Landloping in London
From the cities I have been to, I would say that London is at the very top of my list of favourites alongside Taipei and Barcelona. There is just something appealing about a big city if I can be honest and a city with so much history buried beneath its modernity is even more intriguing.
The moment, the plane touched down on the runway, I let the overwhelming sense of going back to your hometown wash over me. What was funny about that was that I was not from London or UK for that matter of fact. I just lived in the UK for some time and that was pretty much it.
However, the explanation for this phenomenon could be that the UK always felt like a second home to me no matter how little time I spent there. It is just something so familiar that you feel as if you have been there your whole life even though it most certainly hasn’t.
It did take a moment too long for my ears to adjust to the accent again since I hadn’t heard it for so long and hearing mostly American English, it did take some time to adjust to British English since it is very different if you pay close attention to it.
On our way to the B&B, we took the tube from the airport to central London and then took the double-decker bus to St. Paul Cathedral. From St. Paul Cathedral we had to cross the Millennium Bridge and pass the Globe Theatre to get to the B&B near the Tate Museum.
Due to the plane in the morning being cancelled and the hassle of finding another plane to fly to London, we were exhausted. So we didn´t do much that evening besides getting some dinner at a nearby restaurant and some fruits and snacks from the nearest Tesco and calling it a day.
Since we went to sleep quite early yesterday, we were ready for the next day. Even though the weather was quite cloudy, we didn’t let that stop us from going out and doing some sightseeing in the lofty city of London.
Very luckily for us, our hotel was close to the famous Globe Theatre where fun fact Shakespeare himself didn’t step foot in even once considering that the first Globe Theatre burned down and the second Globe Theatre (which was rebuilt) was closed by the parliament and the modern reconstruction was opened late 20th century, way after Shakespeare’s time.
Fun facts like that filled the one-hour tour of the Globe Theatre we decided to take part in. The tour guide used humour to take us back in time to when the Globe Theatre was still in use by Shakespeare´s playing company.
Together we discovered so many interesting facts about Shakespeare and his play, how his plays were brought to life using rather ancient methods of the theatre, how the first globe burned down, why the second was closed and who built the third. It was an interesting tour and I would highly recommend it for any Shakespeare fans.
If I can be honest, I am a big fan of Shakespeare since I find the stories surrounding him very fascinating and his plays very intricate so having the opportunity to learn more about him and visiting a recreation of his theatre was quite a dream come true.
After the information-filled tour, we visited the museum dedicated to Shakespeare below the Globe Theatre. Most of the information there was already mentioned by the tour guide but there were plenty of pictures and real-life ancient tools to make the visit interesting.
My mother and I spent a good two hours in the theatre after being disappointed that the Scottish play was sold out. Since it was roughly lunchtime, and the Borough Market was nearby we made our way there through the streets of London.
When we arrived, we were quite shocked that the Borough Market sold quite exotic fruits and other uncommon foods. Borough Market was located underneath train tracks so to say so every time a train passed by the rumbling of the tracks made the visit even more memorable.
Since there were too many options to choose from, I had some sort of Analysis paralysis where the more options there were the more unable, I was to make a choice. The solution was to simply leave to eliminate every option and potential choice.
However, I can say that I enjoyed the market very much despite the decision incapacitation. The market was filled with the most interesting products and the most different kinds of people. The streets were bustling with people despite it being a workday and not the weekend.
After Borough Market, we headed to Piccadilly Circus to get tickets for the musical I was dying to see. Since Chinatown was nearby, we went there, and I had Baozi for Lunch since the thought of it had been following me for the whole day.
I hate to reiterate what has been said on the internet but the food in Chinatown was so good and authentic. It is not exactly like the ones back home but it was close enough, so I don´t have anything to complain about.
A fun fact about me is that I am also a huge fan of the famous British detective living in London. Therefore, the next stop had to be Baker Street to visit Sherlock Holmes´s fictional home in real life. We took the bus to the prominent street of a well-known fictional consulting detective.
Since the queue for the Sherlock Holmes Museum was rather long and the reviews of the museum were not overly exciting or out of this world, we decided not to go in but instead just visit the museum gift shop next door instead.
Even though the gift shop was not part of the museum, the decorations were certainly leaning towards the 1800s which makes sense because the original Sherlock Holmes was in the late Victorian era even the staff working there were wearing time-appropriate attire which was a nice touch.
After a lot of contemplation, I did get the Baker Street Street sign because I just couldn't resist being in the official gift shop and not buying anything. The street sign was so cute and had a Sherlock Holmes silhouette in the corner. It was a souvenir worth buying and the quality was good.
If I can be honest, the gift packaging already made it well worth it, the street sign was a plus. However, we did eventually leave Baker Street after a lot of pictures later since we were on a mission. The mission was to find Princess Diana´s memorial fountain.
Due to some very unfortunate directional confusion, we took an hour longer than planned to find the memorial park and I underestimated the size of the parks and the things in the parks which could delay our arrival by another half an hour or so. (But for the flowers and wildlife it was worth it).
At the end of the day, we walked from one end of the green park to the other passing Buckingham Palace. Crossed the street to Hyde Park through the rose garden where we took a lot of pictures of the garden along the serpentine as the pond is called while taking lots of pictures of the ducks.
After taking way too long, we eventually made it to Princess Diana´s memorial fountain in Hyde Park. And I don’t want to offend anyone, but it was just a small walled-off garden, if it weren´t for the significance of that place, that fountain surrounded by greens didn´t seem so spectacular.
However, Princess Diana holds a special place in my mother´s heart like for millions of others so I let my mother be while I gave my legs the rest they so desperately needed after that long walk through two parks while enjoying a small snack with a gorgeous view right in front of me.
My mother did take some time paying her respects in the park since she couldn’t pay her respects in person (because Princess Diana was buried on the Spencer estate for security reasons). But we eventually left the park as well since we had a last item on the agenda.
Hyde Park is right next to the Royal Albert Hall and this meant checking out the Royal Albert Hall as well since the annual BBC Proms was taking place there and on exactly that date there was a concert we both wanted to visit.
Online the tickets were sold out but when we were at the ticket office the attendant found two seats after all so we grabbed some snacks at the café and made our way into the concert hall which was mostly empty since we were half an hour early.
Being half an hour early also meant watching as the big concert hall filled up and can I just say that I regret not filming that in a time-lapse because it was truly fascinating how so many people can fill into such a space after the whole pandemic. I just needed some time to readjust.
Before the concert, I can say that I am not the biggest fan of classical music concerts because classical music makes me sleepy and spending money on a classical music concert would be like spending money on a temporary hotel room. In other words, not worth it.
However, I decided to give classical music another chance since Stravinsky’s The Firebird did sound interesting and from all the composers throughout classical music history, I have always preferred the Russian composers since their music sounds so intriguing as if you want to stay to find out more.
My favourite composer is Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky but funnily enough, my favourite classical piece is Pachelbel's Canon in D minor by Johann Pachelbel a German composer. Pachelbel´s Canon is my favourite due to nostalgic reasons and not quite for musical reasons.
When the concert started, I had my popcorn and drink in hand ready to face the next hours with my eyes wide open. The start was quite interesting since I had never been to a classical music concert before and everything was so new but after the interval, I can´t say the firebird I wanted to hear was what I wanted after all.
Don´t get me wrong, Samy Moussa's Symphony No.2 and Shostakovich's Piano Concerto No.2 in F major were really good but just not Stravinsky the Firebird. Maybe it was the piece or the conductor, but it wasn’t as good as it could have been.
After the concert, all the people in the concert hall flooded out onto the streets to catch the next bus or take the tube home. It truly looked as if we were all flowing down the street into the tube station like rainwater on a very stormy day.
When we eventually arrived home it was probably already or around midnight and we did have a rather full day in the morning so we took a quick shower and went to sleep. After a long day of walking through London nodded off real quick.
Following the first one and a half days in London were four further exploration-filled days but since I don´t want to make any article unnecessarily long, I will leave it at the first one and a half days in London.
To see where the next four days of landloping (I swear this is a word; landloping: wandering, roving, vagrant) in London took us, check back in two weeks when the next article will be published. I can´t promise a grand adventure but I can promise a good itinerary for your next London trip filled with wonderful suggestions.