Dear Child: Here is your London.

Dear Child:
Here is your London.
Proper, polite, spit-spot London.
Funny-hat, mushy-peas, good-dog London.
Loverly, brisk-walk, chin-up London.
If we went there, Mabel and Gus,
Or Buster and Violet,
This is what we would see,
(and we could discuss it over tea).

I don’t think it’s possible for me to adequately put into words why or how much I love London. So much of my time abroad brings back unhappy memories, and yet I can’t help but literally ache for that city.

I remember walking to the bus stop on chilly mornings, the click-clack of my boots on the pavement; my first trip to the nearby grocery store, everything seeming wonderfully bright and fresh and novel; spending one magical afternoon wandering around the Victoria & Albert Museum in awe. I remember sightseeing trips every weekend to Bath, Stonehenge, Windsor, the Isle of Wight; soaring above the Thames in a glass bubble on the London Eye; always forgetting which way to cross the roundabouts.

As you may have seen in some of my tweets over the past week or so, I’m the process of planning a trip to Europe next year with this lovely lady:

(Lisbon, Portugal)

World, meet Steph. Steph and I studied abroad in London together in the spring of 2006. Of my nine flatmates, she was the one who shared my taste in music, and my love for outdoor markets, hand-sewn tote bags, and a clean kitchen. As such, she’s the only one I’ve kept in close contact with over the past two and a half years.

About a year ago, Steph and I were listing everything about London that we missed: Topshop, Fruli, Sainsbury’s, Hyde Park, the number 9 bus, our local pub (the Devonshire Arms, affectionately known as ‘TheDev’), South Kensington, Harrod’s, chocolate biscuits, electric kettles, Camden Market, the Tube, and this crazy club called Strawberry Moons where we used to dance until all hours to Kylie Minogue impersonators.

And we thought too about everything we neglected to do while we were there, like stroll across Abbey Road or visit the British Museum. So we said, why not go back? Revisit our old stomping grounds, relive our favorite experiences, and do all those things we meant to do when we were there before.

And so, after pushing past a few roadblocks and scheduling conflicts, we’re finally in full planning mode to go back to London in late February of 2009 and I couldn’t be more excited. Right now it’s looking like we’ll do a week in London, stay a few days with a friend near Oxford, then head to Paris at the tail end of the trip for a few days before heading home.

I’m actually tingling with anticipation as I write this, but there’s still so much work ahead. So for now, I’m planning and scheming and dreaming and Googling ’til I’m blue in the face (err, fingers).

More to come on this. Stay tuned.