These past two weeks have been amazing! However, back to a school routine, it doesn’t feel like a vacation anymore. London suddenly seems like the most complex, crowded city in the world! Being in contact with this everyday has, inevitably, made me feel a bit homesick. Especially living my days five hours ahead, it has certainly made me feel disconnected with my relatives and friends! Thankfully, this past weekend, I had one of my closest childhood friends visit me, which cured the part of me that wants to bring some of my Puerto Rican roots back to life.
Ian traveled from Madrid, where he’s studying abroad, carrying some of that Latin spirit himself. Of course, his mindset was to explore the city, and indeed we did! We walked it in just three days! My favorite memory, however, was our adventure through the suburbs of the city, the place where you would least expect it to be. On Sunday afternoon, we decided to sit down at Hyde Park and, after an hour of conversation and laughing, we remembered we had forgotten the one place we had talked about since day one: Abbey Road, the famous street from the iconic Beatles album cover! Barely sundown, we rushed to the tube, hoping we could make it before our three day meet-up was over. As soon as we got off at St. John’s Wood Station, we did what any tacky tourist would, we searched for “Abbey Road” on Google Maps, and walked to the indicated destination. We took pictures on a crosswalk, only to realize we had walked so far to the wrong one! We sprinted back, and finally found it, the famous Abbey Road crosswalk, just before sunset.
We took fabulous pictures, stopping traffic for that perfect shot. However, the story doesn’t end here: right after that last shot was taken, his phone died (and mine was already dead!), so we had no idea how to go back. However, instead of stressing out, we had an even better time, figuring out our way back with street maps and intuition. We laughed at our impulsive trip up to North London, and how disastrous yet fun it had been. This made me realize that it was this spontaneous and positive attitude towards the small things in life that I missed the most. Thankfully, I got to come back to it even if it was just for one weekend.
It was definitely tons of fun, and I can’t wait to find out what other wonderful things this city has!
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