It's been a long time since I've written, so I've decided to chronicle my weekend - interesting or not!
Despite having lived here for eight and a half months, I feel that I do not have a good conceptual grasp of London. I understand the area around me in Kensington and Hammersmith (the borough in which I live and the one next to it), and I feel that I have a good general idea of what is where in central London (which in fact consists of a number of boroughs, some with rather long tendrils that reach into the heart of town), but I don't feel that I really
understand any of those places. And when it comes to the outer boroughs, well, I really have no idea. (As I think I've explained before, "London" generally refers to
Greater London which actually consists of 32
boroughs and the
City of London, which is only about a square mile in size - almost all of the governmental buildings you probably associate with London are actually in the City of Westminster which is in fact a city, but also a borough in Greater London. It is quite clear that a "city" in England does not mean the same thing that it does in most of the United States, where it implies certain duties performed by the municipal government).
Anyway, with that in mind, I decided to go exploring on Saturday. My first stop was at the
Shepherd's Bush Market near my house, which was unexciting - a market with numerous clothing, Arab food, and kitchenware stalls. Next, I hopped on a bus to the "town" of
Elephant and Castle. I say town, because most of London is in fact lots of little communities. So my borough of Kensington has its own
high street (equivalent to the American main street) with the same shops that you'd find on most other high streets (adjusted for the quality of the neighborhood). The same is true of most other areas in London. This is unlike, say, New York, where the shops are spread out on the major avenues and major side streets, but no area in Manhattan has a "main street" to speak of. This becomes less true in the outer boroughs of New York, where only one main avenue will have the stores, but even then there are far more local shops than you would find in London, and the thinking is not quite so linear.
I should pause here and explain my understanding of London architecture. Most things can be categorized according to the following tree:
- Nice
- Town-like - one or more of:
- Old red brick
- Old Victorian
- Old Tudor
- Old stone churches
- City-like - one or more of:
- Big grand, oldish (think Westminster Palace/Big Ben or buildings like those in Washington DC)
- New, grand, stone (similar to new Federal buildings)
- New modern
- Old stone churches
- Ugly
- Both of:
- Ugly yellow brick
- Ugly modern concrete blocks.
There doesn't really seem to be much deviation from this tree, and my impression of most of the outer areas I encounter is that they fall under the Ugly category.
So, continuing. My bus ride took me along my street past Holland Park and through Notting Hill (Mostly town-like Victorian, with a few ugly new buildings thrown in at Notting Hill's major intersection), nothing exciting to see there. Then down Hyde Park, around a corner, and down toward Victoria Station. Again, nothing I hadn't seen before. And then, around a corner, past a park, and out into the square in front of the new
Supreme Court of the United Kingdom (most exciting - a separated legislature and judiciary! As a side note, there was a lot of fear about the new court beginning to exercise judicial review. Admittedly, the lack of a written constitution means that judicial review would be, literally, arbitrary, but nevertheless the concept makes some sense). Here, finally was something exciting. A bunch of protesters! At first, I was rather confused, because the main banner proclaiming "capitalism doesn't work!" was backed by others asking for "peace now!" and I could not see how they were strictly related, until I realized that there were, in fact, at least three separate groups - peace protesters ("bring our troops home NOW"), communists (hammer and sickle flag, "capitalism doesn't work!") and people protesting for a "fair votes now " (some form of proportionate voting, rather than the current plurality system). A photo:
After crossing over the bridge just by Big Ben, the bus went under a railway (leading to Waterloo station, no doubt - there are so many train stations in London!) and promptly entered the "ugly" phase, and remained in that state all of the way to Elephant and Castle. The high street in Elephant and Castle was nothing to write home about, except for the minor excitement of an oriental grocery store selling, among other tasty Asian goods, root beer, which is very difficult to get here. Not only was it selling root beer, but it was only £0.79 per can, imported from Singapore and the US (two varieties). Very nice. A can of A&W root beer and a box of chocolate pandas -
- and I was on another bus back to Kensington via a different route (remember, it was all about exploring!). I massed through two more neighborhoods and a green that I had previously heard were nice (and I was in fact a fan, in large part because they were hilly) - Clapham Commons (the neighborhood and green) and Clapham Junction, where, allegedly, a lot of Australian people live (and the evidence was quite strong, judging by the "barbie" restaurants and tiki bars along the street. Here I changed for another bus to Sloane Square, with the landscape changing back to "ugly" before I hit the river-front area, and ended up in Chelsea (beautiful red brick). Along the Chelsea part of the journey, which took me up King Street (the Chelsea high street) I decided that Chelsea was one of my favorite parts of London. Only after I alighted at the end of the bus line in Sloane Square, did I realize that my favorite part of Chelsea had been the part at the very end of the journey, and that this, stereotypically, is where Americans live. I think that part of it might be cultural (there is much more red brick in the US than there is here, so we may be drawn to it, and there is a store stocking American imported goods right next to the Square) but a lot of it is probably also money-related. Despite the fact that there are more Americans in England than any other English speaking nationals other than the Irish, I encounter far more Aussies, Kiwis and Canadians than I do yanks. I can only assume, therefore, than they're all executives! Seems reasonable. Anyway, executives are the only ones who could live in Sloane Square. Very swanky, and very expensive.
After popping into the gourmet food store containing the American imports (I was more interested in seeing their mustard selection, embarrassingly) I headed up toward
Mayfair, another swanky part of town that I wanted to get a better grasp of. I wandered around the area, which contains both the Saudi and (much larger but uglier)
American embassies. The US embassy is on Grosvenor Square, which is a beautiful residential (and diplomatic) area surrounded by townhouses, John Adams's house, and which is also the site of Adlai Stevenson's heart attack. The nearby streets contain shopping, and restaurants in equal number to, as far as I could tell, members-only clubs and restaurants, such as Cipriani London. Nothing exciting, but all of it (near the square) beautiful. Further out in Mayfair and it's still very posh (to be British about it) but a few ugly modern buildings have been thrown in for good measure.
All in all, a nice day exploring, even if it only solidified my sense that there aren't many neighborhoods of London I need to go see still. I'd still like to go to Greenwich though, and to explore Hampstead and St. John's Wood (both of which I've found lovely when I've been previously).
