My Unsolicited Views

My lovely blog friend Feminist Chick has just returned from a much-deserved holiday in London and Paris. While I am quite jealous of her good fortune at such an opportunity (but much less jealous than I would have been had I not recently had the chance to spend 10 days in Italy, and much less jealous than I would be if I had to go to work today), I am excited to hear her impressions and see pictures. In the mean time, I decided to give my own opinions.

I am, and have been since a child, an Anglophile. I used to watch the BBC and affect an accent. I still sometimes buy loo paper and take the lift and put "u"s in the middle of words like neighbour and favourite. My favorite Monkee is Davy Jones. I majored in English Literature and totally enjoy Shakespeare. All things British appeal to me. Well, except blood pudding. And fox hunting. And those little pre-made packaged triangles of buttered white-bread sandwiches. But otherwise, I love the accents, the countryside, the humour.

The farther north you go, the more rugged and interesting the British Isles become. I chose to study abroad in Aberdeen, because that's about as far north of as I could get (although I did take a bus up to MacDuff and Banff just for kicks. I liked the names and wanted to see that northern coast. Wick was a little too hard to get to--but there's always next time). Scotland had even more appeal than the rest of the U.K. because of the brogue and the kilts and the lochs and the highland cattle. But I'm getting off the subject here: I was going to discuss London.

London is a strange place. The sites (locations....palaces, squares, parks) make for lots of nice sights (views from my eyeballs), but it's a busy, dirty, crowded, expensive place. It's all bustle and bankers and barristers and it's hard to find a nice cafe or spot to relax and watch the town go by. You have to join the crowd and go with it. I mean, in 2000, I saw the Olsen twins outside of Harrods. What on earth was I doing at a department store while on vacation? That doesn't sound like me. I'm definitely not posh enough for Knightsbridge (as made evident by the rich tv-star company), but it was one of those places you somehow end up because you can't find a quiet place to just sit and enjoy (except the Tower of London, which is cool despite the creepy history).

So while I am still a HUGE fan of the U.K., Paris certainly tops London for ambiance. You can spend hours at cafes, eating pan-au-chocolat with your coffee and people-watching. You can stroll and stroll and not run out of unique streets to explore. The food and wine are consistently good. I do have a language issue, since I've never been able to properly pronounce those French vowels or that tricky "r", but even so, I would not hesitate to go back in an instant.

Who am I kidding, though, really? Where in Western Europe would I decline to visit? Nothing comes to mind. Even if I did end up in a second-rate suburb somewhere, I could just hop on a train and easily get wherever I wanted instead (unlike an American suburb, where you would be totally lost without a car. Help me, I'm stuck in Manassas! When's the next train out of Wesley Chapel? Thonotosassa?) I currently have interest in Zurich (starts with a "Z", can't be bad) and Riga (why not visit exotic Latvia?) if anyone is offering free tickets.