Day 1- Nine miles of Thames
Day 2 Camdon Town, Primrose Hill & Little Venice
Day 5 Fleet St, Wesminster to Leak St Waterloo
Day 8 Shoreditch and Brick Lane
The
'Like' London Project
My objective was to repair my disillusionment with London based on first impressions of a stuck-up-overpriced-shite-Pit. Harsh and unfair I know, but the feeling was mutual. London despised me too!
- for example, when I first arrived at Liverpool St. Station, London expressed its abhorrent disgust for me with a £4 baby chino as an alternative to a pretentious regular latte that would have had Prince William topping up at the ATM
I doubt London and I are ever going to get along. It wasn't just the money. It was uninspiring and souless. Sure it's great that Londoners speak English but ...well No its NOT great, I like foreign languages! London pubs are just full of drunk Australians with British accents. There I said it! It was too familiar. Being in London was like being home but it was hostile and it felt spoilt and greedy. The deja vu is soul crushing when you're hovering inside the frame of a postcard that you've seen a thousand times before.
I asked myself why do so many people want to come here? Or are these the same people who think Romania is just fancy pronunciation for' Rome' and who forgot that Bosnia's war is over? Anyway To avoid sulking about paying £3 for a cup of hot water to dangle my own tea bag in, I decided to use the next ten days to find a reason to actually Like London- I didn’t say Love- I just have to LIKE it!
I never really Liked London. Its all very awkward and I've never really known what to say about it because I guess I'm almost embarrassed to admit it. Was I missing something? Were my expectations too high?.
But what's perhaps More embarrassing is how I dealt with the problem. Faced with a momentous desision - do I hide in a Starbucks and give up on London? or do I completely Flip-Out on the pretentious Shit-hole and go somewhere else?
In fact I did neither of those things, Instead I found myself dealing with the issue by developing an
Action Plan
Objective: To 'Like' London in Ten Days. Create an Off-the-Beaten track guide for exploring London in small manageable chunks Strategy: Avoid all Postcard scenes, plush Paddington Bears and Shazam tagging One Direction songs.
Budget: Stingy
Starting Point: Isle of Dogs, Greenwich, London
Timeframe: 10 days
So if you didn't already think I was a Super Organised Travel Nerd - wrap your head around this,
.........the time I used a spreadsheet to try and 'Like London'
Like London Action Plan
Result:........Don't say I didn't try