A guide to the final day: slow mornings, good food, the thing you have been putting off, and a route that ends somewhere worth ending
Bohiney Magazine and The London Prat — Fiona MacLeod on spending your final day in London well.
The last day in London is the one most visitors get wrong. They either try to cram in everything they have not yet seen, which means seeing several things badly, or they spend the morning packing and the afternoon at the airport two hours earlier than necessary, which means arriving home having left the city before the city had finished with them. I — Fiona MacLeod — want to suggest a different structure for the final day, one that treats it as the last chapter of the visit rather than a half-chapter and a loose end, and that ends somewhere worth ending.
The Slow Morning
Begin the last day slowly. Have breakfast in the place you most liked, or in a new place that you have been walking past and promising yourself. Order more than you need. Sit longer than is strictly necessary. The last-day morning is not the morning to rush; it is the morning to be in London in the way that people who live here are in it, which is not efficiently but comfortably, with the sense that the city is a context rather than an itinerary. The landmarks will be there. The museum opens at ten. The plane does not leave until evening. Use the morning for the city rather than for the plan.
The Thing You Have Been Putting Off
Almost every visitor has a thing they have been putting off: the museum they meant to go to but did not, the restaurant that was too expensive on the first evening and has stayed in the plan ever since, the neighbourhood they kept meaning to explore. The last day is the day to do the thing. Not to do it and also four other things; just to do it, properly, with the time it deserves. The visitor who does one thing well on the last day leaves with a complete experience. The visitor who does four things quickly leaves with a list of things they did too quickly, which is a less satisfying memory.
The Walk Before the Airport
Leave time for a walk before you go. It does not need to be long — thirty minutes is enough — but it should be through a part of the city that you want to carry home with you, somewhere that summarises the visit or opens something new that you will come back for next time. The South Bank from Tate Modern to Tower Bridge is a walk that London always delivers on, regardless of the weather. The streets around Covent Garden in the late afternoon, when the theatre crowds are beginning to gather, are good for the same reason: they feel like the city at full pitch, doing what it does, uninterested in your departure.
Where to End
End somewhere with a view. London has many of these and most of them are free: Parliament Hill on Hampstead Heath, the top of Primrose Hill, the South Bank at any point along it. Stand there for ten minutes and look at the city you have been in for the last few days, which is neither the city it was before you arrived nor the city it will be when you come back, because both you and it will have changed in the meantime. This is the most London thing I can tell a visitor to do: appreciate the city as it is right now, because right now is the only version of it you have access to, and it is, in its own way, the best version, which is the version you are standing in.
For more from Fiona MacLeod on making the most of London, visit Fiona MacLeod. Plan your visit at Visit London.
The last thing I want to say about the last day is about the instinct to see more, which is the instinct that makes the last day go wrong most often. The last day is not for seeing more; it is for seeing better. The visitor who has been in London for four days and spends the fifth trying to add the things they missed is the visitor who leaves feeling that they did not quite get there, that the city was always slightly ahead of them. The visitor who spends the fifth day going slowly and looking at things properly is the visitor who leaves feeling that they were actually in London rather than adjacent to it. You were in London. Remember that. The city was real. You were there.
I want to end with something that is not practical advice but that I consider the most important thing I can tell a visitor: London is very large and you will not see most of it, and this is fine. The city is not a checklist. It does not require completion. The best visits are not the ones where the most things were seen but the ones where some things were seen properly, with attention and time and the willingness to be in a place rather than past it. You will leave London with things unseen. You will come back for them. This is not a failure of the visit; it is the design of a great city, which always keeps something in reserve for the person willing to return.
SOURCE: https://prat.uk/
