Final day in London - Bletchley Park

Our final day of included touring from our hotel in London had the whole day devoted to Bletchley Park. Each of our London hotel based days featured included tours that were the only tours offered. If you were not interested in visiting these locations, you were free as always to find your own transportation and pay your own way if you'd rather spend the time seeing other things like London's famous city attractions. We did have some group members who chose to do that. If this had been our first visit to London, I would have been tempted to do the same. This itinerary is such an immersive program designed around one theme that it really caters to those who have a deep interest in the history of D-Day. 

This museum complex is spread out over a series of buildings where they have turned the actual dwellings into exhibits. It does require a lot of walking between the buildings but there are benches throughout as well as ramps and elevators. Some areas require walking up hills and steep inclines but is mostly paved asphalt. Tickets cost £28 per adult but our admission was covered by Viking. Our Coach 1 tour time ran from 8:30AM to 5:30PM.

During the drive to Bletchley Park (a good drive away from the city so not something you can easily return early from), our guide told us that we'd be free to roam on our own for the entire time. By the time we arrived, that plan had changed to wanting us to do a guided walking tour with a guide from the museum that we were supposed to meet about halfway up amongst the buildings. Then the rest of the time would be ours to explore on our own. For some reason, only one illustrated map was provided to our guide so he had us all gather around him holding it open once off the bus in order to get a picture to use during our time here. 

After we got pictures of the map, we headed up to where we expected to meet the tour guide. The weather was cold and blustery and by the time we made it up the hill to find no sign of a tour guide, we decided to bow out of the guided outdoor walking tour and start exploring on our own. There were a couple school groups being led around but it was only crowded in the smaller buildings where a lot of the display is in one space.

There were a good bit of video components to these exhibits allowing visitors to sit and take a break from the walking to watch. Plenty of signs and written explanations so you can spend as little or as long at each display as you wanted.

I thought this way of displaying D-Day with a nod to the codebreakers outside of the Teleprinter buildings was really interesting.

Looking at the display from behind:

Large print and "tactile" or braille guides were available to pick up as you entered some buildings.

Hologram images of those who worked in these buildings were displayed on the walls along with quotes about their time here. 

There were also audio features throughout the exhibits where you could listen to the people tell their own stories.

Another section featured an example of the limited information the codebreakers would have been handed and tools for you to try your hand at figuring out the rest of the information like they did.

More geared towards kids was an area where you could learn about all the jobs held by the people who worked here and try on examples of their uniforms.

After touring several of the buildings and ending with their newest exhibit dedicated to the use of A.I. and how Bletchley Park's work was such a precursor to this new technology, I left Dad to rest on the benches while I walked over to see the exterior of The Mansion. I opted out of walking further to see the stables etc.

Once back at the main building, we visited the little cafe on site to grab sandwiches, waters, and a rocky road brownie treat for Dad. He wasn't a fan because it was also rock hard and included cherries so he went back for ice cream. Lunch was on our own and at our own expense.

After lunch, we returned to another movie viewing space inside the main building that we had skipped since there was a crowd and no more seats when we first arrived. After the movie, I browsed the gift shop and picked up a couple puzzle books featuring crosswords and cryptograms. I had visions of passing the downtime on our cruise working to solve the puzzles in these books. They sat in our suitcases untouched so long that I accidentally stored away our suitcases at home before remembering they were in the front pocket! Now I keep them next to the couch and enjoy solving the puzzles at home.

Once we returned to the hotel, we stopped at the Viking desk within the hotel lobby to turn in our Quiet Vox boxes and receive our information and train tickets for the next day's Eurostar transfer to the Viking Radgrid. We were told to keep our earbuds so we could reuse them with the ship's provided boxes but also assured that the ship would provide their own earbuds. We returned back to our room to quickly pack up our suitcases as the luggage pickup from our rooms would begin at 6:30PM. We were sent luggage tags with our transfer stickers in the mail pre-cruise but were also given ones to use when we checked in with Viking at the hotel on the first night. The information letter for this ship transfer step insisted that these new tags were the ones that had to be on our luggage or it wouldn't be picked up from our hotel rooms. I visited the Executive Lounge one last time to grab snacks and we relaxed in the room for the rest of the night.

Day 2 of included tours - Part 2 - Covent Garden & The Imperial War Museum

Our second day of included tours continued with a bus ride to the Covent Garden Market. This shopping center is part brick and mortar shops and eateries as well as open air booths for craftspeople to sell their homemade goods. After a brief explanation of the area, we were left on our own to grab lunch and/or shop with a time to meet back at the bus. The market was decorated for the holiday season.

Dad and I walked through the market grounds which were even more crowded since the sun had come out. We didn't find much of interest in the shops but did stop briefly to watch a street magician. Making our way back to the bus, we came upon a small bakery and ice cream shop. Dad's lunch choice consisted of ice cream while I enjoyed a more savory option that looked like an inside out rectangular slice of pizza. No pictures as we were a bit too hangry by this point to think of the camera needing to eat first. 

Our final stop of the tour was to the Imperial War Museum, a stop that thankfully allowed our buses to pull up right in front. This visit was also self led with a time to meet back at the bus. There wasn't enough time to really tour every section so you had to be selective as to on which level you wanted to devote your time. We focused mainly on the World War II level.

This was a fun interactive feature that used a touchscreen to teach you how to set up an enigma machine with a new code key and decipher a sample message written in code.

We appreciated how there were several small benches throughout placed strategically near screens playing a loop of video footage. You could get a chance to rest in general or take the time to sit and watch the footage. I also liked to see that the video footage was accompanied by video of an ASL translator.

The view while standing on the front steps:

A section of the Berlin Wall on display as you walk back down to the street:

Looking back at the front door while standing by the above pictured piece:

On the drive back to the hotel, our guide and driver took us a longer way around so that we could get a view down the Thames River and see several of today's earlier landmarks at once.

Day 2 of our included tours - Part 1- Churchill War Museum & City Tour

Day 2 of included touring brought with it our earliest start yet at 7AM for Coach 1. All of the coaches were only spaced out by 10 minute intervals so the last bus left at 7:30AM. The first two buses were back by 4PM and the latter two back by 4:30PM. Today's tour was called Britain at War & Panoramic London.

The weather was typical for London with a rainy start. So of course our bus had to park just down the street from Westminster Abbey while our guide led us on a speed walking tour of London highlights to get us over to the Churchill War Museum. 

We did use our listening devices during the walk as our guide pointed out various landmarks. It was tough to keep up with the group myself and especially tough for Dad. Thankfully, we could hear the commentary and we had seen all of the main city landmarks on our previous visit. It was all we could do to just keep the group in sight. We had packed our lined raincoats so we could use them for both cold and rainy weather days but we had not anticipated this lengthy walk so did not bother to grab the small umbrella we'd packed. Still being on these pre-cruise hotel days, there was not a Viking provided umbrella available to use. 

Once we arrived at the Churchill War Rooms, we had the opportunity to finally tell our guide about how hard it was to keep up and ask him to please go slower or allow those of us with mobility issues to catch up before moving on. He was apologetic but kept insisting that we had to have rushed to make our scheduled time for this visit. While we did get escorted access down to the exhibits in an elevator, the walk had tired us out and Dad needed to sit out most of the spaces. 

Viking and the museum had set up some pastries, tea, coffee, and water exclusive for our four buses in a banquet room between the two main exhibit areas. After we'd both got some water and rested for a bit, Dad had me go on to see whatever else I could while he took a break. 

There was a self-guided audio tour that we were all given to use while down in the exhibits.

There were arrows around directing you as to what order to walk through the exhibits but even with just our first two bus groups, the space became very crowded. 

This stretch between the first two exhibit areas with an offshoot hallway to the banquet room was the only place with seating - a long bench against the wall.

We asked our guide when Dad didn't feel up to walking amongst the exhibits anymore if the bus was going to pick us back up. The guide insisted that we'd have to do the same walk back because the bus couldn't get any closer. We asked Dee (who'd arrived with another bus) about getting a taxi to take us back and she told us that would have the same problem as the bus. Dee was a lot more willing than our guide to seek an alternative solution and offered to have one of the guides lead us back to the bus early before coming back for the group so that we wouldn't have to rush. We took her up on the offer (the guide chosen ended up being our assigned guide anyway) and agreed to meet the guide up at the gift shop by a certain time. 

The pleasant surprise that we discovered when Dad was ready for us to slowly make our way to the gift shop is that you had to walk through the narrow passageways showcasing the glassed in room mockups. With everyone else either in the main exhibit areas or enjoying their refreshments, we were able to walk at our own pace alone through these passageways that would have been much more congested than the other hallways. This section was the main features of the exhibits that Dad had wanted to see so it was refreshingly nice to take our time and be able to see everything without being blocked by a crowd.

We ended up coming out of the small gift shop (at the time in the middle of remodeling) and had time for a bathroom break before our guide met back up with us. The walk back was much easier, especially since the rain had let up, and our guide stayed with us walking at a much more leisurely pace. This gave us the chance get some bonus commentary and questions asked about the area and his work with Viking as we made our way back to the bus. We were thankful to our guide and Dee for making such an accomodation and appreciated the time to rest on the bus while we waited for the rest of the group to finish their visit.