Out and About in Bloomsbury

A proper good morning to you.
Some people like to scoff at my cultural research, but I am serious! Take today. It was turning unpleasantly hot, and I was on my home yet I turned aside to stroll down to the gelato place in Covent Garden. That’s the one with chocolate from many different places. I am working my way through them. Today I paired hazelnut—the nuts coming from Piedmonte--as they told me--with chocolate from Madagascar. Perfect.
The heat is supposed to break tomorrow. I hope so, although my apartment is very comfortable, and I am so glad I have it to come back to. I did lots of walking today, so let’s get started.
I started out for the British Library this morning. I walked up Southampton Row, which becomes Woburn Place. I passed pretty Russell Square on my right and continued until I turned right on Tavistock Place and then left on Hunter Street. This is Bloomsbury near to where I used to stay when I passed through London. It’s full of Georgian Squares and small parks and was pleasant and cool on this weekend morning. Hunter Street became Judd Street—this happens a lot in Europe—and then I came to busy Euston Road. There was the British Library in front of me.
But also right there was that marvelous late Victorian Gothic fantasy—the East Midland Hotel, now being refurbished to become the heart of St. Pancras International the new EuroStar terminal. It is an incredible building, and I think beautiful for all the fakery of the Gothic. The detail work that went into it is truly amazing, and yet this wonderful structure was left derelict for some fifty years. Thank goodness they are finally going to use it!
I wandered around the train station for quite a while. This might not be your idea of an amusing thing to do, but hey it’s MY trip. There’s a stopping center with some pretty tony shops including some gourmet food stores. Because it’s a train station they are open on weekends for ravenous travelers, so it’s good to know about. There’s a Boots the Chemist, too, so I went in and squirted my self with some cologne.
Oh yes—ahem—the British Library is housed in another notable building. It’s very heavy looking, but not actually unpleasant. Within are some terrific exhibits. You can see old maps, stamps, but I was most interested in the historic documents. One manuscript copy of Beowulf survives, and it’s shown at the British Library along with the Lindesfarne Gospels, a beautiful example of a Guttenberg Bible and letters and documents too numerous to mention. I was taken by a display of different illustrations of Alice in Wonderland starting with Lewis Carroll’s own notebook.
It was a good choice on a hot day because the rooms are kept dim and air conditioned to preserve the works.
I strolled back to the British Museum, retracing my steps except to cross Russell Square on the diagonal to pick up Montague Street, which took me to the entrance around the corner.
I strolled around for a bit, but I was really there to see the exhibition of drawings by Italian Masters lent by the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. When I say Italian Masters I mean among others Leonardo, Michelangelo, and Rafael. Also displayed were drawings by artists I knew because I teach art history and some very impressive drawings by artists I’d never heard of. They are not large and some of them are faint, moreover, the light needs to be kept dim so they aren’t damaged. I had to pay the equivalent of twenty bucks to get in, but it was so worth it to see, for example, how evocative a few sketched lines from a great artist can be.
When I emerged the sunlight was glaring and the heat was up. I walked back along Great Russell Street and cut through Sicilian Avenue to Southampton Row. Turning left would take me home to Citadines, but I turned right because I had developed a craving for gelato. The gelato zone is in Covent Garden. I walked down New Oxford Street and turned left on Endell Street and proceeded downhill to Shorts Gardens where I got my treat, and then I made my way back eating as I went.
So I am stiff and footsore, but the Tour de France is on, and I am sipping at some bitter lemon. It’s been a good day.
Cherrio!