Cactus Language Blog

Cactus Opinion: London (by Laura Harrison)

Posted by Sarah under Cactus Languages Abroad, Cactus Staff Opinion, English, Language Courses UK

Laura Harrison of Cactus TEFL gives us her thoughts on London

To a self-confessed country bumpkin like me, London had always seemed like a gigantic, alien and scary place. This image was no doubt exacerbated by schoolyard tales of city-dwelling elder siblings, whose witnessing of stabbings on the tube trains and muggings in the park had been passed down the ranks as village gossip. London, although only 50 minutes by train from where I lived, seemed a million miles away in lots of ways.

To this day, our capital is still somewhat bewildering to me, but adulthood and travels around the globe have at least helped dispel the notion that body armour and pepper spray are an essential…in most boroughs anyway!

Aside from primary school trips to the Houses of Parliament and Madame Tussauds, when transport is by coach and with such a lack of any geographical awareness, you could be anywhere within the English-speaking world, my first proper trip to London coincided with one of London’s biggest events, Pride. Turning the street to a mass vision of flesh and PVC, my naive, teenage eyes were on stalks- this was not the kind of thing that happened where I lived…

Once the shock had subsided, we did manage to successfully (and proudly) master the underground, and visit a good number of the city’s tourist sites. This was the point when London became a more human place, and when I realised that it is just a city like any other…but a particularly interesting, historical and diverse one nevertheless.

London is often labeled as expensive and crowded, and Londoners as rude and haughty, but with such magnificent and iconic places as Buckingham Palace, the Tower of London and even, dare I say it, the Gherkin, how can this place fail to impress? You might pay £4.00 for a pint, and be squinted at suspiciously if you attempt to greet a stranger on the underground, but London has a vibe about it that is undeniably infectious- the appetite that Brits and foreigners alike seem to have for this place is quite simply insatiable.

Tags:English, london