Friday, 19 September 2025, London, Somerset House and Farewell Dinner

Written 29 January 2026

This was our last full day with Tauck. The tour's plan for the day was a two-hour walking tour with Fiona, starting from the hotel. When Buckingham Palace announced yesterday that it was reinstating the changing-of-the-guard ceremony originally cancelled in favor of an earlier special one for Trump, Stefano announced that the tour would start five minutes earlier than announced and begin with the 26-minute straight-line hike from here to the palace, then continue with another hour and a half of walking and standing. David said no way, and I was inclined to agree, so we blew that one off. We've done walking tours of London before.

After another lovely breakfast in the River restaurant (scrambled eggs and salmon again, of course), we considered our options, which we had narrowed to two—the nine-minute walk to the National Portrait Gallery and the four-minute walk to Somerset House to see the Courtauld Collection. Choosing the latter, we went on line and bought tickets, reserving a 10:15 am time slot (it opens at 10 am) and strolled on over. I even managed to receive our tickets on my phone to be scanned at the door.

In our elevator, a list has been posted of where a film crew is and isn't allowed to work. Our floor is off limits, but the principal cast green rooms are just above us, on the sixth floor, where Stefano is staying—we'll have to ask if he's seen anybody recognizable. We shared the elevator with some of their security people, but when asked, they would only say that the incipient film will be a rom-com.

Somerset House should be familiar to PBS fans, because it used to house the national archives, and the detectives in mystery series, professional and amateur, were aways going there to check the records (discovering who was secretly married to whom, who left what to whom, who had an unknown half-sibling, etc.). But it's not the archives any more; the records were moved out in the 1970's. Now it's a mixture of now a mixture of galleries and other things.

It's a huge building with a vast central courtyard (here, a large tent is being erected in it). The Courtauld Institute occupies only a corner of it.

The building itself is worth seeing apart from the art it contains. For example, have a look at this amazing floor vent, part of the HVAC for the building. Magnificent!

They even stock those handy portable folding stools that make museum visits so much easier. Because theirs are metal and therefore a little heavier than the newer, carbon-fiber ones we saw in Germany, they keep a stock on each floor so that you don't have to carry them around so much. The place was deserted when we showed up, and never got very busy in the course of the morning. We took the elevator straight to the top floor, so as to start with the impressionists and work our way down.

We'd seen the Courtauld Collection before, in Paris. While its space in Somerset was being renovated, the collection was displayed at the Louis Vuitton Institute, and we caught it there. You can read all about it in my travel diary for 13 June 2019. Now that the renovation is complete, the collection is back in its usual home, and it's a small gem, so we were glad to go have another look. The Manet at the left is probably the best-known item in the collection, but it also includes a study for his "Déjeuner sur l'herbe," a little too risqué for display here.

At the right is a Cézanne view of Lake Annecy.

Boudin specializes in wide-open landscapes with distant livestock, and his work has grown on me over the years. I remember fondly a musuem in Le Havre that had a lot of his work, including his closer views of livestock, which are even better.

At the right is a well-known Renoir.

The collection also includes works by Manet, Degas, Toulouse-Lautrec, Modigliani, Gaugin, Van Gogh, Rodin, and Suerat, and they were featuring a small collection by the Bloomsbury Group, who are less to my taste.

And, of course, my favorite, Monet.

At the left, "Vase of Flowers" and, at the right, "Autumn Effect at Argenteuil."

And just as we caught the Courtauld on the road a few years ago, here in Somerset House, we caught the Barber on the road. It's a major museum in Birmingham that is, what else?, being renovated, so a selection of its holdings are being hosted by the Courtauld.

At the left here is "Portrait of Countess Golovina" by Elizabeth Vigée le Brun. At the right is "Symphony in White, No. III," by James Whistler.

At the left here is "Portrait of a Man Holding a Skull" by Franz Hals, whose work we admired so much during our Viking trips to the Netherlands.

At the right is a kind of twofer; it's a portrait of Jan Brueghel the elder and his family by Peter Paul Rubens!

The Barber collection on display also included works by Nicolas Poussin, Turner, Gainsborough, Reynolds, Rossetti, Degas, Toulouse-Lautrec, Monet, Pechstein, Bellini, and Gossaert.

Eventually, of course, our feet gave out and we got hungry, so we turned in our little folding seats and prospected for lunch on the way back to the hotel.

Looking back along the Strand, away from the hotel, I spotted this handsome tower, which Google "search on image" informs me is St. Mary le Strand church, "the finest 18th-century church in London.

But forward, between us and our destination, we found the Wellington, a lovely and meticulously authentic pub.

David had sausage and mash with onion gravy, and I chose this handsome chicken and mushroom pie, accompanied by mashed potatoes, a pitcher of rich gravy, and those ubiquitous sweet carrots.

The food was a long time coming because they always ask about allergies and intolerances. Avocado, no problem, but nobody in the place knew what buckwheat was, so they couldn't be sure there was none in the food. Great consternation in the kitchen. Fortunately, we weren't in a hurry, and David eventually just told them he's chance it—it's just an intolerance, after all. The little green flags on our plates are allergy alerts.

Almost next door to the Wellington was Casa Manolo, a Spanish food store with great window displays.

At the left, baguette sandwiches of Iberico ham. Note the two hams on carving stands in the background.

At the right, cones of nibbles for munching on the street. The choices included cubes of ham, cubes of aged Manchego cheese, a mixture of the two, slices of mini "fuet" (a salami-like Spanish sausage) with cubes of cheese, and mini fuets, and whole mini chorizo sausages. They apparently even has a tapas restaurant in the back. Next time we're looking for a meal in the neighborhood, that looks like a promising stop.

We spent the rest of the afternoon resting up for the farewell dinner.

In the evening our Tauck group gathered at 6 pm for our farewell reception and dinner in a private room.

The first appetizer was a small hollow sphere of crispy rice filled with crushed peas and coconut and garnished with blue borage flowers.

The second was a tiny, cylindrical onion tart made with the special red onions from Roscoff.

Then came the first of two surprises Stefano had promised us. Our predinner speaker was Carolyn Robb, personal chef (for 12 years) to Charles, Diana, and their two sons. She told us about the experience of cooking for royalty, from shepherd's pie for little William and Harry when their parents were on the road to state dinners for 120. Then she sat with us through the meal (one course at each table) so that we could ask questions, and at the end she gave each couple an autographed copy of her book of recipes for afternoon tea!

The first course was arancini (deep-fried rice fritters) of spinach and mozarella cheese with tomato and basil sauce. They were okay, but not terrific.

Unfortunately, the crust on the arancini had buckwheat in it, so they brought David a handsome salad instead.

Then came the second surprise. After the first course, we were entertained by an energetic (marching!) string quartet, who paraded in playing "You're Just Too Good To Be True"! When they came to the bridge, the cellist did have to sit down. After following up with a movement from Vivaldi's "The Four Seasons," part of Bach's orchestral suite #3, and the gallop from the William Tell Overture, they paraded out again. Fun!

I neglected to photograph the main course, which was lemon and thyme roasted breast of chicken with gratin Dauphinois, spring vegetables, and red wine thyme jus.

Dessert was tartlet of white chocolate mousse with fresh berries, made with a dark chocolate crust.

Then Ms. Robb was kind enough to pose for photos (underscoring once again how very unphotogenic I am). Note the copy (autographed!) of her book Tea at the Palace.

Tomorrow, we're off to Paris.