British summers are indeed glorious
Endless blue skies give way to sunny dispositions and endless reasons to seize the day
I’m not even talking about my personal experience right now — I am also living vicariously through many friends’ summer plans. I couldn’t fit everything I wanted to do in the two and a half weeks I was in the UK for the first time. But somehow, through friends’ Instagram stories and their own itineraries to accomplish, summer was ours to conquer and share together.
Our summer was a collection of countryside hikes, day trips to quaint little towns, impromptu concerts that turned into unforgettable nights. There’s no lack of things to do when the city is drenched in the summer sun, and very often those moments become suffused with a certain magic.
I mean, when you impulse-buy tickets to a kickass high-octane rock concert by Haim (at the risk of the tickets being fraudulent) and Taylor Swift makes a surprise appearance, you’ll feel like the luckiest person on earth, no? Only in London.
Even the little moments were something to cherished and appreciated by this recent London initiate. The white-hot heat of the sun saturated the city with light, but the cooler climate tempered the sun’s harshness into something more welcoming. In the tropics, I hid from the feverish intensity of equatorial sunshine. Here, the heat mellowed into radiant benevolence, beckoning me outdoors. (Heatwave notwithstanding, anyway.) That crucial vitamin D was recharging my batteries and giving me a renewed sense of vitality. It helped me sleep so soundly at night too.
Britons are notorious for suffering from seasonal affective disorder and gloomy skies other times of the year, and cholecalciferol-infused drinks on grocery shelves reminded me of that fact. In the summer, things are different. It might also be a result of the pandemic having kept people cooped up for so long, but everyone was so friendly and chatty — strangers asking me what I’ve been up to that day, what my plans were, recommending restaurants to hit up and things to do.
I’ll be honest. I’ve mostly interacted with service personnel outside of friends, but the wide smiles felt genuinely convivial. Policemen and security were so much more polite and helpful compared to what I was used to elsewhere (I’m looking at you, New York). Help in the form of directions were given generously and appended with a “darling” or “my luv” and it made all the difference.
And the flowers — so many flowers. Especially on corner pubs with flower pots bursting with blossoms of all sorts of vibrant hues. The Superbloom display — 20 million wildflower seeds planted at the moat of Tower of London to celebrate the Queen’s Jubilee — was in full bloom when I went, and it was a joyous experience to see all the busy bees taking in their fill. It was also my first encounter with the adorable fuzzy bumble bee.
Even the trees were more nurturing somehow, my husband enthused. Trees of all sorts — oak, maple, and willow, for sure — spread their limbs wide and low. I never really understood why climbing trees were a pastime for children in the stories I heard about until I visited the Kew Royal Botanic Gardens. Trees in the tropics mostly had spindly branches and resembled overgrown shrubs with none of the sturdiness to inspire a sense of adventure. Said branches were usually too high up to reach, racing towards the sun.
I travel to eat. Much to my delight, the stereotype of British food being bland doesn’t ring true — in London, at least. First, let me get potatoes out of the way. Somehow London does it best? I don’t think I’ve had a better chip than in London — they are always crispy, even the large potato chunks that come in your Sunday roast. Even the cheap fast food ones wouldn’t have been anything special if not for the place’s special handling.
I can’t believe I’m waxing poetic about potatoes (thank you for bearing with me, but if you can’t even, I understand). There are London’s numerous markets and food halls too, Spitalfields, Borough, Brick Lane, Harrod’s — that are an overwhelming combination of novelty and flavor, enough to convince me to move to London in a heartbeat if I could. And for sweet tooths like me, London is hard to beat. There’s practically a chocolate shop in every corner, a lot of places in Central London selling pastel de nata, amazing cookies and fudgy brownies and — it’s hard to stop. With the UK being the largest consumer of chocolate in the world, it makes complete sense.
You’ll probably think that I was experiencing London through kaleidoscope technicolor glasses (London is just too interesting for a monochromatic lens, even if it is the rose kind) and I won’t deny it. I mean, again — I’m raving about potatoes here. But my experience wasn’t all sunshine (even if on some days it was way too much sunshine) and wildflowers. That’s for the next post!