you don’t have to go home but you can’t stay here

06Jan10

I get wanderlust fairly often, I suppose. It depends on how annoyed I am with my current living situation at any given time. So it has happened especially often over the past few months. I’ll start hunting for places to visit, things to do; I wonder who lives *there* that I might know and can intrude upon to show me around.

This is notable because it felt different this afternoon. Instead of frustration and itchiness, it was one long wave of nostalgia and longing.

I miss London something dreadful right now. It started out of nowhere, a flash of memory, so vivid I could almost hear the buses rumbling by on Westminster Bridge. When I was living over there, I managed to visit London not nearly as often as I wanted to. Once I went by myself for a weekend. I took the bus from Leicester into Victoria Station and caught the tube over to Earl’s Court, checked into the wee little hotel off Bayswater I was staying in.

It was the weekend of the Royal Henley Regatta, I remember that. It might also be the weekend the Queen Mum died, as I was in London for that as well.

Instead of giving in to the desire to hole up in that little room all weekend, I went out for a walk. It was fully dark by the time I got to the Tower, but I was still able to walk around. I took tons of pictures that evening. Almost universally they turned out blurry—I don’t own a tripod. More’s the pity, as the Tower looks really scary and badass at night, all lit up.

I remember walking out across the bridge and watching the Eye spin around, then turning back towards Westminster Abbey and Parliament. I stood as close to directly under Big Ben as I could, and took several pictures, hoping that at least one of them would manage to convey the awe I felt staring up at that clock tower. It’s really neat to see from afar, from the Eye, but it’s magnificent from just beneath it.

I miss London. I want to go back.

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Tags: london, wanderlust