, but at very 21st-century prices.

 One of the temporary exhibits was about the Holocaust.  It came with a warning that it was unsuitable for visitors younger than 16 years old, which we interpreted as "Any adult with even a modicum of sensitivity will be emotionally scarred for the rest of their life by the images here."  How could you not be?  I have visited Auschwitz and Birkenau before and don't need more Holocaust images in my life, so I stayed outside with the girls while Hadley went in for 5 minutes, and later wished she hadn't.  I can't imagine that these schoolchildren were there for the Holocaust exhibit, but since they were paying tribute to Anne Frank, and since we'd been to the Anne Frank House about two months ago, I appreciated their sense of history.

There was a fantastic exhibit elsewhere in the museum about living through the Blitz, as told through the eyes and recollections of a real London family (one of whom, now in his 90s, still volunteers at the Museum).  The girls were enthralled, and we were delighted that they were enthralled.

 A large chunk of the Berlin Wall outside the War Museum.

 From there we walked to the Tate Modern, an old power station turned into a contemporary art gallery.  I love the unapologetic honesty of its exterior--it screams "Hey! I'm a boring power station and I'm not pretending to be anything else."  And I love that there's now a fascinating art gallery inside.

 The old turbine rooms at the Tate Modern.  Some of the power-station machinery is still in place.

The nearest Tube stop to the Tate Modern is actually across the river.  So we walked past some really good Eastern European folk musicians busking on the South Bank, walked by vendors selling chocolate-roasted hazelnuts on the Millennium Bridge (but didn't have spare change to buy any--darn!), and headed towards St. Paul's on our way home.