Back to the U.K.

         No, I’m not talking about Harry and Meghan, bless their hearts.  Rather, I scheduled a U.K. two-fer this year – Scotland/Northumberland in July.  And next, London with a side-trip to Bath. Regular readers know that the Scotland trip was all about cycling with The Hubs, but this upcoming trip is a solo-ish, extended, non-cycling adventure.  Which is to say that I signed up for another long-ish stay with The Good Life Abroad (TGLA).

Last year’s TGLA trip was a month in Florence, which I lengthened on the front end with a few days each in Lucca and Porto Venere. The glow from that trip continues to shimmer.  It really was the experience of a lifetime that I’ll treasure always. I have visions of another extended stay in that area on my own sometime, but in the meantime, I impulsively booked with TGLA for a shorter stay (2 weeks) in London. I’ve added a few days on the front end in Bath, where I’ll recover from jet lag while I ‘get my Jane Austen on.’

I’m confident it will be great, but it will surely be different. London, unlike Florence, is a metropolis.  And, although TGLA’s claim to fame is to “live like a local,” the accommodations for this trip are in an “apart-hotel.”  That’s an apartment-type unit inside a hotel-like building. It’s got a bar and common space on the ground floor, and a gym room somewhere, all of which I’ll appreciate. But I can’t convince myself it’ll be “living like a local.” 

Also: it seems like two weeks in one place would be plenty.  But I can already tell it’s going to fly by; I’ve booked tickets to a variety of activities and, between those and the TGLA events, my schedule is nearly full already. Nevertheless, I look forward to lots of walking as I explore various neighborhoods and markets.  I’ve got a list.

        I arrive in the U.K. on September 23. As always, I hope to post observations you might not find elsewhere.  I hope you’ll check back and see.

 

Here's the B&B where I stayed the last time I was in London, which I think was 2002?  The grandma pink room. Actually, this is south of London near the Southlands tube station, one station north of Wimbledon.