I’ve been revisiting things.
When I’ve stayed in London in the past (2 whole times), I’ve been based south of the Thames. I liked being in Clapham and I loved being in Putney. As I was passing through London once again and had a few days before my next house sit, I decided to spend a few days in the HydePark/Paddington area. Seeing it on the flip side, you might say. Ok, that feels lame but there are 2 main sides of any city divided by a river and they’re almost always different.
I knew I wanted to experience a bit of the less tourist-y bits of London and since I’d finally read some Virginia Woolf in the summer of 2021 I thought I could make a stop at some relevant sites to her life, as well.
A blue plaque of one’s own? A house in Fitzrovia once lived in by both Virginia Woolf and George Bernard Shaw.
It felt nice to be wandering in slightly slower-paced London with nothing scheduled. I looked up a few locations I’d like to visit each day, plotted a vague course, and set off. I took buses and trains as I needed, but mostly just focused on enjoying walking in North London.
I love London. I love the variety and the ease of movement. I love how areas like Paddington and Kensington are so near one another, yet so different in vibe. I love how things are always changing and how there are also ancient ruins.
My fave history museum in London!
In fact, the only places I revisited in London from my 2016 trip were the Tate Modern (and I’d return multiple times per trip if I had the time) and the Museum of London. It’s a free museum documenting London throughout time from prehistory to now. It’s also my top recommendation when people ask me about London. I enjoyed it thoroughly both times (2016 and 2022) I went. Plus, I felt the need to check back and see if I had hyped it up too much since it was such a great memory.
My 2016 trip to the UK included revisiting the Tower of London. The tower held a strange place in my memory from childhood.
My family lived in the UK when I was very young and my first memories include the birth of my brother and a family trip to the Tower of London. I must have found it quite scary because I had a recurring nightmare about my sister getting injured in it for a decade. When she and I went back as adults, it was fascinating and reassuring (something most people might say about a torture prison location) because I was able to reframe this thing that had loomed in my memory most of my life. And I could also validate my childhood feelings of fear around it. (It is scary and a tiny 4-year old has every right to be afraid.)
Back to this visit, I walked through many parks comparing the sad, brownness that had overcome them since I landed in the city in May. The lack of rain and the excess heat all summer made them look like deep autumn and the leaves had even started falling. I felt sad thinking of how difficult a summer it has been for people across the UK and the globe due to climate change.
I did however stumble upon something that I knew about but didn’t realize was in the same park as I was.
Peter Pan statue in Kensington Gardens, London
This reminds me more of the movie Hook than any childhood experience of the Peter Pan story, but it feels right to see this icon of youth and imagination while revisiting places where younger versions of me could also be found.
Going back to things we enjoyed and making a point to view them through a different lens than before can be a great learning opportunity. We can transport ourselves back to our previous visits. We can confirm our previous opinions or realize that they had been colored by something else. We can add layers of context based on things we’ve read or changes of circumstance since we were last in that place.
I think it’s more than ok to release yourself from goal-oriented travel sometimes. We don’t always have to be learning something new or seeing something new or checking something off a list. Sometimes we can just wander in a place we’ve been before and be open to the possibilities of the present moment.
Follow along if you like and remember — Even tiny adventures matter.