If yesterday was our last full day in London, today is the final day, the last opportunity to be in London, to experience the London ambience, and, of course, to pick up clotted cream before flying home to Seattle.
Which of those three is the most important? Depends on who you ask.
But with a little luck, I can accomplish all three things in one final outing. After my great disappointment at Waitrose, I only had one potential source for clotted cream, and that was the Sainsbury's at Holborn. Conveniently it opens at 7 a.m., so at 6:45 I set out.
The Sainsbury's at Holborn is right across from the Holborn underground station, one stop beyond Russell Square on the Piccadilly Line. I could hop on the tube and get there that way, or I could just walk above ground, only a mile literally down the road from Russell Square. I opted for the walk. I suspect that it would take just as long to go down to the tube, wait for a train, ride for a few minutes, then go up the long escalator to the street, and crossing the street to Sainsbury's. Why not have the added enjoyment of a nice morning walk?
So, walk down Marchmont Street to the Russell Square station, turn right to go towards Russell Square, then left on Woburn Place (across from Russell Square), and follow Woburn Place southward as it turns into Southhampton Row, until you get to the Sainsbury's (and Holborn tube) just before the road turns into Kingsway.
(By the way, it is just a short distance further down Kingsway to Aldwych and the Strand, where you will find Somerset House, Waterloo Bridge, and various West End theatres. A few years ago during a firefighters strike in which the tube workers struck in sympathy, my mother and I were going to see My Fair Lady at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane, and since the tube wasn't running we got on a bus near Euston instead. Of course, since the Underground wasn't running, the above ground streets were packed with cars and taxis, and our bus was not moving.
After about half an hour of very little progress, I insisted that we get off and just walk. My mother reluctantly agreed, so we set out down Kingsway, which is a big, wide street with big sidewalks. The sidewalks were filled with people who had taken to the streets as a solution to the lack of trains, buses and taxis. There was something magical about this quiet tsunami of walkers, all moving in unison toward some unknown destination.
As if swept by a wave, we arrived at the Aldwych intersection where we turned toward our theatre. At almost the same moment we saw our bus pull up, having finally broken free of the glacial traffic. So, had we stuck it out on the bus, we would have arrived at the theatre at the same time—but without experiencing the communal journey down Kingsway with the other walkers.
That night became slightly less magical after the play was over, when we hesitated over grabbing a taxi immediately, then were unable to get a taxi at all when they all disappeared! We ended up wandering to Covent Garden, then Trafalgar Square, then Piccadilly Circus, and finally into Regent Street, in hope of finding an unoccupied taxi. This was, I might add, in the middle of a drenching rainstorm. I finally saw a taxi pulling up to a restaurant in Regent's Street to deliver a passenger. I ran toward it and suddenly slipped and fell on the wet sidewalk (in front of a crowd of bystanders waiting outside the restaurant)! Without pause, I hopped up and asked the driver, "Are you for hire?" He was indeed, and we climbed into the taxi and rode back to our hotel.)
On this morning, I had no need to go further than Sainsbury's, and I went immediately to the dairy shelf hoping to find clotted cream. I was in luck; they had a whole stack of small tubs of clotted cream, and I picked out the five with the latest expiration dates. Objective accomplished—now I just had to get them into my suitcase with the frozen ice packs.
As I retraced my steps back to Russell Square I felt a wave of sadness over my immiment departure from London. In so many ways my time in London felt unfinished. I hadn't even gone to Covent Garden—I usually go there for the Jubilee Antiques Market on Mondays, but since we went to Stoke-on-Trent on our only Monday in London, I hadn't had any other opportunity to go to Covent Garden. (Sometimes I walk through Covent Garden en route to other destinations as well.)
And the British Museum—I hadn't been by there at all. I usually pass by it several times on the way to Oxford Street or Charing Cross Road. (I never go in, but I always go by it!)
By now it was about 7:15 or 7:30 a.m., and I had plenty of time before our designated breakfast meeting time of 8:00, so as I approached Russell Square (the actual square, not the station), instead of turning back toward the hotel I turned left toward the British Museum. Moments later I was in Great Russell Street looking through the gates toward the massive columns of the British Museum. The entry gate was open for employees to go through, and I asked the guard if I could step inside to take a picture. She agreed, so with a snapshot I remedied my British Museum deficiency.Before leaving I turned down Museum Street, past the Museum Tavern (a picturesque landmark pub across from the British Museum) and walked along a back street looking for a street named in a (fictional) book I was reading. I never found the street, and couldn't see it on my map, so perhaps the author made it up for purposes of the book.
I returned to Russell Square, another destination that I usually walk through several times during a trip, and had barely passed until this morning. Russell Square, the British Museum, and in fact our hotel are all part of the area of London known as Bloomsbury, a region with a distinguished history and geography.
Bloomsbury was developed by the Russell family in the 17th and 18th centuries as a fashionable residential area. Geographically it is an area bounded by Tottenham Court Road to the west, Euston Road to the north, Gray's Inn Road to the east, and either High Holborn or the thoroughfare formed by New Oxford Street, Bloomsbury Way and Theobald's Road to the south. The Woburn Place/Southhampton Row thoroughfare runs through the center, linking Tavistock and Russell Squares. While there are still residential portions (including a lot of hotels), Bloomsbury is also known for academic establishments and colleges, hospitals, and a large number of parks and squares.Bloomsbury's impressive parks and squares consist of:
·Russell Square, a large and orderly square; its gardens were originally designed by Humphry Repton. The Square is adjacent to the Russell Hotel and Russell Square Tube Station.
·Bedford Square, built between 1775 and 1783) is still surrounded by Georgian Town Houses.
·Bloomsbury Square, a small circular garden, but called a square, also surrounded by Georgian buildings including the former Victorian House and state home of the Lord Chancellor.
·Queen Square, is home to many hospitals including the National Hospital for Neurology and Neurosurgery.
·Gordon Square surrounded by the history and archaeology departments of University College London, as well as the former home of John Maynard Keynes, the famous economist.
·Woburn Square and Torrington Square, which are home to other parts of University College London.
·Tavistock Square, home to the British Medical Association, its eastern edge was the site of one of the 7 July 2005 London bombings.
·Coram's Fields - a large recreational space on the eastern edge of the area was formally home to the Foundling Hospital.
Bloomsbury is perhaps best known for its connections with the artistic and literary world. Virginia Woolf ((1882-1941), author, essayist, and diarist) and her sister Vanessa Bell ((1879-1961), painter) lived at 46 Gordon Square, and was part of a group of artists known as the Bloomsbury Group, who met in private homes in the early 20th century.
Poet TS Eliot worked at the publishing group Faber & Faber when their offices were in Russell Square. Many years later Eliot's book of poems Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats, Illustrated Edition was the inspiration for Andrew Lloyd Webber's famous musical Cats, which includes a reference to flying "up, up past the Russell Hotel" (apparently taken from some unpublished Eliot material).Other notable Bloomsbury residents include:
Randolph Caldecott (1846–1886), illustrator, lived at No 46 Great Russell Street;
Charles Darwin (1809 - 1882) lived at 12 Upper Gower St in 1839;
George Dance (1741–1825), architect lived at 91 Gower Street;
Charles Dickens (1812–1870), novelist lived at 14 Great Russell Street, Tavistock Square and 48 Doughty Street;
Philip (1792–1870) and Philip Charles Hardwick (1822-1892), father and son architects lived at 60 Russell Square for over ten years;
John Maynard Keynes, lived for thirty years in Gordon Square;
Bob Marley lived in 34 Ridgmount Gardens for 6 months in 1972;
John Shaw Senior (1776–1832) and John Shaw Junior (1803-1870), father and son architects lived on Gower Street;
Thomas Henry Wyatt (1807–1880), architect lived at 77 Great Russell Street;
William Butler Yeats (1865–1939), poet, dramatist and prose writer lived at Woburn Walk (which is, by the way, the little road we walk through as a shortcut from the hotel to Euston Road); and
Kristin Timm, (plus thousands of other American college students from Pacific Lutheran University and other universities), went to school in the premises of the University of London, January through May 1986, and have returned to stay in the area numerous times thereafter.
(This information was obtained from Wikipedia, the free on-line encyclopedia, and other internet sources.)
After standing at the corner of Russell Square for a moment reflecting on all this history (imagine it running through my head like a compilation video—Virginia Woolf looking like Nicole Kidman in The Hours; T.S. Eliot and Jellicle Cats dancing around; Charles Dickens and Charles Darwin travelling from one square to the next; and W.B. Yeats picking through the cobblestones of Woburn Walk), 
Finally, I felt as if my stay in London was complete.
This would be a great place to end; a satisfactory finish and a firm final punctuation mark to our trip. But, I don't know when to stop and our story is not yet done.
After a big final breakfast—or should I say a final big breakfast—we hauled our various pieces of luggages into the hall and out to the sidewalk to await our car to the airport. 
It was due at 10:30 a.m. and from 10:25 or so we were out there waiting. And waiting. At 10:45 we had the desk clerk call to check, and they were on their way, delayed by traffic. Finally the car arrived (a big Mercedes estate wagon, very nice), and we loaded up and began our slow trip to the airport. Some 30 minutes later we passed Regent's Park (which takes me 15 minutes to run to in the morning). I stopped paying attention to the time, relying that the great amount of extra time we allowed before our flight would keep us on time. And in fact, we arrived at Heathrow Terminal 4 some time before 1:00, in plenty of time (though not excessively early, at this point!).
We had already checked in online, and for the first time I can recall, did not have to stand in a long line to check in. We dropped off our bags, got our boarding passes, and headed toward the gate. The clerk warned us that the gate was at least a 15 minute walk from security, which was a good thing to know, because it prevented us dilly-dallying in the shopping concourse too long. In fact, we went directly to the gate and within ten minutes of getting there, the flight began boarding.
Unlike most airports, the British Air flights from London to the U.S. seem to board in a cattle fashion, everyone just piling on at once, rather than by row number. I have experienced this bizarre method several times, even on flights that are quite full, as ours was today. But while it was chaotic in the terminal, by the time we got to the plane everyone seemed to sort themselves out adequately.
The flight was unremarkable, other than watching Hugh Grant's Music and Lyrics twice, with Stranger Than Fiction (Will Ferrell and Emma Thompson) in between. (It passed the time!) (My only Hugh Grant siting of the trip.) After leaving London at 3:05 p.m. London time, we arrived in Seattle at 4:00 p.m. Pacific Time. (Funny, the flight seemed a whole lot longer than an hour!)
And that really is the end.
Of the trip, that is.
I may still have a few things to say, every now and then, as my Anglophilia resurfaces.
And stay tuned; in a few days I am going to post a final wrap-up in pictures, for those who can't be bothered to read the long narrative posts!
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