Around the World in 80 Days
Day 1: 25 September
I leave the Reform Club, Pall Mall, London one hundred and fifteen years three hundred and fifty-six days, ten and three-quarter hours after Phileas Fogg. It's a wet, stuffy morning, I've had three and a half hours sleep and the only thing I envy Phileas is that he's fictional.Few buildings could be more fitted to a Great Departure. With its 60-foot-high main hall, marble columns, galleried arcades and the grand scale of a Renaissance palace the Reform Club is a place of consequence, grand and grave enough to add weight to any venture.
This morning it smells of old fish, and glasses and bottles from the night before stand around. I can see no one sampling the sort of breakfast Fogg had taken the day he left: ' . . . a side dish, a boiled fish with Reading sauce of first quality, a scarlet slice of roast beef garnished with mushrooms, a rhubarb and gooseberry tart, and a bit of Chester cheese, the whole washed down with a few cups of that excellent tea, specially gathered for the stores of the Reform Club.'
Choose another day from Around the World in 80 Days
PALIN'S GUIDES
- Series: Around the World in 80 Days
- Day: 1
- Date: 25 September
- Country/sea: England
- Place: The Reform Club, Pall Mall
- Book page no: 13
Bookmarks will keep your place in one or more series. But you'll need to register and/or log in.
RELATED LINKS
- England
- Introduction
- Full Circle
- Introduction
- Pole to Pole
- Introduction
- Sahara
){kind=link}