After breakfast, I took my bags, but I
couldn’t figure out how to get to the other Premier Inn. I walked this way, then that way, then back
again. Finally, because I needed to be
somewhere by 10:30, I settled on taking a taxi.
They charged £16.00! I knew it
was just around the corner, and the driver even said as he loaded me that I did
not need a taxi for this trip. I
explained that I could not find the path.
It turned out I had been heading in the right direction at one point,
but that I’d turned back too quickly.
Whatever! I got my bags stashed
and now knew how to walk back to the airport entrance. My flight was only much later. I had initially planned to spend the day in
Brighton and Hove on the English Channel, but chose instead to return to London
to visit first Westminster Abbey and then the National Gallery.
I rode a Thameslink and then a Southeastern train into the city. It was quite hot. I made my way to Westminster Abbey. This place was impressive. I knew that important people had been laid to rest here, but I hadn’t known that there were so many tombs. It is a veritable indoor cemetery. At some point, I was scolded by a priest for recording video. How medieval to be scolded by a priest!
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| (Westminster Abbey) |
From the ground floor, I saw some people way up high in the galleries, and I wanted to go there. That, I was told, would cost an additional £5. The cheek! I paid and made my way up Weston Tower. (I found out later that this part of the abbey was closed to the public for 700 years.)
Reaching the top, a sign forbade any picture taking in the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Galleries. I was sneaky and put my phone on video to capture as much as I could, only when I checked afterwards, the video had stopped recording right after I’d put the phone in my shirt pocket; I’d recorded nothing at all. (I found this while writing.) Ultimately, the crushing crowds got the better of me, and I scarpered.
It was time for the National Gallery. I'd wandered across Trafalgar Square so many times in my two years here, two decades ago in my late twenties, but I'd never bothered to find out what was housed in the building on its northern edge. I'd be fixing that today. I didn’t know before booking that its collection dates only up to 1900. As I made my way through the rooms, I became despondent when the style did not gradually modernise. I stayed for about an hour, leaving unhappy.
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| (National Gallery) |
There were still several hours before my flight, but I decided to head back to Gatwick and wait patiently there. In hindsight, today marked the point at which I started loosing steam.
