London an Intro

I spend Easter Weekend in London. Just to get away and to be by myself. Just me and a new place.  Well, semi-new. I've been there once before.

I love London. Literally. It is one of my favorite settings. The city of Shakespeare, of Spooks, of Sherlock, of Platform 9 3/4 and a million others of my favorite stories and things.
It is the city of hundreds of years of fascinating history.
It is an amazing and beautiful city.

So why was I not enjoying myself?

I was on the trip I'd saved money for. That I'd looked forward too. I had been dreaming of this trip for basically three years since I had last seen London.

But now I was there. I was exhausted, annoyed, and wishing I was in my bed and watching TV or reading a book.

This was discouraging. I wanted to love this city. I wanted to feel inspired and enlightened and instead I was just exhausted. London in my mind was one of my favorite cities. Just like Galway or Edinburgh or D.C. But now that I was here I felt like Adele, lamenting that my deep passion lay unrequited.

I was so upset about this that I actually lay awake on Saturday night agonizing over it. Then I realized. I was in love with the London of the stories I loved. Now, a lot of these stories went to great lengths to capture London. But, that didn't change the fact the London I thought I knew I knew from other people's eyes. I had only ever been there once myself and had spent most the time in various theatre-- no regrets.

The main problem was that I was tired so tired. Too tired to really let these places have an emotional impact. Travel is always exhausting. But this was worse than tired. This was zombie walking through the holiday I'd been looking forward to.

So Saturday night, while pretending to be asleep on the wrecked hostel pillow as my Spanish roommates discussed their party plans for the night in steryo-typically loud voices, I made a plan. I would cut some things out of my list to see, I wasn't going to make it to most of them anyway at this rate. And, if I officially cut them from the list I wouldn't be stressing about missing them. I needed to relax. I needed to enjoy these things. I wouldn't see everything. But I would be happy seeing the things I did instead of just crossing off check marks.

London was huge city. It wouldn't become on of MY cities right away. I need to quit pushing expectations onto this place and just enjoy it. Furthermore I needed to quit comparing it to other trips. Like Edinburgh, I had loved every minute of that trip, but until now I had somehow allowed myself to forget that I had zombie walked through the beginning of that one too.

Slow down. Enjoy the city for itself as I saw it. 

And you know what? It worked.

I'm not saying that next time I go to London I won't be overwhelmed and exhausted. But, I am saying that London is still one of my favorite cities and this trip was great.