ravi sekerWelcome to my collection of interesting tidbits and reflective blogs of my time here in London! These are all things that caught my attention which were a little bit, and sometimes a lot, different from life back in America. Archives
August 2018
Categories |
Back to Blog
Hot London summers7/27/2018 Coming in to London, I had this picture of what to expect of London. Grey skies and lots of rain. Safe to say I was thoroughly shocked when I didn't see rain till the end of my second month here. However, the locals were clearly more surprised by the hot weather than I was. The following months, I noticed little things here and there on how London managed to cope with the heat. Vendors marched on streets offering free samples of pop to promote their brands. Ice cream trucks popped up on every city block. People rushed to bars after work to have a nice cold beer after a long days work in an air-conditioned environment. Public parks were swarmed with people sunbathing and tanning with their bathing suits on, trying to take to full advantage of this sunny surprise. Warning signs for the heat were put up in all train and tube stations, urging commuters to always carry water with them and look out for passengers that seem dehydrated. Even the dogs of London weren't forgotten as stores set out numerous doggie bowls of water for exhausted pups that walk by. It may not have been what I was prepared for, but London had this summer heat covered.
0 Comments
read more
Back to Blog
Getting around town7/6/2018 In a city as big as London, one can never truly “see it all”. That didn’t mean I wasn’t going to give it my best attempt. Starting off, there were the musuems. London is home to some of the most renown musuems in the world which were also, to my surprise, free to enter! I spent many a Sunday afternoon walking through the marble floors of musuems such as the British Musuem, the Natural History Musuem, the Victoria and Albert Musuem, the Tate Modern, the Science Musuem, the Design Musuem, the London Musuem and the National Gallery. And there were still so many left to explore! Providing free entry (with optional donations) catalyzed the history and art interests in me and got me to explore and learn so much in countless fields. I have to give special mentions to the local markets, specifically Camden and Borough market. Why pay for lunch when you can stuff yourself with free samples of food from all over the world at Borough Market and why pay a lot for high end clothing when you can shop for cheap, timeless, vintage clothing at Camden Market? Despite my stomach appreciating my frequent market visits, my suitcase sure doesn’t. It wouldn’t be a semester in London without spending a fair amount of time at local pubs and bars. It didn’t matter if we were ordering exotic drinks at a cocktail bar during happy hour after a long day of work or sipping cold beer at the countless pubs while watching England make its run for the World Cup on a giant screen, each experience was as enjoyable as the last one. In addition, London boasted some of the most incredible night life I had seen in a city. Nightclubs like Ministry of Sound and Fabric playing rhythmic beats courtesy of world class DJs usually till 6 in the morning. Dance clubs with popular and live music like O’Neills. Even comedy clubs like Top Secret Comedy Club serving drink specials and uproars of laughter. There was never any lack of nightlife to explore for a group of college students in a city as sleepless as London. Whether it was gazing down at the skyline of London from the rooftop bar at Sky Garden, enjoying a picnic at Regents Park, stumbling into free concerts at Trafalgar Square or even marching in the Pride Parade down Piccadilly Circus, there was no shortage of awesome experiences this summer in London has shown me.
Despite being an unpopular opinion, when flying into London the thing I was most excited for was the public transport. This was the first time I had ever lived in a city with a public transport system of this magnitude. The TFL (Transport for London) service included the London Underground tube service, the bus, the National Rail and the London Overground. The convenient thing about all of these services were that they functioned with one form of contactless payment, the Oyster Card. Getting an Oyster Card is as simple as pushing a few buttons on a kiosk and the card functions as a debit card for public transport. It gave users the option to add money or durational travel passes to their Oyster card. This made travel extremely convenient as I didn’t have to be worried about carrying spare change to pay for the bus every time I left the house. London’s traffic and parking can be quite atrocious which is why most people, myself included, make their morning commute via public transport. My commute involved riding the Piccadilly Line for 10 stops followed by a 10-minute walk to get to the hospital I worked at. Luckily for me, I lived by Kings Cross Station, one of London’s largest stations, which meant many underground and over-ground lines, including the Piccadilly, were a hop and a skip away. As someone who can’t drive, I was extremely grateful for London’s efficient transport system. Whether it was getting to work at 8am or even getting home after a night out at 2am, I could count on public transport to be there for me. So much so, that for the entirety of my trip here I have yet to get into a single car be it a taxi or a rideshare such as Uber or Lyft. London transport’s efficiency has negated the need for me to rely on cars and I am confident I will not break my no-car streak for the rest of my time here. |