I’m accustomed to drinking in Virginia Woolf. I imbibe her words and her wisdom on a regular basis. But last night I drank her in from a cocktail glass.
The Bloomsbury Club Bar in the Bloomsbury Hotel on London’s Great Russell Street features cocktails named after members of the Bloomsbury Group — from Virginia to Leonard to Vanessa and more.
After Frida Kahlo
After a day viewing the amazing Frida Kahlo exhibit, “Making Herself Up” at the Victoria and Albert Museum, Lois Gilmore and I headed to the hotel’s celebrated bar for a Bloomsbury cocktail. She chose Lytton Strachey. I chose Virginia, a yummy mix of gin, lemon, raspberry shrub, Cocchi Americano and egg white.
First, though, we stopped to warm up in The Sitting Room, a cozy first-floor lounge with a welcoming fireplace, walls hung with portraits of Bloomsbury Group members, and a copy of Frances Partridge’s book, The Bloomsbury Group, prominently placed on the fireside coffee table.
Suggestions to hotel management: Identify the subjects and artists of the reproductions on your walls. Even two Woolf scholars were kept guessing at a few. And provide a safe, child-friendly lounge for your guests with youngsters. A room with an open gas fire whose name — The Sitting Room — promises a relaxed adult retreat is not quite the place for noisy toddlers who don’t sit still for long and their bulky strollers.
At the Dalloway Terrace
Last year I had lunch at the hotel’s Dalloway Terrace, which pays homage to Woolf and her 1925 novel specifically. Its outdoor venue is charming and the food delicious — although I can’t remember what I ordered beyond my dessert, a delectable hot chocolate mousse.
However, Blogging Woolf contributor Kaylee Baucom wrote a detailed review of her trips to the restaurant a year earlier.
Both venues at the Bloomsbury Hotel are worth a trip for Woolf fans. You can decide for yourself whether you want to go back for more. Kaylee votes yes. I say move on to new adventures.
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