That's my intro and I'm sticking to it. I may have chosen to do it to show off my travels, to paint myself as a man-of-the-world, or at least man-of-northern-and-a-little-bit-of-eastern-Europe. I may have chosen it to suggest that what comes next comes not from some country boy who has never seen a big city before and as such is too overwhelmed to really pass the comments he's about to... erm, pass. I probably did it because I just like lists.
London. I went to London this week. Not for the first time, but you get a fresh take on a place every time you visit, same as you get a fresh take on a person every time you meet them, well, at least for the first four times, people don't have as much depth as cities.
London is not my favourite city, but it's better than Paris, which seems to be entirely based around pouring too much salt in your dinner and worshipping a giant pylon, personally I blame the wine. London does have an incredible appeal though, and it's one that its inhabitants probably hardly ever see, one that a lot of tourists probably miss, with their maps, destinations and plans. Everyone has plans in London, everybody needs to be somewhere. It's a terrible place to be when you need to be somewhere, it's crowded and confusing, it's noisy and over complicated, it's constantly running out of time. Look into the eyes of a Londoner, they're tired and they're beaten, they have to spend hours of their days fighting for position and pushing through a crowd. Unless they work in Pret of course, where they smile, they smile the painful smile of a being with their most sensitive body parts inches from a bear trap that will snap closed if the edges of their mouth ever drop in angle. Pret a Manger is the gateway to hell, though they do make nice food.
My point. The best thing you can do in London is get lost. Have yourself a vague destination with no strict time scale for arriving there, throw away your map, and go on instinct. There is something impressive, interesting or entertaining around every corner of our capital city, and only half of it gets in the guide books. The buildings, the squares, the shops, the parks, the people, the pianos. Then if you're really lucky, you'll chance upon the river, the shores of which make up one of the most incredible sights on this earth. Nothing makes you feel more humble and more proud at the same time as what lines the Thames, I challenge you to challenge that and mean it.
Look at me, gushing hyperbole.
To sum up though, don't go to London with an agenda, and don't try and go for a night out, the place closes at 11pm, probably because everyone is tired from their agendas, if you go, get lost.
This blog is dedicated to everyone that had to wait an hour for me because I'd left my map at the hotel.
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