My week started and ended in Iceland, but in between I spent four days in London, going to museums, taking lots of trains, drinking great coffee, and walking over 30 miles. It was nice to be in a giant city again, to feel the energy and possibilities that, for all its charm, are not part of life in Reykjavík. Also, while I know that London is not known for its weather, it was quite a bit warmer, and it was nice to wander around without the need for a hat and scarf.
One of the days I took the regional train northwest of the city to visit The National Museum of Computing, which has been on my list for a while. It’s housed on the campus of Bletchley Park, which was home to the British codebreakers during WW2. That’s where they worked in secrecy to decipher coded messages sent by the Nazis, which required reverse-engineering the Germans’ encryption machines. Most of the computers they created to do this were destroyed after the war, but TNMOC houses working authentic recreations alongside a broader collection of large-scale systems and personal computers. It’s a fascinating place, and the volunteers do an excellent job explaining how it all works. I didn’t make it to the rest of Bletchley Park, which is actually the much larger museum campus. They are two separate organizations, and had a bit of a falling out years ago around the time that Bletchley Park got a large grant. It seems that TNMOC is the place to go for a more technical history, whereas Bletchley Park is more about life during that period. It would have been interesting to do both, but since I only had time for one I chose to see the working recreation of Colossus over where Alan Turing used to sleep.
I also got to go to the Transport Museum Depot at Acton, a large warehouse that stores over 320,000 historical items from London’s transport history, from posters and signage to trains and buses. While there is a smaller museum open most days, this full archive is only accessible to the public on select weekends or by booking a guided tour.
Those two museums were the bookends of my trip, but I also went to the Design Museum, the Grant Museum of Zoology, Sir John Soane’s Museum, the Tate Modern, and the Treasures of the British Library. Other notable stops were Novelty Automation, eating at Dishoom (twice!), an incredible concert by Makaya McCraven in an old church, and a Dadaist performance/film at the Horse Hospital. I hadn’t been to London in a long time, and most of my past trips were for work. So it was nice to wander around neighborhoods I hadn’t been to before.
One thing I found notable was how seamlessly the transport system now works with contactless payment. I never had to buy a ticket — I just tapped my credit card at the start and end of my journey, on both the Tube and the regional railways. I didn’t ride any buses, but it works the same there. The system keeps track of what zones you pass through and charges you once at the end of the day, factoring in the daily fare cap. I’m already used to the convenience of showing up in another country and not having to worry about paper currency. This takes it to the next level, where I had immediate access to public transit with no separate account, tickets, or tokens to worry about.
In Iceland ferry news — last week I wrote about the challenges the Vestmannaeyjar ferry was having (failed engines, harbor filled with sand, etc.). Since then, the dredging of the harbor at Landeyjahöfn went well, but this ferry company cannot catch a break! As soon as the sailings resumed, their booking system went down because of a fire in the Dutch data center that hosts their website. Luckily, I already bought a ticket for my sailing in 11 days, but given their track record, who knows what will happen before then.
