Today at Barnes and Noble

While strolling around the store I gravitated toward the bargain books. This aisle is always filled with huge photography books of world famous cities, landmarks, and countries.

I picked up a book on Scotland and flipped through its enormous, heavy pages. As familiar places flickered by, the corners of my mouth would twinge slightly in a pseudo-smile or I would let out a deep sigh of joy and reflection. As I set that book down, another one caught my eye. This one was on London. I’m a sucker. I picked it up.

Why do I love London so much? Beyond the museums, people, pubs, churches, and history, why am I still obsessed with the place? It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense sometimes. I was there for four months. I would rather visit London a second, third, and fourth time before visiting elsewhere first.

London makes me feel like someone. Longmont didn’t necessarily make me feel like a nobody. London put me on the map, not the map of popularity or success, but the map of independence. Perhaps London put me on the map of importance. I felt an incredible sense of pride and joy as I strolled along those streets hardened by hundreds of years of history. History happens in London, it always will. I knew this throughout my soul and mind by the time I had to leave. I was one of 7 million in a city that was one.

London is built up and has no room for expansion. Unlike in the U.S., where there is so much space planners see no need to put things next to each other, in London the planners have no room to build because the place is 1,000 years old. There is a true heart of the city, perhaps a heart more recognizable than the center of any city I have visited in the United States.

As I travel into that heart I am transported to the epicenter of the Western world and modern civilization. At its core London can enlighten the most un-expecting traveler. I wasn’t un-expecting. I knew the city would teach me, but how much? I had no idea.

And in the midst of London teaching me I became enchanted with its architecture, culture, people, beauty, and its transportation system. London has taken a piece of me and I have of it. I want more. Ideally, I want more by going back and living there. For now, I have to take the old-fashioned approach by following London in word, audio, and film, in order to live there because a part of me always will.

*This is not my photo. Don't use it.