Literary London

Harry Potter, Sherlock Holmes, 1984, Bridget Jones, A Little Princess. 

All books I love. All books that are set or have scenes in London. I've been dreaming about seeing the stage for so many of my beloved books since I started reading them.

Finally, my chance came. My dad had a business meeting outside of London, and I was fortunate enough to get to three whirlwind days seeing as much of the city as I could.

I flew in early Tuesday morning, dumped my luggage on my dad, and headed out for the city.

The day was long and by the end of it, my feet hurt so bad I didn’t think I would physically be able to keep walking, but I got a lot of sight seeing done!

The first day I saw, Hyde Park, Big Ben and Parliament, toured Westminster Abbey, went on the London Eye, ate real hamburger and sushi, and walked around seeing different famous streets I read about time and time again.

I didn’t go into London on the second day (I’ll get to that in a minute), so on the last day, I toured the Tower, ate in Piccadilly Circus, and saw Buckingham Palace before I had to make my way back to the airport.

All in all, I enjoyed London. It was a great city. And it felt nice to be somewhere everyone spoke English even just for a few days. I think how unbelievably expensive everything is kind of marred the experience for me. I spent well over $200 in one day there without doing anything special or buy any souvenirs. Between meals, tickets into various attractions and public transportation my money was gone. I know all of it went to a good cause, but usually if I spend that kind of money, I have tangible items to show for it.

What I really liked the most was just being all of the different places I’d read so much about. It was just cool being on Tottenham Court Road and Charring Cross Road because I’ve seen them referenced so many times.

That has been one of my favorite parts of traveling. I have a firm setting in my head when I read about the cities I've been to now. Now I know, when I read about Paris or London or Florence what the cities are like. I know what Luxembourg looks like and how far away it is from Montmartre, so when a character has to rush from one to the other, I actually know how far away it is.

I got my ultimate literary fan girl on in Bath. If you have heard of Bath, I’m willing to bet it has something to do with Jane Austen. Since I was actually staying in Swindon, about an hour outside of London, I decided to take the 25 minutes train ride to Bath instead of paying another 40 pounds to go into London.

Bath is a splendid town. It’s very quaint, charming, and clean. The town is a book lover’s paradise. I stepped of the train and the first thing I saw was a bookstore. I popped in and discovered it was a run of the mill store; it sold first editions and classics. I never knew I wanted a first edition copy of Jane Austen’s works, but I do now.

Everywhere you turn in the heart of the city is a bookstore, or a store that also sells books. Clothing stores sell books, music shops sell music specific books, make up stores sold girly books. It was incredibly. I could tell I was in a city of like-minded people because many shops (even the non-book ones) had literary names like “Through the Looking Glass” and “The Raven.”

The epic culmination of all of this fun was the Jane Austen Center. Jane Austen lived in Bath for 5 years and set two of her novels here, Persuasion and Northanger Abbey. They have a house that was modeled after the one she lived in full of information about her life, and on the top floor, they have a café. I went up there and had tea with a cheese scone served with chutney. I still can’t exactly tell you what chutney is but it was kind of like jam, but not really. Mine was gooseberry and coriander flavored which was incredibly bizarre but quite good. Later, I even got to walk the path that serves as the setting for Anne Elliot’s engagement.

I loved my time, however brief it was. Fortunately, I headed straight from London to Florence with my dad. And Florence is the subject of my next blog that I will hopefully post shortly.