A First Visit to London Whetted My Appetite for More

While I don't technically qualify as an anglophile, I have to confess to having long been fascinated with London as a place. After all, this city on the Thames, like Rome before it, was sort of the capitol of much of the world, and I've always wanted to visit it and see what the fascination was.

More than 20 years of travel around the world had taken me near it many times; the closest being a brief port call in Southampton in 1965; but, I didn't get to London itself until over 30 years later.

My first time visiting London was in 1996. My wife and I made a side trip on our way back to the U.S. after living three years in Sierra Leone. I felt it was particularly appropriate, after having lived in a former English colony. I wasn't sure what to expect visiting London for the first time; was it the city of Charles Dickens, the Lonely Planet Guide, the Benny Hill Show, or what? My previous visit to Southampton had confirmed that we Americans and English are indeed two people separated by a common language. That was brought home as soon as we arrived at Heathrow Airport and asked directions to the subway to get to our hotel - no one seemed to know what we were asking until I remembered that Londoners rode a 'tube' underground. Okay, I thought, here we go.

We arrived in London in mid-July 1996, during a heat wave - the hottest the city had been in over a hundred years. English friends in Freetown had warned us that only the most expensive hotels had air conditioning, so we opted for a known brand, Holiday Inn. The Holiday Inn in Mayfair seemed a good choice - it's located near convenient transport, and you can also see a lot of the city on foot from there.

Holiday Inn London - Mayfair

3 Berkeley Street

London W1J8NE England

44-871-9429110

http://www.holidayinn.com/hotels/gb/en/london/lonmf/hoteldetail

The London of Myth and Reality Combine

From the moment we checked into our hotel, we began to experience why London so fascinates people. Thanks to an early flight from Freetown via Amsterdam, we had lots of daylight left, so we decided to spend the first day exploring the city on foot and by double-decker bus. You don't have to be a fan of the royal family to be impressed by the Changing of the Guard ceremony or Windsor Castle. London Bridge, seen first from the top deck of a bus as you approach, and then as you cross, brings back images of Dickens' tales, as does the Tower of London, sites that don't seem much changed from when they were first erected.

The old and new exist in London, as in many European cities, side by side in apparent harmony. An old pub dating from the early 1800s is not that far from Planet Hollywood, for instance.

It's Not Just the City, Either

After you've seen a good part of the city itself, the other thing that makes London interesting, is its proximity to other famous English sites. Day trips from London to Stonehenge and Bath; England's most beautiful Georgian city; can be arranged from as little as $150 per person. Topping off a walk through the ancient Druid monument and a view of the Roman baths that gave the city of Bath its name, with a visit to a local pub for fish and chips washed down with room-temperature ale is highly recommended.

Our 11-hour day trip ended with a great meal in the hotel restaurant, and we fell into bed exhausted, but thoroughly enchanted with our second day in London.

You might surmise from this that two days is all you need to get to know London - banish that thought from your mind. It will only whet your appetite for more, which is what it has done for me. Since my first trip to London in 1996, I've been back about a half-dozen times, and each time, I find something I missed on previous trips.

I'm still not exactly an anglophile, but London comes very close to edging me in that direction. Dickens was on to something, that's for sure.