So I'm in London with my girlfriend for two weeks and I've decided to write about it. She is a fashion photographer and won a contest with British Airways, who kindly gave us two roundtrip tickets to England. The deal was that everyone had to write a proposal on how they would use photography during their stay, if chosen, to promote English culture and their photos would adorn the Terminals of British Airways. The winners would receive tickets for two people.
I'm mostly tagging along as the +1, although I am assisting and working on my music and homework as well. I'm also lugging around our massive suitcase and her camera case in order to increase my shoulder strength.
Weeks before we departed I started doing research so that we could make the most of our stay London. We had been wanting to visit Europe but it would have been a while before we could save enough money. This free trip was very fortunate for us.
Our approach to traveling is unlike that of the typical tourist. We don't generally care for tourist attractions such as tours, landmarks, tchotchke shops, etc. When we travel somewhere our goal is to learn about what it's like to live somewhere. So when people ask us about Boston, where we've lived for over two years, we really have no idea what the cool tourist destinations are. I'm sorry but I just don't care about the tours, I don't want to pay ridiculous prices at extremely lame and gimmicky restaurants for mediocre food, and I certainly have no need to buy "I love [location]" memorabilia and such to "prove" to myself that I had a good time. Just ask my best friend John, I talked to him online and I raved about the supermarket for 10 minutes. Traveling is like me auditioning the world to see where I'd like to live.
The main concern for research was the fact that we knew nothing about London and had no idea which area would be ideal to stay in. The factors of staying somewhere were how nice the area was, whether it was quiet or rowdy, whether it was safe, the accessibility and convenience. I wanted to use the trip to possibly inspire me while I wrote my music and to increase my culturual understanding of the rest of the world. I basically hoped to stay somewhere "cool" and/or "artsy."
Another important concern was our budget. It was unanimous that we would not be renting a car or leaving the city at all and while our plane tickets were free, we did have to pay for wherever we were staying for two weeks.
Of course, something very important to us is food. Whenever we go somewhere new the most important thing is for us to map out all the restaurants that we want to visit to experience amazing food. I had been asking people about England and many told me the food was horrible, although there was Indian food. The reputation of England is as Dennis Farina's character in Snatch puts it, "Fish, Chips, Cup 'o tea, Bad food, Worse weather, Mary f'in Poppins..." So I was slightly worried. Another assumption is that everything is more expensive in London.
What bothers me a bit is the fact that people blindly hear and regurgitate notions about certain things as fact without ever having experienced anything first hand. How can they possibly think that this makes them sound intelligent and cultured?
Say milk is $4 a gallon in the US. It's not going to be 4 Pounds in England. If it was then yes it would be like $7 dollars. People assume, the Pound is double the Dollar so everything is twice as expensive. I cannot express how stupid and ignorant people sound when they, upon hearing I'm going to England or even when I was moving to Boston, in an effort to contribute some sort of intelligence, warn me of things such as the money as if I wouldn't survive without their bullshit information.
So anyway, from my research I concluded that there were a few Indian restaurants, a bunch of Pubs, budget eateries that taste like shit, a few guitar shops, shopping streets like NY, and insanely expensive hotels or less insane hostels that are horrible.
Eventually I settled on a chain of hostels called Astor Hostels which had a cool web site and seemed to have decent facilities but did not have any private 2-person rooms for 13 days straight. I decided to stay for a couple days at each hostel and this way we would not get stuck in one area, and we would get to experience living in a different region every couple days. Total the hostels cost us just under $100 a day for the both of us. Were were still a bit anxious since all we know about hostels is people crammed into tiny rooms and the Eli Roth movie.
What we've concluded upon arriving in London and being here for a few days is that we love London. I wouldn't go as far as to buy a shirt that proclaims so, but I will say that so far London has been the greatest city I've ever been to. I could see myself moving here and living here in a few years.
London is beautiful, from the classic architecture to the cobblestone roads as well as the layout of streets, the culture, and of course the accents. The first night we stayed in Victoria which is a quiet neighborhood. We walked around in the middle of the night looking for food and found pubs everywhere as well as Indian restaurants sometimes two per block.
We finally settled on an Indian place and the food was phenomenal. It was a bit sweeter than Indian food in the US and with more milk, which I enjoyed. I had read during my research that Indian food was sweet here due to the English sweet tooth. It also ended up being slightly cheaper than a similar meal would have been in Boston.
Everyone is also very welcoming and open as well as polite. Many people ran into me on the busy streets and all of them would apologize and say stuff like "no worries" or "cheers."
People especially at the hostels are extremely personable. Many people assume that city folk from Boston or New York or foreigners are rude. From my experience I believe it is the arrogant, presumptuous attitudes of tourists and many Americans that turn people off and cause a negative response.
We walked around exploring during the day and ended up getting some random chinese food in chinatown from a carryout place in a small alley. The chinatown here is super-clean, does not smell of nasty seafood, trash, piss from crackheads, sewage, that Boston and New York have. We had "cashew chicken" which is basically like kung pao chicken but with cashew. This was a bit saltier than I normally eat, which is no salt, but was very delicious, with rice, a bottle of water, and cost us 5 pounds for lunch ($8.50 USD).
There are small business and restaurants EVERYWHERE, they are all clean and have tons of variety. You can find any type of food you want. They have sushi places that have conveyer belts around the bar and you just take what you want ala carte style. There are sushi places with individually or double packed nigiri that you pick out to create your own bento lunchbox all around $1 or $1.50 for two pieces, ($1.7 USD, $2.55 USD)
There are actually several shopping streets and really I haven't explored all of them. We like to window shop as we can't really afford most of the clothing that we admire. It feels like half the city is shopping and food and it really is quite nice to just walk around and get cheap food and take in the beautiful architecture. The tiny cars don't speed around dangerously, there are no Hummers, and certainly I have not heard gasolina being blasted from a ridiculously ugly civic.
There is also an availability or beer pretty much anywhere, and you can drink on the street, provided you don't get too out of control. The cafes are also quite impressive here. I've been impressed by places like Tealuxe in Boston, but other than Crema, most of the coffee shops are trash and have nasty espresso. Starbucks and Dunkin Donuts are not even considered. Most of the coffee shops here have really good espresso and there is a big chain called Nero that I've seen everywhere. For some reason everyone who works at a cafe has been Italian which is quite comforting. It is very hard to get regular coffee though since most Europeans drink espresso, but they do sell Cafe Americano, which is just espresso in water. You can figure out why it's called that. Starbucks here may have regular coffee although we haven't gone into one yet. I've been mostly drinking English Breakfast Tea which is their blend of black tea with some milk. This is the base for the popular Bubble Tea at asian places. Asians don't really drink milk so this was actually brought to Japan and Hong Kong during British Occupations.
We've tried a few beers and some ciders which were all pretty good. This is really a preference so I will just say that I hate American beer and I do prefer imported when I do drink which is seldom nowadays.
We met up with someone we know from Boston who designs clothes here and ate at a Swedish place called Fika (http://www.fikalondon.com) and had reindeer salami, swedish meatballs (ikea style), Pear Cider, and a Finnish Lager, the names of which I cannot pronounce or remember. The Lager was pretty good and the Cider tasted like soda, a little too sweet for me but perfect for most tastes. It was about a 15 minute walk from the Tube station and we had to trek through a street that had at least 50 Indian Restaurants. I got the impression when I searched online that there were several Indian Restaurants, no one bothered to say that there was a street full of Indian Restaurants. No one bothered to say there was a street with about ten music instrument stores either.
You can pretty much find anything you want to eat anywhere in the city.
There are also a bunch of museums here, many of which are FREE admission and have a lot of really good stuff, much better than our MFA, which is still pretty good but is only free because I'm a student in the city. Even the Louvre in Paris only costs something like $15 USD to get into. Someone told me it was going to be really expensive. What a jackass.
This long entry will have to do for now, until I write more and organize them. I just wanted to get this started.
One more price comparison. I bought a two-liter bottle of spring water from a convenience store. A 24-hour convenience store that has tons of food including steak, and their sandwich cooler has like 20 different types of sandwiches, all of which are deliciously edible, unlike the garbage 7-eleven subs meant for drunk crackheads. The two-liter bottle of water cost 36 pence. I looked at it at least five times and at my receipt a few times. That converts to 61 cents. Bottled water is cheaper than soda...?
