Trips to and inside of London

In their travels to places away from home, tourists stay where the place’s narrative is easiest to follow. In cities, it’s usually the center of town where you find the critical mass of historical sites and cultural institutions. These are the sites we see in pictures, and here is supposed to contain the essence of a place. Stay nearby to capture as much of that essence as possible before packing up and leaving on Monday morning. If staying in London’s West End, you could wake up and see Buckingham Palace, Palace of Westminster, and maybe even walk across Trafalgar Square and take a quick tour of the National Gallery before seeing an evening show in Theatreland.

You could argue that city centers are catered for tourists or maybe just the rich, and “real life” happens outside. Many of these exterior neighborhoods, however, won’t have the clean hotels of the city center, however, and probably fewer English speakers (when outside of an English-speaking country, of course). Airbnb dares you to have a more “authentic” experience by staying in the apartment of a local, and many Airbnb offerings are outside of expensive city centers. If you’re visiting a new place for only a few days, however, it is likely more efficient to stay centrally and see as much of the nearby sites as possible. This is the difference between living in a place and visiting a place.

Amongst our first impressions of London is that the city is huge and crowded. Chicago is a big city, but living in the Gold Coast near the downtown, everything felt close (except the suburbs). Our London neighborhood, Islington, sprawls. Holloway Road runs past our home. You can turn left or right to find strings of stores and restaurants stretching on and on.

If you turn right and start walking down Holloway Road, you pass a mosque, a library, the Chinese grocery store, many chicken restaurants (apparently chicken restaurants are a thing here – a big thing), and my favorite wine and cheese and beer store. As you continue walking, the businesses start catering to gradually higher income levels.

Wine and cheese store just a few blocks from home. They also sell craft beer. We've already spent a bit of money there...

After a good twenty minutes of leisurely walking, you get to Upper Street, where we have yet another long road lined by businesses. Walking down Upper Street, there is a wine store specializing in aged wines, a dedicated Le Creuset company store (i.e., the most expensive low-tech kitchenwares in the world), Ottelenghi (a bakery phenomenon that’s turning into an empire, where Christine bought a $7 pastry: it was delicious).

After about forty minutes walking through nothing but business district, you arrive to Angel, which is itself a neighborhood famous for its service offerings. We are now almost to Central London. And this is as far as Christine and I have got because we’re carrying Bobby and we’re tired.

Tomorrow we have dinner reservations in central London. It will be Bobby’s first adventure out of his neighborhood since he moved to his new home. We will probably take the Tube or an Uber.
Many of London’s old and unique shops are in the neighborhoods of the West End. I’ve identified some specific bookstores, a map store, some wine stores, and kitchenware stores I’d like to visit. But even those neighborhoods, as dense as they are, just seem far away and huge.

It will take a long time indeed to understand London. I think it’s so big, many locals probably don’t spend too much time outside of their neighborhoods. Traveling across the city to find something or someone is like a mini-vacation in of itself.