Goodbye London!

Just so this is in context, I wrote this a few days ago on the bus ride from London to St. Andrews… I’ve been without wireless internet for the past couple of days, hence the delay. Wireless is proving to not be as popular as it is back home, but I did just recently find out that Seattle is one of the top three places in the US to get wireless. Regardless of the internet situation, I have still been writing, so you have some reading to keep you busy for a bit.

Well, I’m on a bus headed up to Scotland as I’m writing this…going far, far away from London.

London’s a crazy city let me tell ya. It’s ridiculously big and so expansive; it’s really quite overwhelming once you wrap your mind around it, and even that takes a couple days. It’s also impossible to get around easily if you don’t know it—the tube is expensive, but very straight forward, but hit the streets and it’s a whole ‘nother ball game. Coming from NYC, I thought I had the big city thing all wrapped up, but turns out that was just the minor leagues—London is the big time. The streets have no logical course or direction; the words “total chaos” comes to mind. It felt like I spent my whole time in London going in giant circles around where I wanted to be. Thank god for the A-Z (pronounced A to Zed), a map of London in a small book with a giant index that contains every single street, courtyard, etc…I would have been totally screwed so many times without it.

I did get to see some cool stuff in the past couple of days: Islington is super cool, it kinda flies under the radar tourist wise, so it was quiet and quirky—lots of small funky shops, etc. Camden was a BIG touristy version of Islington—hundreds of small shops, huge street markets (your #1 source for $10 Gucci sunglasses and other knockoff designer wear), and quirky restaurants. There were also quite a few record shops that were super cool. There were actually real LPs from all genres, and some cool rare mixes that were awesome.

So that was my London experience. It was not as grand as I thought it was going to be—maybe I set my expectations a bit too high, but I don’t really think so. I just never felt like I connected to it on any level—I know that takes time in any city, but I’ve been to other cities where I’ve been at least comfortable. Maybe I tried to see too much, too fast, or maybe it’s just a case of small town boy meets big city. Who knows. I’ll give it another chance, but for now, I’m going to check out other parts of Britain…

…Starting with Edinburgh, which is actually all the way up in Scotland. I have a friend going to St. Andrews, so I’ll been visiting her all weekend. Should be fun, and the weather is supposed to be good, so maybe I’ll get a taste of fresh air!