“As Paul put it, "for Charlie, it was Christmas in Heaven".”

From where we were staying in South Kensington, we took the Tube to Embankment and walked up through the neighborhood where we'd stayed on a previous visit - it's always exciting to retrace ones steps and see familiar sights. I was chuffed because I correctly guessed the cross street that would bring us to the Covent Garden piazza. After only a very little confusion, we found the museum, which has a fairly discreet frontage on a street east of the piazza. At the time, the museum was entirely given over to the world's largest exhibition of vehicles and props from the James Bond films! As Paul put it, "for Charlie, it was Christmas in Heaven". So true.

The first thing we saw past the gift shop was a staircase going down to below street level. Above the staircase was suspended the "Little Nellie" autogyro from "You Only Live Twice". This was promising. At the base of the stairs were two magnificent Rolls-Royce sedans, from "Goldfinger" and "A View to a Kill" respectively. I'll reassure you right now that I'm not going to describe every single exhibit - perhaps I'll bung a few descriptions into the photo captions - suffice it to say that, without exception, every single object in the exhibit, including the 30-odd vehicles, the props, the costumes, the production sketches, the posters, elicited a gasp of recognition and pleasure. For the next couple of hours, Paul and I wandered through the space, elbowing each other and recalling scenes from the movies. "That's Camille's Ford Ka from 'Quantum of Solace'". "Do you remember when Bond drives through Black Park in that Beemer?" God bless Paul. He know's what a freak I am about the movies and he's so indulgent of my wacky obsession.

The exhibit occupied a series of rooms, all on the same level one below street. It was a fairly low space without long sightlines - an exciting new tableau would suddenly be revealed every time we turned a corner. Behind the exhibits, the interior was fairly nondescript except for one wonderful old cellar with a vaulted brick ceiling. Many of the vehicles were displayed along with mannequins modeling costumes from the associated films and with video clips of the scenes involving said vehicles projected on the walls behind. The Aston Martin Vantage from "The Living Daylights" was shown with its black and yellow striped snow outriggers extended, Kara's bullet-holed cello and case leaning against the wall on which the scene of their escape into Austria was projected.

For a rabid fan of the films, little explanation was needed for any of the items. If I had any issues with the exhibition, it's that there was little or no information about the role of the specific vehicles in each of the productions. Multiple vehicles are used in filming, particularly when the cars are involved in action sequences, as most of them are.

It was clear that the two wrecked Aston Martin DBSs were used in the crash scenes from "Casino Royale" and "Quantum", but what was the history of the red Mustang Mach 1 from "Diamonds are Forever"? It had a custom paint job not present in the film which, I'm assuming, was added by some subsequent owner. Was it the actual car used in the two-wheel alley transit? Similarly, what was the provenance of the white Lotus Esprit submarine? Many were used in the film - was this one the fully functioning wet sub or one of the ones used for the transformation closeups? Also, didn't Elon Musk recently purchase the submarine version? Ultimately, I didn't really care. I was content to simply drift and reminisce. When Paul and I had gone through the entire exhibition, we heaved deep sighs... ...and went through it again.

When we finally managed to extricate ourselves, we trudged back up the stairs into the museum shop. I'm a little ashamed to say that I already own most of what was available for sale. We came away with two tea towels and a complete set of Bond movie poster postcards which Paul bought for me and which now are hanging in rows on the wall of my cubicle at my office.

“...it was a pleasure to be surrounded by so many amazing vehicles from the films.”

My brother John and I were both free the morning of the event and decided to do a little museuming in advance of the meet-up. The Air & Space Museum had undergone a recent renovation and both of us were keen to see the result. Unfortunately, timed admissions were required so we went to the Hirshhorn instead. After an hour or so in the exhibits, we bought coffee and buns at the cafe on the ground floor and got outside of them while sitting at the outdoor tables. John headed back home and I began my walk through L'Enfant Plaza to the Spy Museum.

As I walked through L'Enfant Plaza, I realized that in all the time I spent in the D.C. area, I had NEVER walked through L'Enfant Plaza. It's really rather impressive. Brutalist, don't you know. Bits of it looked as though they were under renovation. I walked along the wide avenue, looking left into intriguing spaces with ramps and bridges and sculptures. I could see the Spy Museum up ahead on the left and, as I approached, recognized some of the friends I was there to meet. It's a wonderful thing to meet in person people with whom one has become friends through the Internet. I've been part of a small, online community for years, meeting up on Monday nights to chat and play online games. I'd met three or so members in person already, but this time was to meet at least two more. We exchanged greetings and, after waiting for a few more arrivals, entered the museum.

Just inside the entrance, resplendent on a very grand, elliptical platform, was a magnificent Aston Martin DB5. It really is a gorgeous car. I'd seen two previously - one at the Bond in Motion Exhibit in Covent Garden a few years before and one in the wild! A graduate student living in our dorm (I think he must have been some sort of senior resident advisor) owned one and parked it in the lot adjacent to the building. I think it was red - can't remember for sure. It's strange to think that in the fall of 1980, that car would only have been 15 or so years old.

I'll pass over the rest of the Spy Museum. I'd gone through their permanent exhibits when the museum was in its original location near Gallery Place. I enjoyed it very much then and they've upped their game since. The exhibits were very impressive - a wonderful mix of artifacts, information, and fun interactive displays. Our party had reservations for the general exhibits and a timed entry for the Bond exhibition. I fell behind pretty quickly as I was lingering at the displays and I failed to complete my "mission" at a series of interactive challenges interpersed throughout the museum spaces. Realizing I had fallen way behind, I hastened to rejoin the group at the Bond area.

The Bond in Motion exhibit was on an upper floor - I think I took the elevator to get there, but I also remember going up and down the stairs at some point. On a long wall leading into the exhibit was a grid of Bond movie posters and at the end of the entry corridor, a curved wall was decorated with that wonderful, iconic publicity still from "Goldfinger" of Connery leaning against the DB5 at the Furka Pass in Switzerland.

Unlike the show at Covent Garden, which was in a series of low, basement rooms, the Spy Museum edition was in a single, lofty space. Entering the exhibition, I was greeted by the sight of the AMC Hornet from "The Man With the Golden Gun" and Tracy's Mercury Cougar from "On Her Majesty's Secret Service". We'd seen both in London in 2018 - that's assuming these were the same vehicles. I think they probably are - the Bond in Motion exhibits are, I think, drawn from the same collection of vehicles. Near the AMC was a fun interactive display that allowed the user to select variables for executing the famous spiral car jump: takeoff speed, ramp angle, ramp twist, etc. and then seeing how those variables affected a simulation of the jump. After several spectacular failures, I managed to select the right combination.

Many of the vehicles were the same as the ones in London - not that I'm complaining - it was awesome to see them again. Some of the standout new exhibits were the Neptune submarine from "For Your Eyes Only", the Q Boat from Moonraker, and a model of the Vulcan bomber from "Thunderball". I'd seen the Neptune sub back in the 1980s when my Dad and I went to the D.C. auto show - that year (whatever year it was) there was a section devoted to Bond vehicles. I'm pretty sure I took pictures - I should really try to find those. If there are enough of them, they'd make an appropriate addition to this page.

So, it's time raise the same concern I had about the prior exhibit in London. There was very little information about how each of the vehicles were (or weren't) used in the production of the films. Some of them may have been screen-used, some may have been bought for promotional purposes. The "Quantum of Solace" DBS was obviously one of the ones used to film the car chase in the PTS - the damage spoke eloquently of that. It'd be interesting to know how many cars were used (destroyed) while filming that chase scene. I seem to remember that one of the Q Boats used in "Moonraker" ended up stuck on the edge of Iguazu Falls and I'd heard that Elon Musk had purchased the functioning Lotus wet sub from "The Spy Who Loved Me". I don't remember seeing any information about that in the exhibition. Ah well, ultimately it was a pleasure to be surrounded by so many amazing vehicles from the films.

How wonderful it was to experience the exhibit with so many of my Bond friends! One of our Bond Instagram acquaintances, Christian, works at the Spy Museum and arranged for us to go up to the roof garden to socialize and take pictures. It was a beautiful day and there was a wonderful view of the monuments, the downtown and the Wharf. Of course, we all had to visit the museum store where I purchased a cool 007 lapel pin. After leaving the museum, we walked the (surprisingly) short distance to the Wharf development and had nibbles and drinks at one of the restaurants there. Other events that weekend included two wonderful gatherings at Melanie's house - an evening of drinks and karaoke on Friday and a lovely brunch on Sunday. A fantastic weekend!

“As Paul put it, "for Charlie, it was Christmas in Heaven".”

Jeff met me at our house and I drove us to the Intermodal Station in downtown Milwaukee to catch the Amtrak Hiawatha to Union Station in Chicago. There's something Bondian about taking the train - there have been so many wonderful train scenes in the films. From Union Station, we took an Uber to the Museum of Science and Industry. One can take public transport, but it's a bit fussy and, as we had a timed entry into the exhibit, we didn't want to risk missing a connection and being late. It was only a 10 or 15-minute ride, anyway.

Among the columns along the main facade of the museum were hanging huge banners which, together, showed an immense "007" and the "Science of Bond". Fantastic. Jeff and I couldn't resist taking a selfie in front of it. One enters the museum not through the main doors in the facade, but through a set of doors at the base of the stairs which lead to a vast, underground lobby. After having our tickets scanned, we proceeded up the long staircase to the main level. The stairs themselves were decorated with an image of the DB5 and the title of the exhibit. As we soon saw, the exhibit was divided between two gallery spaces on either side of the vast central atrium. We followed the signs to the entrance to the first section, had our tickets scanned, and went in.

The first item on display was a tuxedo worn by Daniel Craig in one of his five films. It was very dramatically presented - in a glass case beneath a round domed ceiling bathed in red light. Just behind was a doorway leading into the first gallery which mostly contained production materials for the films - a model of Goldfinger's Lockheed Jet Star, a mockup of the MI6 building, a display of production sketches by designer Ken Adam, and various other items. Ken Adam is a hero of mine - his contribution to the look of the Bond films is enormous. I'm particularly fond of his deign for Stromber's "Atlantis" lair in "The Spy Who Loved Me". That first gallery was inventively decorated with a pair of asymmetrical, angular arches which evoked the "laser room" from "Goldfinger".

First up in the next room was the Wetbike - the personal watercraft used by Bond in "The Spy Who Loved Me". Beyond it was the wrecked Aston Martin DBS from "Casino Royale" - one of the vehicles used to film the spectacular roll-over car crash. Further along was a case containing Scaramanga's marvelous golden gun - whether it was a replica or one of the several actually used in the production wasn't clear.

Up next was a true oddity. It appeared to be the Aston Martin V8 Vantage from "The Living Daylights", replete with the rocket assist nozzle, studded tires, and stripey outrigger skids. On closer inspection, however, we realized it wasn't a car at all but a full-sized prop replica. Peering in through the windows, we could see that it had no dashboard, seats, or even a normal chassis. There were no doors, only grooves in the external material where the edges of the doors would have been. A look underneath the object revealed that even the wheels were fake and that the car actually was resting on four casters. Here is where I'll say that, like the other two Bond vehicle exhibits I've seen, there was little or no information about how these vehicles (or mockups) were actually used in the films. For an exhibit purporting to be about the "science" of Bond, I would have expected more in the way of technical explanation. Oh, well.

Passing by the Q Boat from "The World is Not Enough" we encountered a magnificent Aston Martin DB5 - the car that originally appeared in the film "Goldfinger". What can one say about the DB5? It's an exquisite design. Jeff and I simply orbited the vehicle for several minutes drinking in the contours, the chrome details, the wire-spoke wheels, the wonderful chrome letters reading "DB5". When we finally managed to tear ourselves away, we found we had reached the end of the first half of the exhibit. Exiting through a door into the atrium, we soon found the entrance to the second section.

Some smaller items were on display in cases just inside the second section: Tee-Hee's lethal prosthetic arm from "Live and Let Die", the Fabergé Egg from "Octopussy", the Goldeneye device from the eponymous film, among others. The vehicles on display included the DB10 from "Spectre", Zao's Jaguar from "Die Another Day" and, my personal favorite vehicle in the entire series, the Lotus Esprit submarine from "The Spy Who Loved Me". My understanding is that only one fully functioning wet sub was used in the production. A number of road vehicles were used for the terrestrial chase scenes, and several body shells were used to show the transformation of the vehicle into a submarine after it's driven by Bond off a pier and into the Tyrrhenian Sea. So, was this the functioning submarine? I'd read that the sub was purchased by (shudder) Elon Musk. Again, there was no information giving the history of this particular object. Not that I really cared all that much. It was such a pleasure just to be among these familiar objects from the beloved film series.

The exit was through the shop, as usual. I bought a set of four drinks coasters bearing poster art by Robert MacGinnis and a 007 T-shirt. Jeff and I had some time to kill before our arranged meeting with another of our Bond friends - Chris from Sacramento was to meet us at a pub near the train station. With our remaining time, we had a look at the U-505 exhibition - a permanent display of a World War II German submarine captured by the allies. The sub is in an amazing underground vaulted concrete space that could easily have featured as the villain's lair in a Bond film. We also hunted down another item in the permanent collection which I'd remembered seeing several years previously, an Aston Martin DBS from 1970 - pretty much the same model driven by Bond in "On Her Majesty's Secret Service". This particular vehicle had been owned by Washington D.C. muckety-muck Carter Brown and was donated by him to the museum.

Thus ended our Bond excursion, except for the meetup with Chris and his friend Jack from Sacramento. They were in town to see the exhibit as well, but our calendars didn't permit us seeing it all together. We had a fun hour or so conversing over dinner before Jeff and I got back on the train to Milwaukee.