I travelled to London from Walsall for the first time in 30 years - the city is overrated
London was an experience that I’ll never forget, but is it for the right reason?
On Thursday (June 4), I travelled to London, ‘The Square Mile’, or ‘The Big Smoke’ as trendy locals call it, and as a 31-year-old man who’s never visited the nation’s capital, I was both shocked and amazed at what I saw.
In this brutally honest review, I’m going to talk about the reasons why I both love and hate the city, and why it left me shocked, confused and also awe-inspired.
I visited the city on Thursday, June 4, to attend Amazon’s ‘Delivering the Future’ expo event.
It would be the first time that I have ever visited the capital, and prior to my visit, I was being constantly hyped up by colleagues, friends, family members and acquaintances; needless to say, I had high hopes.
Ultimately, after returning home to Walsall and having a moment to unwind and reminisce, I wasn’t left feeling very high at all.
The city
The city has tonnes to offer, no one is arguing the wide range of restaurants, attractions, and things to see, because there are plenty of them all around.
The sheer amount of shops to go into, food to eat, and buildings to see is near endless. There was always somewhere to walk, somewhere to go and something to see around every corner.
But does this make it a great city? And does it make it worth visiting more than one?
Using the tube, on my visit I managed to see pretty much all the major landmarks, Buckingham Palace, Kensington Gardens, Chinatown, Camden Market, as well as the Houses of Parliament, Big Ben and the Thames. All within two days.
I even took a trip to the SIS (MI6) building, just to kill time, and what shocked me was that I wasn’t really shocked by any of it at all.
The underground, whilst extremely convenient, was a horror to be in.
It was packed, it smelled of stale sweat and damp clothes (despite being unbearably warm), and above all else, the sheer amount of noise was deafening.
A corporate London
Above ground, the London I saw was extremely corporate.
The tall buildings filling the skyline, hardly a tree in sight outside of the parks, filled me with awe, being that humans could build something to this scale, but also a strange sense of boredom.
The large brutalist grey scale buildings were amazing for the first 10 minutes, but quickly got boring and a bit mind-numbing, in all honesty.
Even the places that were called historic couldn’t escape the feeling of corporatism.
London Bridge and the Tower of London, again, are flagged by businesses and skyscrapers and a lack of anything substantially visually historic.
Even Buckingham Palace, which was originally built in 1703, felt like another business building; in all, it all felt very ‘business’.
People with places to go
What I found quite funny is that even the people who live in the city didn’t really like living in the city. It’s almost like they had become immune to everything around them.
No one was stopping to talk; everyone was rushing about with places to go, and when you did talk to someone, most people didn’t really seem to like being here.
And I know some of you might say “oh but we are Brits, we always moan”, and I get that, but this was genuine and heartfelt boredom with the place they live.
There just seemed to be real ‘love’ for living in the city.
And don’t get me started on the traffic of the absolute lunatics darting in and out of traffic.
It seemed like every pedestrian in London had a death wish. I lost count of the number of near misses that I saw while walking around the city.
Historic London - and its alternatives.
I know it’s wrong to compare, however, my partner and I had recently taken a trip to Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic, and let me tell you, for two ‘historic’ capital cities, it was worlds apart.
Prague was truly awe-inspiring; every building had a very visual history and story you could get lost in, from its Old Town Square to Prague Castle, each step, each paving stone told a story.
London, on the other hand, felt like it had destroyed its own story with the industrial level of corporatism, and instead of feeling encompassed in culture and history, I felt like I was in a big business park.
In conclusion
Ultimately, this isn’t me saying ‘don’t ever visit London’. The city has a lot to offer, and it is absolutely worth a visit at least once in your life.
What I would recommend is to manage your expectations and be prepared to find that London isn’t necessarily the hyper-historic city it appears to be.
Instead, it is a corporate working city, with small bits of history dotted around.
With all that being said, the food was amazing, so there is always that!
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