1 Feb 07 Urban Love

Recently I’ve been receiving emails from friends asking me, “So do you like it there?”

It has been over a year since we arrived here, and perhaps my “End of Year” summary didn’t quite get to the poetry of what’s going on.

Living in London has so many negative aspects, you could summarize a few of them if you skim the last couple of posts here. Just like New York City there are far too many tourists here, more than 20 million each year, which causes difficulty when you want to go about doing normal things like buying an iron, or clothing, or even groceries.

Living in any major urban center means you live in a chaotic universe that’s organic, always changing. Some days you want to vanish, while other days you want to give up the safety of your home and live in the buzz of the streets. That could just be me…

A day like today in London is a Royal Treat! It’s sunny and warm, but the days still begin to end around 3:00pm. The sun just doesn’t ride high enough.

But today I took a break from flat hunting to do some shopping in Covent Garden then decided against traveling home underground as I usually would. Weekends we would normally walk home (last weekend we walked the entirety of Zone 1), but today I rode home in the bottom of a double decker bus and enjoyed what is one of the best tourist rides going - from Trafalgar Square down the Strand and Fleet Street past St Pauls church, Tower of London, Tower Bridge and jumped out at home. The ride took 20 mins.

I didn’t have my camera today unfortunately, but enjoyed watching Londoners be, watching the city go.

Not many places in the western world can you ride past thousand-year old buildings to your doorstep in a jiffy.

I love London.