An afternoon in London

I think I’ve talked in the past about my love-hate relationship with London. London means a lot to me in a personal level, because of previous experiences and memories, and because it was one of the places where I started to find myself as a person back in my teenage years.

I love the the modern and ancient architecture, the history, the bright lights and the red buses, the theatres and musicals, the concerts, the museums, the simplicity of the underground system, amongst many other things.

However I hate some other things too: the fact that it is a very busy city, the traffic, the crowded underground at rush hour, too many tourists and too many pickpockets, the lack of rubbish bins in certain places due to a possible terrorist attack, how dirty some places are, the fact that the next time you blow your nose black stuff will come out of it, etc.

Still, I very much enjoyed spending the afternoon “in town” yesterday. It was a very relaxed afternoon, in which we didn’t have to rush to be anywhere at any particular time, and that made things so chill out.

We stopped to watch a street entertainer in Covent Garden (he was funny and good, but had a very cheeky way of asking for money at the end of his show that put me off), we then went for dinner, and for pudding to a place called SNOG where they sell frozen yoghurt with real fruit pieces or other stuff like chocolate brownies, oreos, almonds, etc. This place was awesome. Not only the frozen yoghurt was delicious (if only a bit too pricey) and the shop decorated in an impressive way, but also the shop staff had been very carefully selected… In the same way that you don’t find minging girls in a Hooters, the boys who served us in this shop were all HOT! Our gay friend who was with us yesterday almost had a heart attack by just looking at them, and kept saying “Can I have HIM? or HIM?” It was hilarious.

Awesome light fittings @ SNOG shop in Covent Garden

We then went for a walk from Covent Garden towards Trafalgar Square and from there we walked the whole length of Pall Mall, a road which I had never visited before in any of my many visits to London! It’s funny how sometimes we stick to the known. We take comfort in the places that we already know and leave the unknown “for next time”. Since the first time that I visited England in 1994, I had never been in Pall Mall despite the fact of it being so near Regent St, Picadilly and Trafalgar.

Olympics countdown @ Trafalgar Square

From there we went to St James park where I was amazed about the huge amount of animals around, and we enjoyed watching a mummy duck seeing off a heron who was getting too close to baby ducks. It was a fine spectacle We had a sit down in one of the benches and we started playing a game: Count the Spaniards. We saw sooooo many Spanish people walking by! I know I can’t talk. I am Spanish. But I don’t know why I was so surprised to see so many!

Very friendly squirrel @ St James Park

After the park we headed back to the train station and back home.

Very relaxed afternoon, greatly enjoyable. The weather helped, the company helped. The city helped.

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