London Lovin'

I’m falling in love with every city I go to and it’s becoming a problem. I cheat on Calgary when I plan bike trips in Ghent, I cheat on New York when I take part in all of the cool shopping here, and I cheat on Ghent when I admire the gorgeous architecture here! My love for every place I go to give me a guilty conscience when I think about the statements I’ve made about the other cities… But my love for London is like nothing I’ve ever experienced.

 I have another love issue here as well, which is my falling in love with every local who speaks. From Paul the Pasta Brown owner, to little children in the park, to the lady selling me clothes… I love it! British accents are straight up adorable, and they make unintelligent things sound intelligent, and mildly funny things sound witty and clever. ‘Yeah, I’ll pick up some pizzas and meet you at a quarter past six, good?’ simple sentences like that spoken here sound so much cooler than in Canada. My favourite word people say here is ‘Cheers’… how cute is that??? ‘Yeah, ok, see you around. Cheers.’ Would it be dorky if I started to say cheers? I hope not.

We’ve done some awesome things the past two days we’ve been here. We started by a train trip to Brussels and then to London, which was awesome, the countryside was so beautiful and very green. We had to walk to our apartment from King’s Cross, which made us look like the biggest dorks with all of our luggage… but still fun! We got a chance to explore our little neighbourhood of Islington and got some genuine London fish and chips, which was great. I am overwhelmed with shopping and am going to hell for excessive consumerism, no doubt in my mind.

 Yesterday was a classic, cloudy, rainy, drizzly London day and I loved every minute of it. We had crumpets and tea for breakfast like true Brits and we went to see Big Ben and the London Eye via the Underground (which is much cleaner than the NYC Subway btdubbs). We then went to Westminster Abbey, which I enjoyed way more than I thought I would. I got to see the memorials of so many amazing writers and poets like Chaucer, T.S. Elliott, Shakespeare, Lewis Carroll, Jane Austen, the Bronte Sisters, Charles Dickens and Rudyard Kipling. So cool. There were lots of scientists buried there as well like Isaac Newton, and interestingly enough Charles Darwin, the guy behind the theory of evolution. Everything from the memorials we saw for Kings and Queens and the architecture was all so awesome.

My favourite stop we made yesterday was at St. James’s Park, which was really pretty and great for pictures. I have far too many pictures of other people’s children running through flocks of pigeons in the grass and I kind of feel like a big pedo. Haha, but the park was great, and I would love to be a local and eat my lunch there, or read or hang out there all the time.

We stopped at Buckingham palace, St. James palace, and Trafalgar. All big, all old, all famous, all awesome. We stopped by the National Gallery to culture ourselves a little more and feel awkward around naked paintings. We saw some more Leonardo, Monet, Canaletto and my new favourite, J.M.W. Turner. Then we had some of the finest Indian food in England and called it a night.

Today was equally great. Our first stop was St. Paul’s Cathedral which I love. So much better than Westminster and I don’t blame Lady Di for wanting to be married there, it’s so much brighter and grander and just lovely. We stayed for communion which was a cool experience too. My favourite part was climbing to the top of the dome with a sketchy guard rail that only went up to my chest. Had mum come with us she would have puked then died, those of you that know my mum can only imagine her horror. We did a lot of market shopping today and wandering and sightseeing. All great things. We went for dinner at Pasta Brown, where we became buds with the owner, Paul, thanks to our friend Justine back home who used to know him. Paul treated us right and hooked us up with a table during the busy hour, free bread, and free desert. Love him.

Well, this is looking less like a blog post and more like a really bad short story so I should go. Cheers. ;)