The Spy Museum

April 09, 2015

A lot of these photos are not wonderful. It's really hard for me to take pics inside of a dark museum. I should have just put my camera in Program mode from the start and moved on. Still, I got shots that I want that remind me of what we did and make me happy enough to scrapbook with.

There were a lot more opportunities for interaction than I expected here. Right off the bat, they told everyone to choose one of the characters hanging on the wall and attempt to memorize the background story about him/her.

Once in the next room, they gave you a mission to accomplish. They also gave a little quiz to see if you could remember your background information.

This was an exercise in spotting specific things via a satellite image. I was horrible at this. The boys were pretty good.

I of course, had to take pics of all the cameras. :)

This display was showing how people would sneak out of East Germany. I can't imagine the risk they took and the lengths they would go to to hide. Not just the people being smuggled, but those who were doing the smuggling. I can imagine the high blood pressure, the elevated heart rate, the sweat... I'm sure it would be incredibly stressful.

How many people attempted and survived hiding here...

This cracked us up. Brilliant right? Who's going to check dog poop for a transmitter?

Ninjas are awesome...just saying...

Don't laugh, but I was so excited to see this. Two of my (and my mom's) fave movies are Elizabeth and Elizabeth, the Golden Age. One of the characters is Walsingham. He was Queen Elizabeth's spymaster. I love his character - so smart and cunning. Well, ya know, you never know what is true in movies that "based" on truth. So, it was very exciting to see that not only was he real, but he was indeed a spy.

I would have taken a pic of Mata Hari, but the area where her life sized picture was, was too dark to get a good shot. She was definitely a confident woman. Playing both sides. She actually blew a kiss to the men in the firing squad just before they executed her.

It was interesting seeing this display too. I had read about these guys and the damage they had done to the British and American intelligence community.

The Spy Museum had tons of stuff about writers - especially Ian Fleming. Of course the creator of James Bond would be featured in the museum. but there were a shocking number of writers that were also spies or cytologists and the like. Very interesting.

Shorty trying to break James Bond's hanging record. He made it to 36 seconds. I don't know why I don't have a pic of Little B doing this. Maybe I was too busy cheering him on. He last 49 seconds. The guy said the average was only 20 seconds, so the boys did really well. Bryan would have had to hang in there for another minute or so I believe.