Travel Inspiration Archives | In Lieu of Postcards

Mayo, Ireland: Ordinary Heritage, Preserved in a Bog

This June, I had the opportunity to spend nearly three weeks in Ireland – see my previous post on Dublin – always a welcome experience. And because my parents were coming over and meeting us for the trip’s second half, we couldn’t resist returning to County Mayo (in Irish Mhaigh Eo, meaning “plain of the yew trees“), home to ancestors on both my mother and father’s sides of the family.

We stayed in the lovely town of Westport and put together a plan to explore areas we hadn’t on our previous visit 15 years ago, like beautiful Achill Island, the National Museum of Ireland – Country Life in Castlebar, and Céide Fields ancient site. After a few days in Mayo, we would head up to Sligo and Donegal to finish out the trip. Put together, our experiences in Mayo and Sligo prompted me to think more philosophically about this unique stretch of land and my connection to it.

Beach at Achill Island on a gorgeous day.

Land of the Blanket Bog

County Mayo — particularly the western part of the county — is covered extensively in blanket bog. This means the ground is layered with partially decayed vegetation called peat, which has historically been harvested and burned as a source of heat. Mayo’s landscape is not very useful to people trying to survive, and poor topsoil for farming has made this a site of struggle for thousands of years. But the bogland does have some good qualities. For one, peatlands act as carbon sinks, which makes them useful in slowing climate change (however, peat extraction — on the decline but still ongoing in Ireland — counteracts this with large emissions). Squishy to walk on and covered in golden-hued flora, the bogland is also an astounding historical archive: archeologists have found evidence in the bog of early civilizations, even well-preserved human bodies, which tell the story of this land as far back as 5,000 years.

Bogland in Ballycroy National Park, County Mayo

The bogland, it turns out, holds onto things. It holds within it a staggering history, but one which documents simple lives — what those in our contemporary society, lovers of conquest and great wealth and great wars and intellectual innovation — might call mundane. It’s a history of pastures divided up by stacking stones, of basic thatched-roof dwellings, of hard labor on harsh land. It’s a history of small, eccentric traditions. It’s not extraordinary in any way, really, aside from its perseverance.

A poetic description on a signpost in Ballycroy National Park, Mayo

What have we found in the bogs? Stone ruins, animal fossils, tools, books, jewelry, the bodies of young men (human sacrifices dating to the Iron Age — the most exciting bogland happenings you’ll ever hear of), and butter. That’s right — great heaping, towering portions of butter, looking fluffy as marshmallow creme, pulled out of bogs throughout Ireland. Turns out, the Irish have always been good at dairy.

This verse from Seamus Heaney’s poem “Belderg” comes as close as any text to capturing the awesomeness of the bogland:

When he stripped off blanket bog The soft-piled centuries
Fell open like a glib; There were the first plough-marks, The stone-age fields, the tomb Corbelled, turfed and chambered, Floored with dry turf-coomb.
A landscape fossilized, Its stone wall patternings Repeated before our eyes In the stone walls of Mayo.

My Unshakeable Mayo Roots

I know how annoying it is when Americans prattle on about their “Irish heritage” — and yet I too can’t help but give in to the desire to feel connected to my ancestors. My great-grandmother came from a town in Mayo called Crossmolina, a tidy-but-drab burg about which nothing much has ever been said. As far as my parents know, further back most of our ancestors on both sides in fact from this same hardscrabble land — Crossmolina and the more cosmopolitan nearby Ballina. I’m a full three generations removed (and even then only connected by the single thread of my great-grandmother), but I do feel a connection to this land. Is it real, or am I fooling myself? Is there any way to really know?

My great uncle, Father Eugene Devitt, with unidentified relatives in Crossmolina, County Mayo. — My great-uncle, Father Eugene Devitt, with unidentified relatives in Crossmolina, County Mayo.

This feeling of connection could be due to associations from fragmented stories half-told; to daydreams of Ireland conjured in my mind before I even set foot on the island itself. Maybe it stems from those old color slides I’ve seen, taken by my great-uncle the priest (always addressed properly as “Father Devitt,” never “Uncle Gene”), who visited in the 1960s and was invited in for tea by unidentified relatives whom he later photographed, unsmiling, standing in a pasture beside a donkey. (My mother says not to assume they were unhappy; it was rather more likely they were self-conscious about their teeth.)

But in a more metaphysical sense, could it also be the bog itself, that meticulous preservationist, soaking memories and identities into its spongy surface? Holding them intact like great gobs of butter and ginger-haired bogmen, revealing a whiff of them each time a farmer cuts away a new shaft of peat? I wonder too if my grandmother, who never had the chance to visit her own mother’s homeland, might have felt an even stronger pull of some nebulous connection, from a people who shared a similar perspective, perhaps, or gait or countenance or manner, or in fact a similar approach to life and family, work and community.

Céide Fields neolithic site in north Mayo, bogland which contains the oldest and most extensive field systems in the world.

Yeats & the Lure of the Land

Does the land merely preserve the physical — that which can be seen or analyzed? Poets certainly don’t seem to think so, particularly Irish ones, who write about the land like an oracle, keeper of secrets and holder of grudges. Sligo, where I recently spent a few days, is considered the adopted home of the poet W.B. Yeats — a fact of which one is constantly reminded via statues, murals and the tourist-attraction grave of the man himself. Yeats wrote famously of the strong pull he felt toward the Sligo landscape, including the Lake Isle of Innisfree, which to any clear-eyed observer most closely resembles a mound overgrown with brush, inelegantly plunked into modest Lough Gill. “I will arise and go now,” he wrote, off to his personal utopia, a slice of his soul there preserved.

Downtown Crossmolina, County Mayo, Ireland. — Downtown Crossmolina on a Sunday, County Mayo, Ireland.

My Own Ordinary Innisfree

I forgive Yeats his hyperbole, because I get where he’s coming from. Crossmolina, after all, is my Innisfree, my own mediocre island with an otherworldly pull. On our way to (the magnificent and extremely well-run) Céide Fields, my parents, my husband and I stopped in Crossmolina for lunch, walking to the cemetery to look at the gravestones and try to somehow understand by osmosis who our relatives were and if there might be any left. It was our second visit to the sleepy town; 15 years earlier my parents and I had met with a genealogy specialist who said something about great-grandmother Mary Munley who was actually Munnelly, and about some spinster sisters named Quinn who might share some of our genes and donated a statue to the church when they died.

A closed-down Crossmolina business, possibly owned by some relations of mine.

Suffice it to say the findings would remain sparse unless we ponied up some more Euros. But we didn’t, because that’s not what it’s about. People conduct genealogy tests to reveal connections to extraordinary people who did interesting and glamorous things. But in County Mayo, in the bogland, we know what our ancestors did (bog finds detail the more ancient past, while recent civilization is captured in the comprehensive and truly immersive National Museum of Ireland – Country Life). They toiled on the land, farming and raising animals; perhaps someone owned a pub, was a grocer, a tradesmen, or a member of the clergy. They were (mostly) faithful Catholics, attending mass and community gatherings and weddings and funerals, putting on a fine Sunday lunch on occasion for the parish priest. They were ordinary.

A view of Croagh Patrick through a heavy fog, Crossmolina. — A view of Croagh Patrick, Mayo’s mountain pilgrimage site, through a heavy fog in Crossmolina.

I Will Arise and Go Now

And here I am, a woman from a small, Midwestern American town who has always strived to be different, assured that my circumstances didn’t suit me, that I was destined for more excitement, more glamor, a somehow more interesting life.

But the bogland preserves; it records. And here in Mayo, the land tells me otherwise.

So walking along the road to the cemetery in Crossmolina, catching fat raindrops on my nose and running my fingers along stone walls, I think about who I came from, and how they’re in me more than I may think. I can smell it in the ozone, on the contentment that rises in me despite the fact that I’m spending a rainy morning in a cemetery in a boring-ass town with a handful of pubs, a few churches and a library, in a county where it rains cold stinging pellets 280 days per year.

I guess what it is, as it was with Yeats and his god-forsaken overgrown oasis, is a sense of belonging. It’s a feeling of nothing less than identity, I suppose, corny as that sounds: the call of “I will arise and go now,” beckoning from the bog.

“Dublin” on My Heart: In the Drizzly City of Contrasts

My third visit to Dublin began with—of all things—a discussion of the city’s tram system, Luas. Chatting with our taxi driver on our way into the city from the airport, my husband and I recalled the chaotic Luis-related construction we encountered during our most recent visit in 2016. This came as a surprise as we assumed it would be done—way back in 2004 when we were studying at University College Dublin, the project was already beginning operation. So what happened? All told, our driver explained, the project took a turbulent 13 years (it’s finally finished): first city government decided on two separate city centre lines; then they decided to join them; next they realized the tracks were two different sizes and needed to be redone; and eventually the 2010 recession stalled the whole endeavor. Hence the 2017 completion date.

Our new friend from the north side put it like this: “In this city, we prefer to do something wrong the first time, and then spend ages fixing it.”

This little motto seemed even more apt days later, when we stopped in at the National Gallery of Ireland. Upon our last visit to Dublin, the museum was in the midst of a laborious, drawn-out renovation that pushed some of its most celebrated art into storage. But when we returned these three years later hoping to finally see the beautiful (supposedly complete) new wings, we found them shut down once again, for “essential maintenance.” Those Jack Yeats paintings will have to wait until our next visit, I suppose.

Dublin: City of Frustration?

I’ve spent more time in Dublin than perhaps your average tourist—around 7 months or so total—but I can’t claim to know it, of course, like people who live there. And yet the great thing about being a repeat visitor to any destination is the ability to see different sides of it: you observe its changes over time, but you also can’t help but change your own perspective on it. This time, I feel like I’ve I’ve shaken the stars from my eyes a bit and started to see what the locals see—that in some ways, Dublin is a frustrating place.

George's Street, Dublin, Ireland — George’s Street, Dublin

As countless poets, novelists and songwriters have observed over the years, Dublin spends much of its time being gray, drizzly and smelling of exhaust, the traffic is a nightmare and stalled building projects seem to glare from every corner. Like many other 21st-century metropoles, the city of Dublin has a problem with poverty, homelessness and drug addiction, and gentrification and skyrocketing housing costs haven’t helped. Perusing local independent paper the Dublin Inquirer, I read stories on rising noise levels in the city, the housing crisis and other myriad city problems. Being a Dubliner, never easy, seems to be getting even harder. So why do I, why do many of us, love this city so incredibly much?

“Dublin” on Our Hearts

James Joyce allegedly once stated that when he died, they’d find the name “Dublin” written on his heart. It’s a sentiment you’re likely to hear from others who have spent any amount of time in the city, even (perhaps especially) those given to griping over daily annoyances. I think perhaps what makes the city near and dear to so many are in fact its contrasts; this juxtaposition of the frustrating and the inspiring.

There’s the way those gray, rainy mornings can open up into sunshiny, optimistic afternoons—the kind that call post-work crowds to sunbathe on St. Stephen’s Green or congregate chattily in front of pubs with friends and pints in their hands.

And maybe it’s that feeling when you enter Merrion Square, and the shocking green of the vegetation seems to throw the city into technicolor, and its statue of Oscar Wilde, artfully slouching on his rock, half-smiles as if to say not too bad, is it?

Or those times when you enter a crowded, cozy pub, with its snugs and panels of beaten wood, and just when the barman has topped up your Guinness a few generous lads get up and leave you the perfect table.

The Winding Stair Bookshop, Dublin, Ireland

Perhaps also it’s the seemingly endless number of great bookshops to duck into, swearing you’re just going to browse until you encounter the carefully curated tables piled with enchanting works and the shopkeeper from central casting with the owl-eyed glasses (and 100 euro later you stagger out with a stack and a tote bag and a new lease on life).

And it’s noisy, yes, but in such a way that heightens one’s appreciation of the quiet places, like the medieval sanctuary at St. Audeon’s Church, the dignified stacks in the 18th-century Marsh’s Library, the dusky elegance of the Central Hotel’s upstairs Library Bar.

St. Audeon's Church, Dublin, Ireland — St. Audeon’s Church

Library Bar, Dublin, Ireland — Library Bar

Finally then there’s the way the noise seems to fall away on a Grafton Street Sunday morning, when the street’s occasionally tacky cover-song buskers make way for a singer-songwriter with startling talent, and people crowd around and listen as though they were in church.

David Owens on Grafton Street, Dublin, Ireland

Postscript from a Smitten Tourist

There’s a lot I could say to you about Dublin, about the ways I like to walk the city, its hidden charms and jagged edges, the off-the-beaten-path attractions, the food, the pints, the wit and wisdom of its people. But these few points of description really say it all. Dublin is a city of frustration, grit, poverty, occasional violence. But it’s also a city of tender moments, of beauty and softness, of light breaking through heavy clouds and bright colors on Georgian doors, of a group of friends and a song and a pint in your hand on a summer evening.

Ha'Penny Bridge on the River Liffey, Dublin, Ireland — Ha’Penny Bridge on the River Liffey, Dublin

Dublin Recommendations

Books:

Books Upstairs, 17 D’Olier Street, Dublin 2
The Winding Stair Bookshop, 40 Lower Ormond Quay, N. City, Dublin 1
Ulysses Rare Books, 10 Duke Street, Dublin 2
Hodges Figgis, 56-58 Dawson Street, Dublin 2

Pubs:

Library Bar at the Central Hotel, Exchequer Street, Dublin 2 – Go up 1 floor for the bar. This is a great place to have a pint by yourself with a book, though I’d recommend going before 5 p.m. to get a good spot.
The Long Hall, 51 South Great George’s Street, Dublin 2 – Classic Victorian Pub that’s small but always seems to have room for you. It’s faded Dublin elegance at its best.
Palace Bar, 21 Fleet Street, Dublin 2 – Another Victorian bar with a cozy skylit room and outdoor street tables. Midcentury meeting place for journalists from the Irish Times.
Mulligan’s, 8 Poolbeg Street, Dublin 2 – Storied 18th-century pub frequented by James Joyce and Irish poet Seamus Heaney, nicely hidden near Trinity College.
Bruxelles, 8 Harry Street, Dublin 2 – A Dublin institution frequented by musicians and featuring a statue outside of Thin Lizzy’s Phil Lynott, one of Ireland’s biggest rock stars. Go downstairs and you’ll have your choice between a cocktail lounge (the Zodiac Bar) and the Flanders Bar, a pub for aging punks and what Bruxelles’ website calls “rock heads.” I’d highly recommend the latter.
Kehoe’s, 9 Anne Street South, Dublin 2 – Traditional pub that draws large post-work crowds. Stand outside on charming Anne Street for a view of beautiful St. Ann’s Church.
Whelan’s, 25 Wexford Street, Portobello, Dublin 2 – Dublin’s best music venue, with a pub in the front and a club in the back.

On Losing Yourself: Preparing for a Trip Abroad

After a long hiatus, I’m excited to resume my writing about travel! As much as I enjoy writing about travel all times of the year, I’ve gotten out of practice due to work, other creative projects and various life events (including having to unexpectedly move), not to mention the fact that I haven’t done much Traveling with a capital “T.” But my husband is teaching a study abroad course in Italy this summer and attending a conference in Dublin beforehand, with me along for the ride. (He noted that he did not even tell me he applied to such a conference until he received his acceptance because, apparently, I tend to get unduly excited about such prospects.) So I currently find myself, for the first time since my spring semester abroad 15 years ago (yes, I am now OLD), preparing to spend a substantial amount of time (two months) abroad. It’s pretty cool, and I feel incredibly lucky that we (barely) have the money and the flexibility to pull it off. But I do have one small worry: that my anticipation, high expectations and tendency to over-plan juuuuust might be my downfall.

Born to Itinerary

The thing is, I am a great planner. I love planning a trip, something I didn’t realize until I planned my first, our honeymoon to Dublin (where we met) in 2016. I was drunk on the freedom of deciding where we would go and what we would do, thrilled by the ability to put together pieces on how we could get to each place and move smoothly from one thing to the next. The truth is, I was probably born to be a travel agent (but not really, because the idea of dealing regularly with airlines makes my palms sweat). But this tendency doesn’t necessary help one enjoy travel; in fact, it can have the opposite effect. While I strive to take a slower pace and avoid the marathon sightseeing of the stereotypical tourist, I have to admit that the kind of planning I do – writing down in a notebook everything I’d like to do, reading restaurant and coffeeshop reviews and the best hive-mind recommendations – is not exactly a recipe for the more romantic and immersive aspects of travel I claim to love.

The Beauty of Being a Know-Nothing

When I think about the experiences that solidified my love of travel, after all, they were not those that I had written beforehand in a mini-notebook or booked through Trip Advisor. During my semester abroad in Dublin, for example, I pretty much knew nothing about anything, bouncing around to whatever bars and clubs that I heard about from my peers (quite a few of them trendy hell-holes), wandering the streets not knowing where or what the historical, cultural or other tourist attraction were, but rather learning as I came across them. (My brother loves to tell the story about visiting me a few weeks into my study abroad experience and having to point out the Spire of Dublin to me, which I had never noticed despite standing right next to it.)

When I returned to Dublin (and I will again this summer), it was with a mind of correcting that behavior a bit, learning more history and culture and trying to go to “good,” “authentic” and “historical” places. Did I see interesting things and eat good food? Yes, of course. But was it more impactful and enriching than the first experience? Absolutely not. Sometimes to really immerse in a culture, you have to try losing yourself, ignoring that pesky controlling voice within. Sometimes, I suppose, you’ve just got to go to some trendy hell-holes to see the light.

Yet with our two-month European adventure – to Ireland, England, The Netherlands and Italy – just a few days away, I’ve already written way too much in my little notebook (and the impulse remains to write more). The travel agent in my head wonders if it isn’t a good idea to look up a few more London restaurant recommendations, to pour over my Dublin map and find out what route I might take on a meander (yes, I’d still prefer to call it that) through the city. You really should review a map of Venice, it says, despite the fact that I’m not even going there until July, and I’ll have my laptop and phone with me the entire trip.

Thus, I’m attempting to push that little travel agent within aside. Instead of building my anticipation and sheer delight at the thought of the summer ahead (and that delight is a big reason travel planning is such an addiction), I’ve decided to turn my attention to why I really enjoy travel. I’ve written in the past about things I like to do when traveling, the places I love, and why travel is important, but in my cloud of precision-planning, I don’t want to lose my own reasons for travel, its mental and emotional impact.

Focusing on the Why

So, why is it that I like to travel? This may seem like a strange question, as generally in our society long-distance travel, even for work, is something about which we’re expected to be excited. When I happen to share the news that I’m embarking upon a two-month trip to Europe, the standard responses include “That’s so exciting!” “You must be so excited!” “I’m jealous!” etc., etc. I’m sure that, in part, this has to do with my tone and countenance; if I sighed heavily and explained that I *had* to travel all summer because my husband was dragging me all sorts of places, perhaps they’d react differently. (Though they’d probably think I was at best odd and at worst a potentially miserable person.) But what is it about going somewhere with a different culture (even one that’s only slightly different in the grand scheme of things) that feels so thrilling?

Lost and Found

There are many schools of thought on travel, and it’s honestly a subject that’s been written to death by backpacker types on every blog and website imaginable (insert photo here of girl in anorak standing on edge of mountain). Two perspectives seem to come up again and again: 1) that travel helps you find yourself and 2) that it helps you lose yourself. I’ve personally vacillated between these. I think of the times, when I was a kind simple traveling to my grandparents’ house in eastern Pennsylvania from Illinois, how I felt blissful at the opportunity to be away from home, and how it stoked my imagination with dreams of being somebody different. I think of the delight I feel still in being anonymous on a foreign city street, in a market, on a bus or train, willing myself to fall into a new city’s complex choreography. These sensations fit pretty snugly in category two.

But I also think of the more enriching moments of travel, the negotiations and interactions, the attempts to explain myself and to find out about others. I think of the things I’ve seen and the things I’ve learned, and how I must wedge them into my formed conception of the world, how I’ve turned them over in my mind and processed them through my experiences. I think of the experience of a semester abroad, and how what at first felt disappointing and disorienting became a time of personal evolution, of coming of age and developing a sense of myself.

It’s this last thing that really gets to the heart of it. The fact is, travel can be about both losing yourself and finding yourself. If I really dig deep to suss out the appeal of travel, to me, is the way it combines a feeling of hyperawareness of oneself with a sort of forced reset. Thrust yourself into a foreign country, with all its attendant communication issues and challenges, and you’re forced to confront the person you truly are: how you relate to others, how you respond to challenges, what aspects of culture you are drawn to, which ones you misunderstand or fear. You are removed from the familiar surroundings that sometimes obscure these aspects of your identity, and thus they come into sharp relief.

But you lose yourself in some ways, too. Trying to forge relationships with those from other cultures can be challenging; because you lack a cultural shorthand and perhaps also have a language barrier, it can be difficult to show them who you really are. It can be frustrating to compare these encounters to those with friends at home, and wish the people you met abroad could know you in that same way. But isn’t it thrilling to be someone ever-so-slightly different, to figure out how to present yourself in a new context? To navigate new situations like this can make us feel foolish and uninteresting (in Italian my conversation is basically limited to asking a person how they are, and then naming different types of food, clothing and animals) but it also shakes you out of complacency, and forces you to answer for your beliefs and attitude in ways you never have before.

Coping Mechanisms for Losing Yourself

When I’ve led study abroad classes in the past, I’ve at times had to check my frustration when students become absorbed in Instagram during sightseeing expeditions, meals or meetings, or when they ignore the tour guide’s insights in favor of discussions about the minutiae of life back home. Think about where you are! I want to remind them. You may not be here again! And yet, I also realize that these behaviors are not a sign of apathy or disinterest per se: they are in fact a natural response to the unmooring sensation of travel. The students are out of their cultural context – many for the first time – and it can feel alien and dangerous; not only in the sense of physical, walking-down-an-unfamiliar-street-at-night danger, but in the sense of losing the context within which we feel defined and unique. Some of us turn to social media and to banal discussions of fraternity parties to continue to grasp a firm identity, to make sure we still understand ourselves.

And some of us, we plan.

It’s a natural reaction and, whether or not you give in, travel will change you.

I know that this summer will not be as life-changing as a first trip abroad, but I also know that if I let go a little, these two months will have something to teach me. Here’s hoping I can stay committed to write a bit about the amazing places I will visit. Stay tuned!

Feeling London: Wandering in England’s Capital

Walking in the exciting city of London is the perfect way to really experience it in a short time.

London: a city that conjures up a lot of excitement in me, mainly due to years of listening to music, reading books and watching films set in the city. While it’s not the world’s most beautiful, exotic or affordable place, it is one of the most cosmopolitan and exciting. When I had the opportunity to visit in June on the way to see friends in the southwestern English city of Exeter, I seized it. I had been to London twice before but had never been intentional about how I spent my time there. In short, I never felt like I really got a feel for even part of the city, something I was determined to do this time around.

The Two-Day Trip

Strangely enough, my two previous visits to London had also been two days — it’s like some accidental pattern I can’t break. The main reason for this trend, however, is sadly no mystery: I had and continue to have very little money, and London is one of the most expensive cities in the world.

I was 18 when I first traveled to England — by ferry from France, as part of a French class trip. We did the usual — Buckingham Palace, Trafalgar Square, Topshop, and karaoke in a pub, for some reason. I don’t remember much (though I do remember my karaoke selection, Soft Cell’s seminal “Tainted Love”), which is probably because we only really spent a day there, dedicating much of day two to an Oxford-Stratford day trip.

View of the London Eye from Westminster Bridge.

The second time was during my study abroad semester in Ireland, when a friend and I decided to meet in London with another friend studying at University College London. Toward the ends of our semesters and impoverished, my friend and I agreed to share a tiny twin bed in an empty UCL dorm room rather than pay for a hotel. We saw a West End production of When Harry Met Sally starring an aging Luke Perry, spent a day at the Tate Modern, and wandered around pleasantly for the rest of the time. I came away satisfied and happy to have seen friends, but without much understanding of London beyond parks and pints and red phone booths.

Feeling London

This time around I was focused, determined not to waste my two days. My husband and I booked a room at an economical, well-located, and slightly shabby South Kensington establishment called the Cromwell International Hotel, and I set out excitedly to plan my first London trip as a proper adult. My husband was planning some meetings with overseas colleagues, so I would have a good chunk of each day alone to do as I pleased. I perused lists of museums and markets and theatrical performances, but what I was really chasing was a feeling: the feeling of being in London, the city of so much music, literature and film I loved. So I decided to simply do what I like best, which is walk.

Parliament Square, at the end of my walk. — Parliament Square, looking pretty at the end of my walk.

As discussed in my post on the “flâneuse,” the best kind of walking for a traveler like me is wandering solo — I don’t much enjoy an organized tour, no matter how informative. Knowing little about the best ways to wander in London, I looked online for self-guided walks and landed on London for Free’s “Bridges Walk,” a very on-the-beaten path kind of stroll that would take me through the heart of tourist London. While I’m not usually one to go full tourist, I couldn’t resist the misery-gray allure of the Thames. Plus, considering I didn’t feel like I’d really seen London, it seemed a logical place to start.

But First, Records

The original Rough Trade record shop in Notting Hill, which opened in 1976.

Our first morning in London, my husband and I had one thing to check off our list before I embarked upon my walk: a visit to the original Rough Trade Records on Talbot Street in Notting Hill. Ever since I was a teenager, I’ve been obsessed with British music (of which London is undoubtedly the locus), as well as contemporary London novels by the likes of Nick Hornby and Emma Forrest. I longed to finally get a feel for the city of Rob Fleming’s imaginary Championship Vinyl; the city in which Damon Albarn, brokenhearted and detoxing, wrote “Tender,” one of my all-time favorite songs; the home base of so many great bands, some of whom released music on the Rough Trade label in the ’80s and ’90s.

It was surprisingly pleasant and quiet wandering down the famous Portobello Road on a cloudy Tuesday morning (all in all, I found Tuesday and Wednesday to be excellent days for visiting London), and though the neighborhood is now quite pricey, I was easily able to imagine its humble roots as a home to artists and musicians. The shop itself was small, with a lived-in feel and basement full of great vinyl. The only downside was that I had little money to spend and little room in my suitcase. After much deliberation, a vinyl record by the 1970s post-punk band Magazine and a CD by 1980s London indie-poppers the Siddeleys were enough to satisfy me. I parted ways with my husband and hopped on the tube to Tower Bridge.

The Tower Bridge, site #1 on my self-guided walk.

“Drinking Tea with the Taste of the Thames”

This line from Morrissey’s song “Come Back to Camden” always springs to mind when I think of the Thames, an evocative line in an aching ballad about lost love in London. It was time to start my journey along the iconic river, and I popped on my headphones with this song full blast. As a big-time music nerd (I spent five years as a critic for the late indie rock zine Cokemachineglow), I always make playlists for my trips. I made this one extra-long and extra-British, with my all-time favorites the Smiths/Morrissey, Radiohead, Blur; lesser-known bands like the Field Mice, The Clientele and Talulah Gosh; and selections from my mom’s record collection like the Beatles, Kinks, Donovan and the Small Faces (see condensed Spotify version of playlist below). I knew it would be just the company I needed for a magical walk.

I decided to reverse the order of the London for Free walk and begin at the Tower Bridge, ending closer to Soho, where I was to meet my husband in early evening. The walk was clearly designed for an optimal Big Ben photo op in the early day sun, but seeing as the famous landmark was surrounded by scaffolding anyway, I was unconcerned. The day began cloudy, and i was fully prepared for a famous London rain shower. But I was pleased to find the sun coming out as the day wore on. The Tower Bridge, the so-called “most famous bridge in the world” (completed in 1894), cut a striking silhouette against the river.

I proceeded from the Tower Bridge into the morass of office buildings in the Southwark neighborhood. Tourists and Londoners alike rested casually on the steps separating buildings from river. Weaving in between smartly dressed people with briefcases, I felt a stab of jealousy toward the central London office worker, who each day hustles into the heart of one of the world’s most exciting cities, feeling the wind off the Thames, breathing in aromas from the food stalls at Borough Market. Having worked for awhile in Midtown Manhattan, I know that this kind of daily commute can become strenuous and repetitive. But I also know that it takes a lot to quell that internal breathlessness: I’m really here, in the heart of New York City. I’m here in London, at the center of it all.

Borough Market is an oft-recommended lunch stop in London for good reason: it’s a place to find something delicious and filling for less than ten pounds, more often than not less than five. It is one of many showcases for London’s robust population of immigrants, featuring food from countries all over the world. Overwhelmed by the options swimming around me, I stopped at stall with no line advertising “food of the Balkans.” Feeling that this was sufficiently far-flung, I ordered a savory pie (I’m pretty sure it was some variation on a börek) filled with spinach, cheese and artichoke. Sitting on a Thames-facing bench with my Balkan pie, people-watching and eavesdropping, I have to admit I was pretty freaking happy.

The Tate Modern and Half-Hidden Big Ben

Bottles from Brazilian artist Cildo Meireles's 1970 Coca-Cola Project — Brazilian artist Cildo Meireles’s 1970 “Insertions into Ideological Circuits: Coca-Cola Project,” one of my favorite works at the Tate Modern. Meireles printed Coke bottles with political slogans (and Molotov cocktail instructions) and put them into circulation.

After lunch, I crossed Southwark Bridge to catch a glimpse of St. Paul’s cathedral before continuing on my way. My next bridge was Millennium, the pedestrian bridge that opened in the year 2000. I’m always pro-pedestrian bridge, and — despite a general disdain for anything dubbed “Millennium” — I find it to be a pretty lovely structure, with a view of St. Paul’s on one side and the Tate Modern on the other. While I hadn’t planned on visiting the Tate Modern again, I couldn’t resist its pull. It’s one of the best museums in the world after all, and as the façade boasts, it’s completely free.

The Tate Modern: wonderful inside & out.

The Tate Modern grounds are also a prime example of London’s excellent public spaces. On this sunny 65-degree day, many congregated on the museum’s green and benches to chat, picnic or read. Nearby, a man slung a small lasso through a pool of bubble solution, sending clouds of iridescent spheres into the air.

My quite ugly photo of a backlit, be-scaffolded Big Ben. — My proudly ugly photo of a backlit, be-scaffolded Big Ben.

After spending time at the Tate, I crossed Blackfriars’ Bridge, walked west along Temple Gardens and crossed again via Waterloo, threading my way through the thongs at the London Eye — the only place on my walk that felt a little too touristy. I was headed to Westminster Bridge and Big Ben, arguably London’s most iconic spot, which was at this particular time shrouded in scaffolding. I had to laugh to myself when I saw it, and thought of the mixture of disappointment and relief the tourists around me must be feeling — freed from the pressure of snapping the “perfect” photo. The scaffolding brought Big Ben down to earth somehow, stripping away its grandeur to reveal a humble clock tower in need of repair.

Protests at Parliament

Pro-choice protest in Parliament Square.

A protest against violence in Gaza, Parliament Square.

I concluded my walk at Parliament Square, just as the workday was ending and the crowds were flowing into the surrounding tube stations. As I strolled toward Parliament Square Garden, a gathering of protestors caught my eye. Joining the crowd, I listened as speakers from Northern Ireland argued for abortion rights in that country, in light of the Republic of Ireland’s recent decision to repeal the eighth amendment. Northern Ireland now stands alone as the only country in the UK where women do not have access to safe, legal abortion.

The protest concluded and I ambled down Parliament Street, quickly running into another, larger gathering protesting the Israeli occupation of Gaza and the recent military violence against activists at the border. The crowd at this protest was large and incredibly diverse, with native Brits and immigrants alike cheering support for a roster of speakers. I realized I had come to Parliament Square at the right time, as it was a great opportunity to experience activism in London firsthand and learn more about the issues that matter to people here.

End of an Introduction

A pre-dinner pint at the Dog & Duck pub in Soho.

I moved on to meet my husband at the Dog and Duck pub in Soho (a former hangout of George Orwell, it must be noted), and early evening in the city was lively and golden. Garrulous after-work crowds gathered outside of pubs, balancing pints on windowsills and smoking in shirts-and-ties and smart dresses (when in England or Ireland, I always experience jealousy pangs that Americans don’t celebrate happy hour with nearly as much gusto).

Chuffed to be drinking Fuller's at the Dog & Duck — Chuffed to be drinking Fuller’s at the Dog & Duck

Though I was tired and ready to settle in for a pint and some conversation, it was bittersweet to end my day of walking — to turn off my headphones and my meandering thoughts and break from my role as silent observer, passerby, sightseer.

After downing some pints with a friend in the crowded, cozy pub, we concluded our day with dinner at Machiya, a reasonably priced, modern and delicious Japanese restaurant in the neighborhood. I still had another day to go in London, but I finished the first proud of what I had accomplished. Not only did I spend the day exactly as I pleased, wandering with no pressure to accomplish anything besides move from point A to point B; I was intentional about my path, and as present in the moment as I could be. I discovered I now had a feeling for London, at least a very small slice of it. I could trace on a map where I had been and what I had seen there, I could remember what it felt like to weave through the office crowds in Southwark, to roam the Tate Modern lawn with bubbles popping around me, to stand surrounded by protestors outside Parliament.

London is a large and complex city, and I am by no means finished with it. But over one day in early June, we had the chance become ever-so-gently acquainted, to make a tentative connection. And for that, I’m thankful.

My London Wander Playlist

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