For most of my childhood, I lived in Arlington Park in Fort Wayne Indiana, the very image of a quiet Midwestern neighborhood with parks and ponds and families walking dogs when Spring came around. There were a few other kids on my street, and I got along with them well enough, but none of them were quite my age. Naturally, I’d spend a good amount of time keeping to myself, and a lot of that time was spent with my nose in a book. Countless hours I’ve spent daydreaming, filling the shoes of the main characters everywhere from the decks of the Nautilus to the Island of Lilliput. As I grew up (for lack of a better term) and my reading list expanded to include more nonfiction, a small but thick paperback book which had sat for what seemed like years beneath an end table in the living room caught my attention. It was “1000 Places to See Before You Die,” by Patricia Schultz. I flipped through the pages, obsessively some afternoons, and fantasized about becoming some kind of renowned world traveler, the next Anthony Bourdain. I credit that book with playing a big role in instilling me with a spirit of adventure which motivated me to spend a semester in London.
Now that I am entering a chapter in my life in which I am given opportunities to make once far-fetched daydreams a reality, I’d like to take a crack at paying homage to the great works of travel literature which lead me where I am now. I give you, dear reader, 7 Places to See in London Before Your Flight (just so the stakes aren’t so high). What follows is a list of places in London which I consider to be the most entertaining, enriching, or enlightening and which I would recommend any traveler which comes after me take special effort to see in person. Some are well known, some are niche, and some cannot be found on maps at all, but all of them are worth your time. And so, without further adieu and in no particular order: 1. The British Museum Having been the avid reader I was growing up, it should come as no shock that I found myself awe-struck by the seemingly endless artifacts and exhibits of the British Museum. When I found out that the house we were staying in was only a five minute walk away from the museum, I took the first opportunity to take advantage of the free admission. When I did, I was almost immediately overcome with an excited, child-like curiosity as I bounced from display to display and struggled read as much as I could before making room for the next group of people. I spent hours wandering through halls of Neolithic Chinese jade, grand reconstructions of the Greek Parthenon, maze-like displays of ancient Roman houseware and Mesopotamian tombs. Amid all of it though, one display stood out to me in particular. In the Mesopotamian wing, there stands a waist-high glass topped display housing a small wooden board, divided into squares and intricately painted with floral patterns and lying next to a few simple clay pieces. It is called The Royal Game of Ur, supposed to be the oldest board game ever discovered. When I first saw it in the museum, I stopped in my tracks. Since high school, I had played the game with my father, scribbled on notebook paper and using coins as pieces. Playing games has always been a favorite past time of my family-in a way we held the nightly game in higher reverence than family dinner. After all, all during dinner we were busy chewing to talk, all the joking and disagreeing and telling the news of the day was done over a game of cards or Yahtzee. Naturally, we were always on the hunt for new games, no matter how old they were. I discovered the game through a video I had found online posted by the British Museum, and had forgotten entirely about it until I was reminded about the exhibit in person, a pleasant surprise. I think we’re all connected to history in our own way, and for that reason I think that everyone can find something in the vast halls of the British Museum that excites their inner child like it did for me. 2. College Arms Pub (On a Tuesday Night) This is the first of two pubs I intend to mention on this list. Being the closest pub to the house and offering a student discount on top of 2-for-1 cocktails, it should come as no shock that it soon became the house’s preferred watering hole. During my first few weeks here, we would typically only go to College Arms as one leg of a larger pub crawl, but eventually we came to find a reason to come more consistently. Every Tuesday night at 7:30 is quiz night, and in one of the top pubs in the middle of the most academic neighborhood in London, the competition is fierce. Fortunately, the legendary Gower Gang came every week with unbridled enthusiasm and all the accumulated knowledge of some of Eckerd College’s brightest young students (as well as my own). No team I have been a part of has yet placed higher than second. Nevertheless, there is no victory better than being able every week to be a part of the commotion; of the shouts and finger-guns recklessly fired into the air with every right answer and of the laughter and jokes with each wrong one. If you find yourself in London and in the mood for table-pounding fun, as well as cheap drinks, take a stop by the College Arms Pub. And please try to get a win for us. We need it badly. 3. The Dart Room at the Angel The second pub of the list, a couple of blocks away from the house, there’s a charmingly old-school pub called The Angel, still warmed by fireplace with classical chandeliers hanging from the ceiling. Phones are not allowed, and the cozy atmosphere generally means that the only sounds are the bartenders at work and the traffic outside. If you’re lucky enough and come into the bar on the right night, you’ll meet a 70 some-odd year old Irish man, perhaps dressed as he was when I met him: sharp, with a plaid shirt, a duck-bill cap and suspenders. His name is Ray, and if you’re lucky enough to find him, he’ll more than likely be in the middle of a game of darts when you do. Strike up a conversation with Old Ray and you’ll find that despite his age, he’s every bit as sharp as his darts. He’s quick with a joke, and happy to give you a lesson in cricket (a version of darts, not the game most Americans think is just weird baseball,) or to conjure stories of his disco days in a London long gone. I mention him here to fulfill a promise I made to do so when I first met him. When I insisted that he’d make an appearance in this book, he selflessly requested that I not bother mentioning him if I didn’t also mention The Angel, because he said he knew he wouldn’t be around much longer for future readers to visit, but The Angel may be, and old-school dart bars like it need all the support they can get these days. Therefore reader, I encourage you to get yourself into a game of darts at The Angel in the heart of London, and order a warm beer for Ray when you do. According to him, cold beer is for women and foreigners. Like I said, he’s from a London long gone. 4. Virtually Any River Boat For most of my childhood I may have lived in Arlington Park, but for a couple of years before I moved to college I lived about twenty miles away, on a small property on Loon Lake. Some of my fondest memories from that time are when my family and I would take an old used pontoon out for cruises on the lake just before the sun would set, listening to the symphony of crickets and songbirds through the summer snow of cottonwood seeds. While the middle of the Thames in downtown London is about the most different place from a lake in rural Indiana I can imagine, I had the opportunity to take a riverboat ride down the Thames recently, and I couldn’t help but be reminded a bit of home when I did. I’m not sure if it was the steady roar of the boat’s motor which recalled the sputtering old outboard of the pontoon, or the chill wind coming off the water which, if I closed my eyes, made me think of the cool lake air which even in the stifling heat of July reminded me Autumn was coming, or something else entirely, but I was reminded in that unexpected way we all sometimes are that the human mind has an amazing ability to find familiarity and commonalities in places where it seems like home is a million miles away. Even if riding a riverboat won’t give you the same brief whiff of home it gave me, the views of London from the Thames are in my opinion the best in the city; forget all your towers and skyscrapers and viewpoints. When I first came here, one of the more minor concerns was that all the postcards and movies I’d seen of London would not stack up, the same way they never really do with most vacation spots. If you find yourself with that same fear, the riverboats are where you’ll find the most postcard-esque views you can hope for, with unobstructed views of Big Ben, Parliament, Tower Bridge, The London Eye, and virtually the entire skyline. London is a city which for its entire history has been tied to the Thames the same way a bird’s nest is tied to its tree, and therefore to see the city from the perspective of the river is, in my opinion, among the most essential experiences during a trip to London. 5. Bloomsbury Market One of the first questions any traveler will get from back home will inevitably be “how’s the food?” It didn’t take much time in London to have an answer I was confident in. I began to tell my friends and family that the food in Britain is excellent, but the actual British food is mediocre and bland. Scones? Just buttermilk biscuits. Fish and chips? Use your imagination, there are no surprises there. The best food in London is actually international, and given that London is one of the most influential cities in Europe and the entire world, there’s more than enough exotic food to suit your taste. From Hispanic to Middle Eastern to French to German, even if you’re like me and have the pallet of a child, there are likely to be half a dozen kitchens of any given background within walking distance of wherever you’re staying. For my money though, the best eats in London do not come from any restaurant, but from the pop-up street vendors in their parades of tents and stoves which from time to time appear overnight and disappear just as quickly. Serving only those observant enough to remember the times and places they tend to appear, or those lucky enough to stumble upon them by chance, there is truly a real, albeit small, sense of privilege gained from visiting these home-cook caravans and supporting small businesses. A lifetime could be spent hunting down and critiquing the underground eats of London, but if you don’t have that kind of time on your hands, I can recommend at least one. Every Thursday down the road and around the corner from Euston station, you can enjoy lunch at the Bloomsbury market, where thousands of savory scents float and mingle, carried on clouds of steam rising from the myriad hand-made meals. The personal and careful way with which each vendor practices their art is surpassed only by a parent’s cooking for their child. From boar burgers and mash to moo ping rice bowls, some of my favorite meals in my time spent in London have not been on porcelain plates in a fancy restaurant, but enjoyed in Styrofoam boxes sitting along the curb with my housemates. 6. Primrose Hill Frankly, the entirety of Regent’s Park could have made this entry if it wasn’t too large a place to condense into such a small amount of ink on paper. Therefore, I’ve decided to focus on Primrose Hill, situated across the street from the main part of the park. I’ve always been the sort of person that’s needed a good outdoor quiet spot. In Arlington Park, I would climb the pine trees in the park to read books. In Florida, it is the end of the groynes on Cortez Beach. In London, I’ve found that there are few better places of like tranquility as the top of Primrose Hill. There’s a certain charm to the simplicity of the spot; the hill stands solitary in the middle of an otherwise flat and open park, and at the top there is little more than a yard-sized concrete area with a couple of benches, and a single plaque with a labeled illustration of the skyline it faces. From there, the only sound is the whistle of the wind and the chatter of the few others who are willing to go slightly more out of the way than the people at the bottom. If you’re like me and need a please to muse or meditate from time to time, then you’ll find that the minor expedition it takes to get there is well worth the momentary reprise from the sometimes-overwhelming flux of the city that waits at the top. Plus, in Britain, people let their dogs run around in parks without leashes, so if you’re lucky a friendly one will run up to you and let you pet it, and try not to let that make your day. 7. 35 Gower Street Tucked away inconspicuously among the hotels and apartment buildings on a street packed with historical significance, this Georgian-era house has served for generations now as the Eckerd study center, housing hundreds of students like me during their journeys from the United States. If the walls had ears, as the old adage goes, the tales they could tell would fill bookshelves in fine print. In the common room alone, countless friendships have been formed, games have been played, laughs have been shared and memories have been made. I’m sure there are many homes like it, but for the Spring of 2022, it was at least in part my own. Of course, it comes with all the creaks and quirks that a centuries old house does. The floors tilt in places, certain doors are prone to jamming, and the house has probably been home to a dozen mice for each student. For all of its flaws however, the house on 35 Gower Street has undeniably been a warm home for me, thanks in large part of course to the house staff Billy and Maria, and to my classmates who gave me a family away from my family in my home away from home. If you find yourself in London, and care to follow in these authors’ footsteps, have a walk by 35 Gower Street, just around the corner from the British Museum, down the street from The Angel, and wave hello. When you do, take a moment to consider that in front of you is a place where lives have changed.
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