It would be fair to say that I had a few expectations for this trip to London. Not once, though, did I have a thought that I might find myself on the 1938 to Bedford in order to get to Luton Airport. And yet…

Every time I’ve visited London in the past few years, I’ve been struck by an urge, or a melancholy feeling: I should have lived here. Unlike New York, Chicago, or Los Angeles, I feel like I could cope with the scale of London Village (to be fair, I guess I did cope with LA for half a year, but I was starting to go crazy at that point). There’s so much to do, so much to see, and if you ever got bored on a Saturday, you could just head out and lounge on the lawn in front of the Tate, or see what’s happening at the ICA. They even seem to be getting Mexican right at long last. Well, they seem to be improving, at least.

In lieu of actually living there, then, I did the next best thing: rent out a place from Airbnb in Shoreditch. Home of Doctor Who, Rough Trade, and the greatest concentration of hipsters east of Williamsburg. It didn’t disappoint: Thomas The Tank graffiti, neon outfits, a vintage market full of East German army wear, and a shopping centre constructed from shipping containers. Of course.

Biggest surprise of the trip? Blackfriars is finally open after three years of construction. No longer is there a diversion from the Tate to the South Bank - you can walk along the waterfront all the way back to Waterloo (okay, so you do have to leave the riverside to actually get to the station, but you get the idea). Second biggest surprise would be Tabea flying into Luton on our final night in London en route to Ireland.

So, not only did I get to see Blackfriars open, I even ended up leaving from there on a train to London Luton Airport (hoho), and then a very early trip back to London the next morning in order to see Stacie off at Heathrow. And then came home and went to bed. Let’s not do that again in a hurry.

One thing that did sadden me a little: the encroaching invasion of America. Every time I come back, there’s more seeping in. Abercrombie & Fitch, J. Crew, and now Chipotle. It seems a little wrong for me to complain, seeing as I now live in the US, but I do feel as if parts of our culture are being a little subsumed with all this. I wonder when Asda & Boots will drop the façade and become Wal-Mart and Walgreens.

(insert standard rant about how the history of the 80s computer games world in Britain is vastly different from the US or Japan’s, despite the Internet’s attempt to minimize cultural differences. Also, Transformers UK.)

Anyway, back home now. London is still London. Lots of new buildings, but the South Bank is still reassuringly concrete and alien.