I’m calling this post a “writing challenge” because I’m on a flight home from London and have two hours remaining in my four-hour Wi-Fi package. Trying valiantly to articulate some reflections in real-time rather than watch the second Harry Potter movie over the shoulder of the woman in front of me.
This trip has been in the works, at least in my daydreams, for a few years. I first visited London in 2015 with my mom and sister and loved it. But I also had a nagging feeling that maybe I didn’t do the city justice; it was my first time in Europe, and I gained a better sense of myself as a traveler and tourist over time. I can’t pinpoint the exact source of my renewed desire to return, but I attribute it to a combination of 1) starting to read Zadie Smith’s novels at the beginning of the pandemic, all of them at least partially London-set; 2) general pandemic-induced wanderlust; and 3) more recently, listening to the Harry Potter soundtracks a lot at work.
Don’t get me wrong: This was a great trip. I was able to do everything on my agenda and more and had a wonderful time doing all of it with a friend I don’t get to see much. I would love to return to London several times over. But I think I expected to come away with a million special London-specific takeaways, particularly ones I could bestow upon friends and family members visiting in the future: oh you have to eat here, you must go to this museum, this was the best afternoon tea, etc.
Rather, I find myself in a more generally reflective state, considering what this trip as a whole has taught me about myself, how I travel, and how I live at home. I think some of this is rooted in the fact that this is my first international trip since December 2018 (two days in Montreal don’t count for what I’m talking about), and definitely my first time being somewhere noticeably different from my everyday life since the pandemic. London doesn’t come with full-on culture shock, obviously, but it’s not New York, and the UK is not America.
But I also think these broad reflections are born out of my own shifting ideas about what a vacation “should” be (of course, as I’m learning, they don’t have to be anything except what I want them to be). In the past, I’ve treated vacations as sacred. As far as leisure activities, nothing was more worthy of my time and money than one big summer holiday. I suppose I still feel this way a little; I cannot go to London whenever I please, so it makes sense to try and squeeze as much as possible out of that one week. We didn’t do this trip on a shoestring budget, but it was also rather splurge-free, and I feel no marked difference in my level of enjoyment between this trip and previous ones. Money isn’t even really what I’m trying to get at. It’s more the realization that vacation is when I gave myself permission to indulge, but now I’m more of a mindset that little extravagances at home might be even more satisfying.
If I peel back another layer of that thinking, I uncover the notion of the vacation as my one big escape - the one week I could be a version of myself that I couldn’t be at home. More refined, better-dressed, totally the type of person who spends hours in a museum every day. I’m not saying this is a wrong way to think. There’s definitely an allure to the idea of reinventing yourself, however temporarily, in a new place. But why relegate that feeling to one or two weeks a year? And for me, at least, even more challenging: Why put that much pressure on a vacation?
I actually started thinking about this even before the trip began. A couple weeks ago, the forecast showed a few days of showers. Still in old-Paige vacation mode, I immediately focused my thoughts on acquiring a new rain jacket. The one I have is functional but ugly, and that won’t do for vacation! I scoured the internet and sifted the racks. Finally, at Cole Haan, I found my perfect match - then took a long, hard look in the mirror and had to face the truth that no one, especially no one in London, would recognize the difference between this and my trusty old Columbia number. (In the end, it rained once during our trip, and we were inside the Victoria & Albert museum the whole time.)
I now have 49 minutes of Wi-Fi left and this is more personal-growth treatise than vacation recap. Maybe they are one and the same in this instance.
I’ll end with the London-specific takeaways I am walking away with:
We went to Dishoom for breakfast yesterday morning. It was on my list to try, and I’d heard the naan rolls were great, but I was not prepared for the uniqueness of the taste. It’s less “wow, I’ve never had anything like this” and more, “wow, I’ve never had something like this done this well.” I legitimately woke up thinking about the sausage naan roll this morning (particularly the tomato jam aspect).
Favorite museum find on this trip: “Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose” by John Singer Sargent, at the Tate Britain. Carefree childhood summer personified, and the lanterns look like they’re really glowing.
I went to the Harry Potter studio tour at the Warner Bros. lot outside London, and if a middling HP fan like myself found it spectacularly fun, I can only imagine how a die-hard would feel. Who knew walking through Gringotts would be such a thrill.
And lastly, I saw Guys & Dolls at The Bridge Theatre last night and it was a highlight of my theatergoing life! It was billed as an “immersive” production, which I had a hard time envisioning beforehand, yet it completely made sense once I was there. While I had a seated ticket, which looked down on the stage, a large portion of the audience stood on the stage and were guided around the floor as the cast performed on a shifting arrangement of raised platforms. It was done in the round, so the actors had their backs to me at some points, but the staging was so inventive, and they made some fun stylistic choices while staying faithful to the original musical.
This performance convinced me that Guys & Dolls is my favorite musical. It may not be progressive, but it hasn’t become full-on cringe over time. More than that, there’s not a bad song in the bunch. And when they’re performed by a cast as talented as the one I saw, it’s irresistible. I particularly liked Andrew Richardson, who played Sky Masterson, and left thinking “he should be in more things.” I later learned he is one of the final few actors being considered to take over the Superman role in DC films. Hope he becomes super famous and I can say I saw him when.
Ok! Nine minutes to spare. Will I use my Wi-Fi-less time to finally watch Women Talking, or will I continue sneaking glimpses at Chamber of Secrets while listening to folklore on my own headphones? Who can know.
This was fun. Thanks for reading.