Day 28: Oct. 1, 2018 - Bloomsbury

Dale and Betty leave bright and early Monday morning. We will hear from them later this week through Facebook, but for now, we will just hope they have easy travel.

Our destination for today: the Bloomsbury area of London, including the British Library.

After a leisurely morning, we eat breakfast, get ready and head out. We enter the Underground at the Westbourne Park Station and exit at Euston Square. We are walking the #36 City Walk and head directly to the Library.

Entry to the British Library

Interior of the British Library

The building is more modern than the wonderful libraries we saw in Ireland, but it has a similar mission and has a similar feel. We are not really here to see the 14 million volumes, we’re here to see the Treasures.

On entering the Sir John Riblat Treasures Room, we find a sanctuary and feel like we are here to worship. The room is softly lit, to protect the Books. We stroll past about two dozen separate displays of science, art, legal and religious documents. There is a 1^st Folio of Shakespeare, there is a copy of the Magna Carta. There are original documents from Da Vinci, and even notes on paper napkins containing the first drafts of lyrics from the Beatles. There is an entire display on the career of Michael Palin, of Monty Python fame. There is a Gutenburg Bible. This Room is well worth the visit.

We go back outside and notice a monument to Isaac Newton:

Monument to Sir Isaac Newton

We continue the City Walk. We walk past a building where Virginia Woolf lived. We pass the building Dickens lived in when he wrote Bleak House (about Millbank Prison – see Day 21). We pass advertisements for a Karl Marx walk every Sunday; he lived in this area, as well. There are many references in this area to Russell (as in Bertrand) and James Joyce.

We stop in the middle of the walk and have lunch at Burgers and Shakes. Very tasty, especially the Onion Rings.

We get back on the walk and stop at the Foundling Museum, a place where many artists contributed works so that the Foundling Hospital could have a source of revenue to do their good work. Sadly, they are closed on Mondays.

We pass Coram’s Fields and briefly watch a football (soccer) practive in process. The kids are maybe 10-12, but the drills are very serious.

We end the first of the two walks at the Dickens Museum. It, too, is closed on Mondays. Rats! We proceed to City Walk #37, which centers on the British Museum. We visited that with the fam on Day 16, so we pass it by to visit the Cartoon Museum. It is also closed, because it is moving locations and won’t open again until spring. Not having very good luck with museums today!

Even so, it has been an interesting day. We end the walk at Goodge Street Station and head home. After a nice rest, we go back to Brown Rice, the Thai Buffet we visited a couple of weeks ago.

After dinner, we head home and before retiring, we start packing to leave London (on Wednesday). Where has the time gone?