In Love With London

This past weekend, I visited London. Although it was not my favorite trip so far, I can honestly say that it has just replaced Rome as my favorite city in the world. Within ten minutes of getting off the tube and walking to my hostel, I had fallen hopelessly in love with the city…which is odd, because I hadn’t really seen anything yet. Throughout the weekend, I was consistently surprised by my increasing affection for it, and how at home I felt there. Today, I was telling (rambling to) one of the girls from the dance squad, who spent the last Semester in London, about my trip. She just kept nodding her head, and when I finally stopped, she said, “You and I are the type of people who were born to live in London, and never knew it until now.”

I began my first day in London starving, prepared to eat the first decently priced food I could find. This turned out to be an organic and fair trade shop/café that was just like People’s Food Co-op and Café Verde. I sat outside and enjoyed my lunch of cottage cheese, lentil stew, mixed steamed vegetables and ginger beer.

After lunch, the general consensus was to get our inevitable shopping done with that day, so that on Saturday we could get up early and have the whole day to sight see without carrying around shopping bags (read: we were too excited to shop to wait another day). So, we made our way over to Camden Market. This is nearly impossible to describe…it’s like the love child of NYC’s Chinatown and Las Vegas. Anyway, I found some amazing boots, vintage, and other random clothes that were just too good (and cheap) to pass up. After literally shopping till we dropped, we decided to have a relaxed/early night, which we spent in the Milk Bar and Cocoa Club.

On Saturday, the real sightseeing began. I went on a guided walking tour, that took me around to see Buckingham Palace, 

Big Ben,

West Minster Abbey,

 and all those touristy things that I wasn’t going to leave London without seeing. 

 

When royalty is out of town, you can stand in the guard boxes. 

Then, I spent the rest of the day exploring the city, seeing Soho, Chinatown, Piccadilly Circus, Covent Garden, the Tower of London, Harrods and more. As cliché and horrible as I felt doing it, I made my way to Abbey road to pay homage to the Beatles and other artists (so many greats!) who have recorded at the Abbey Road Studios.

We finished off the night by going on the Big Night Out Pub Crawl, promoted by hostels around the city. We went to The Roadhouse, Verve, Oxygen, and The Zoo. Each place was completely different, which kept it fun and exciting. There was a good mix of interesting people on the crawl with us, but I’ve found that no matter where I go, I enjoy my nights the most when I end up talking to certain types of people. This happened in Belgium with the German guy, and it happened at the pub crawl when I started talking with some struggling British band members who were out celebrating a friend’s birthday. I can make a friend to talk about music with for a whole night anywhere I am, because music is a common language that spans across cultures. Similarly, making friends on my dance squad was so easy because dancers are dancers all over the world. Meeting other artistic people is completely fulfilling and I plan on making it my goal to meet and connect with as many as possible.