I’ve only been in London for a few days and I’m already in love. The people, contrary to popular belief, are actually very polite and super helpful. The university I’m at is also really nice, but it’s kind of big and has two separate campuses, one in Kensington and one in Richmond, proving to be a bit of a challenge.
Campus life is also different. I live in Kensington, which is a very posh neighborhood where almost every car is a Ferrari. There are two Kensington buildings in which we have classes. The other classes are an hour away on the Tube in Richmond. It’s going to be an interesting time getting to classes.
The residence hall is full of great people, but the food is nothing to write home about.
I’ve only been in London a few days, so I haven’t been able to do much. We took a tour of Kensington and got to see the London homes of Henry James, Robert Browning and one Charles Dickens.
My tour guide told us Dickens moved around London a lot, never staying in one place too long because he was so afraid of being in debt since he grew up in poverty. Henry James was an American author, but he came to London one day, planning on a short stay, and then decided that he wanted to live there. For any English major, or any lover of literature, this was something that I thought was amazing.
We also found out that if you go to the Babylon building in Kensington you can take the elevator to the top floor with a beautiful rooftop garden anyone can go up to see for free.
There’s also a beautiful garden that’s not terribly far from my residence hall. I may not be able to see bright stars here, but at least I’ll get a good fix of fresh air and exercise.
After the Kensington tour, our group went on a bus tour of the city. We hit up Big Ben, Buckingham Palace and Westminster Abbey. We were not able to tour in them, but we were able to snap a few pictures.
Our guide, a native Londoner, told us cheap ways to get into these places. For example, you can go to church services in Westminster Abbey for free and then if you just happen to have a camera you can take pictures as you wish.
Which leads me to my first tip: try to have a local show you around when you travel. It can be someone you know who you’re visiting, a tour guide, a person you befriended one night, etc.
Our day ended with going to see “Phantom of the Opera” at Her Majesty’s Theater. It was amazing. Phantom is by far my favorite musical and this is the best production I have seen of it. The set looked like it was from a movie, the orchestra played fantastically, the performers were just as good at singing as they were acting. The theater literally had opera glasses that you could rent for the show. It was a great way to end an even better day.