Ever since Doctor Who turned me into an anglophile, all those years ago, I dreamed about visiting this city…
Now, I’ll be there for the third time in three years…and I never get tired of it.
By the end of the second day of my first trip, back in 2005, I knew Central London well enough to navigate it without a map. I already have my favourite spots and my favourite walks…places that make my soul sing…
Oxford Street — so busy, it’s nothing but a line of double-decker buses in either direction, competing with a mass of shops unlike anything I’ve ever seen…and an even greater mass of humanity…
Leicester Square — pedestrianized streets, mixing with funky side streets that go off in all directions, and at multiple elevations. It is impossible NOT to find something to entertain you in the heart of Soho, especially in those magical, late night hours…
Covent Garden — so much charm and history, it simply seeps out of the cobblestones & the covered walkways…the awe-inspiring London Transport Museum anchoring one corner of this Victorian gift to architecture…and in between, old alleyways turned into magnificent mini-streets, designed only for people…
The South Bank — I could walk that area forever…from the London Eye to the Globe Theatre to the Tait Modern to Tower Bridge…the smell of the not-to-distant sea, the monumental skyline of ancient and modern buildings looming across the water…the Millenium Bridge a graceful spear across the Thames…a silver finger, reaching out to St. Paul’s Catherdral…
Westminster Abbey — a world all its own…so much history that the walls threaten to burst from the sheer joy of all the triumphs and tragedies it contains…
So many places…so many sights, smells, sensations, memories…London is a city where I felt completely at home…comfortable…secure. As if I had always lived there, and truly belonged there…
Maybe it’s trying to tell me something. 
Still…next week, I’ll be back there once more…and it can continue to whisper sweet nothings to me…and perhaps, a few of the students I’m taking along on this trip will feel the same…and fall in love with this most magnificent city of cities.
Six days and counting… 
