so, this gorgeous place where we had our afternoon tea is called bletchley park, and it’s not just a gorgeous park…

… but also the home of the WW2 codebreakers, and a fantastic museum!

it was a beautiful sunny day this past august when we took the train to bletchley from london, not knowing very well what to expect… but optimistic on the prospect of exploring 2 things i enjoy: science and history! having seen the imitation game not that long ago, and having studied cryptography some years ago in university, we were definitely curious.

on the entrance, we got ourselves 2 spy kits (supposedly for children, but way too much fun to pass on) and then just followed the clues, decoding the mysteries of the park one by one.

we were stoked to discover that bletchley park is wonderfully interactive! not only did they preserve much of the furniture and materials from the war time, they also use clever projections to show people talking and working on the actual rooms, along with screens that you can use to learn the basic concepts of cryptography.

the museum takes place in several huts and houses around the park, and you can see the effort that went into giving the visitors a sense of what life was like here… and the dimension of the puzzle they were trying to crack against the clock, over and over, every single day.

one of the highlights of the trip was to see a demonstration of (a reconstruction of) the bombe, the machine used to decrypt enigma’s messages!

with our geeky hearts filled to the brim, we hopped on the train back to london at the end of the day, ready to finish our kits and write some postcards for friends. it was the perfect day! :)