Looking back on our last day in London

I’ve been meaning to write this blog post for the past couple weeks as we get resettled back in Seattle, but the resettling has taken more time than I thought it would.

I wanted to look back on our last day in London. Our goal was to get out and see more of the city with stops at the National Gallery and Covent Gardens. We had a beautiful day to walk around. We did some of that, but we returned to the best way of getting around London — the Underground.

It was a particularly interesting day for watching people on the Tube. Halloween was the day before and we saw several creatures returning from overnight stays in who knows where, some of their costumes looking worse for wear.

Trafalgar Square, in front of the National Gallery, was filled with people watching street performers and more “human statues,” but none as good as the one we saw in Bath. The weather was fine, so fine, but the agenda called for going inside the gallery, so we went.

Glad we did. The Goya exhibit showed another side of this Spanish artist and gave some of the history of the period he lived in.

From there, we walked to Covent Gardens and some follow-up shopping that Kathy wanted to do before leaving England. The coup of the day for me was grabbing a particular cap off a mannequin in the official Rugby World Cup store there. It has a badge showing the Webb Ellis trophy on the front, a plaid lining and the Rugby World Cup 2015 insignia on the side. We saw it at an official shop at the Twickenham stadium, didn’t buy it then and never saw it again until Mr. Mannequin doffed his cap to us. I bet it was the last one in the land.

We had one more pub meal in London and then headed back to our hotel to pack for the flight home the next day when we got our only real dose of London fog. We sat in the soup on the runway for two hours before taking off on a smooth ride home. A fitting goodbye to London and England for now.