{"id":1280,"date":"2009-07-13T18:04:41","date_gmt":"2009-07-13T18:04:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/2009\/07\/13\/that-old-rascal-samuel-johnson-told-us-that-when-we-were-tired-of-london-wed-be-tired-of-life-i-know-its-summer-when-any-c\/"},"modified":"2014-03-16T03:03:22","modified_gmt":"2014-03-16T03:03:22","slug":"that-old-rascal-samuel-johnson-told-us-that-when-we-were-tired-of-london-wed-be-tired-of-life-i-know-its-summer-when-any-c","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/2009\/07\/13\/that-old-rascal-samuel-johnson-told-us-that-when-we-were-tired-of-london-wed-be-tired-of-life-i-know-its-summer-when-any-c\/","title":{"rendered":"London Bridges, Kids, and Ferris Wheels"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Waterlloo<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

\nThat old rascal\u00a0Samuel Johnson<\/a>\u00a0told us that when we were\u00a0tired of London, we’d be tired of life<\/a>. \u00a0I know it’s summer when any city is inviting but this week is cool and bright and breezy and London is full of British school groups and kids from everywhere else too, and we have an apartment right in the middle of Covent Garden (well NOT the market, God forbid, just the neighborhood) and our older son and his new wife are only 40 minutes away and we have friends here, too. \u00a0So how could we be tired?
\nWhat you see here is the view from\u00a0Waterloo Bridge\u00a0<\/a>(and yes that’s St. Paul’s Cathedral in the background.) \u00a0This morning I went out and walked all along the\u00a0Embankment<\/a>, over where the trees are, then crossed a bridge just out of view on the right and returned via\u00a0South Bank<\/a>, London’s wonderful (relatively) new arts and museum area. \u00a0My entire walk was around three miles and I’m realizing that it’s much easier to do the walking when there are new things to look at, not just the old neighborhood or, as lovely as it is, Rock Creek Park.<\/p>\n

\n\"Kids<\/span><\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

The wonder of a great city is that it’s always changing, that even the most trivial journey is full of surprises. \u00a0On my way home tonight I came across a group of teenagers – one of dozens of g\u00a0The wonder of a great city is that it’s always changing, that even the most trivial journey is full of surprises. \u00a0On my way home tonight I came across a group of teenagers – one of dozens of groups we’ve been seeing ever since we got here. \u00a0The reason they’re all sitting on the sidewalk is that they’re exchanging addresses and spelling them out – different nationalities, different spelling. \u00a0Kind of an EU photo.<\/p>\n

Of course there’s lots else going on here. \u00a0Huge waves of immigration, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, what looks to me to be an appalling amount of youthful alcohol\u00a0consumption and unemployment all take their toll. \u00a0There’s something about the place despite those issues though. \u00a0The day after the\u00a02005 subway bombing\u00a0<\/a>that killed 52 people, Londoners got back on the train and went to\u00a0work. \u00a0They did that all during the Blitz as much of the rest of the world watched them face down Hitler almost alone.<\/p>\n

\n\"London<\/a><\/p>\n

Cities are supposed to change. \u00a0That’s what makes them exciting. \u00a0Even so, London has seen more than its share: waves of immigration that have transformed it, an early history of wars and fires and plagues, contemporary royal scandals and of course the “troubles” between Belfast and the rest of Ireland and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. \u00a0 After all, who would have believed before it arrived to help celebrate the Millennium, that there would be a ferris wheel right in the center of town? \u00a0They call it the\u00a0London Eye\u00a0<\/a>to make it sound fancy but it’s still a ferris wheel, here in same town that has a real live queen living in a real live palace? \u00a0It’s pretty amazing.<\/p>\n

\nI’m thinking\u00a0that while we’re here I can try to get past some of what I’ve written here and learn a bit of what it’s like to truly\u00a0li
\nve\u00a0here. \u00a0It’s got to be different from wandering around with no need to be on time or face the traffic or crowded mass transit and infinite numbers of tourists and, incidentally, deal with what appears to be an enormous amount of alcohol consumption – especially by men. \u00a0I’m hoping to keep you posted as I make my way. \u00a0I hope you’ll come along.<\/p><\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

That old rascal\u00a0Samuel Johnson\u00a0told us that when we were\u00a0tired of London, we’d be tired of life. \u00a0I know it’s summer when any city is inviting but this week is cool and bright and breezy and London is full of British school groups and kids from everywhere else too, and we have an apartment right in … Continue reading London Bridges, Kids, and Ferris Wheels<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6,27,7,78],"tags":[533,438,302,531,304,3419,532,530],"class_list":["post-1280","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-culture","category-current-affairs","category-life","category-travel","tag-cities","tag-london","tag-london-eye","tag-samuel-johnson","tag-south-bank","tag-travel","tag-urban-change","tag-victoria-embankment"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4gBq8-kE","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1280"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1280\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1955,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1280\/revisions\/1955"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiasamuels.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}