Saturday: Farewell, Portsmouth; Hello, London

My Saturday in brief outline: check-out at Holiday Inn; 10:20 train from Portsmouth Southsea to Waterloo; Tube from Waterloo to Euston station; walk to Goodenough Club; check-in, catch up, and take it easy. The image to the left is from Waterloo Station.

There's not much to add about my Saturday experience. I arrived at the train station in Portsmouth & Southsea just minutes before the 10:20 train was set to depart for London. It was a faster train then my journey south, with fewer stops, so we made good time. I believe I arrived at Waterloo around noon.

The Tube was busy, but not overcrowded, so it was a fairly painless trip on the Northern Line to Euston station. From there I found my way out of the station, walked east along Euston Road and crossed over near the British Library for the walk south along Judd Street. This was a different route then I'd taken before from the British Library, but it was just right and not as crowded as Gray's Inn Road. At Brunswick Square the road jogged east and south and then to Guilford Street and the walk east to Goodenough College and Club. It was early afternoon and still before check-in time, but it turned out they had a room ready for me. It took a bit of huffing and puffing to make it to the top floor with my luggage, and to work out the maze of corridors and doors, but well worth the struggle. The room is sunny and bright (a welcome change from the basement room I had on my last stay) and overlooks the square.

I settled into the room and spent the rest of the day catching up with e-mail, news and uploading photos to my Facebook page. I had 1,000+ items waiting for me on my Google Reader, but absent a newspaper or much other news from the states for the last week it was a nice way to catch up on happenings back home. (I did get two days of USA Today during my stay in Portsmouth.) All in all a quiet day. I spent the final part of the day mapping out my activities for the remainder of my stay in London. It didn't take much to fall asleep. It was a full week.