I arrived in the U.K. about two weeks ago, and I’ve been gallivanting across Central London and England since. During this time, I’ve visited about seven of the “Top 10” sites from my guidebook—including several museums, Parliament, the Tower of London, and, my personal favorite, the exquisite St. Paul’s Cathedral. I’ve also traveled to the towns of Cambridge and Bath, toured the National Gallery with three (3!) tour guides to myself, accidentally discovered Buckingham Palace while jogging during my second day in London, and attended an Alan Greenspan lecture. (Well, kind of attended—Greenspan came to LSE, but I saw him speak via video in an overflow room.) As of the date I write this, Sunday, October 7, one thing I haven’t done is go to class. Alas, this fact will sadly change tomorrow when lectures commence.
So, London is different from any other city in which I’ve been. If pressed, I would say it reminds me most of some odd and, perhaps to baseball fans, inconceivable, union of Boston and New York. After living in New York for almost three months this summer, what strikes me most about London is its quirky and seemingly random layout. There is no grid here, and street names, in the words of Bill Bryson, “tend to wander around like hemlines.” For example, one of the main streets in London changes its name six times in a little over a mile—from Strand to Fleet to Ludgate Hill to Cannon St. to Eastcheap to Great Tower St.
If London’s geography reminds me of Boston, London’s feel reminds me most of New York. Yes, there are similar landmarks: Hyde Park is Central Park, Leicester Square is Times Square, Bank Junction is Wall Street, and Old Street is, perhaps, the Lower East Side. But what I’m referring to is the sense of bustling common to both urban areas, the feeling that you’re very small and the city very big. As I’ve learned, this sense of bustling bigness is overwhelming at first, but it soon becomes intoxicating. They are truly Cities of the Globe.
For me, one of my favorite things about London is that I tend to forget I’m in a foreign country when I’m walking around: I see American restaurants; I overhear English conversations; and I frequent grocery stores selling wares not too different from those found in Lansing, MI. But then all of a sudden a double-decker bus goes by, or a gothic church ostensibly apparates from the fog, or a taxi drives by on the left-hand side of the road—and I think to yourself, “Ah, that’s right, I’m in London.”
A quick story from my Tower of London tour as told by our guide, one of the famous Yeoman Warders (or “Beefeaters”): To set the scene, I am among a group of approximately fifty people. We are standing in front of the White Tower, a castle originally erected by William the Conqueror around 1100 AD. White Castle stands at the top of Tower Hill and lies in the middle of the fort known as the Tower of London. Essentially, we are standing at the “top” of London. But to continue the story, our tour guide looks among the crowd and asks, “Do we have any Americans here today?” A sizeable number, ten or so, raise our hands. “Ah,” the tour guide smiles, gesturing behind him to the River Thames, St. Paul’s Cathedral, and the rest of London, “This could have all been yours…”
I’ve also taken over 200 pictures in London since I arrived. I’ll try to put those up within the next few days, as well as a blog post describing some of my favorite photos in more detail.