After my last trip to London – and the fail of the trip home – we went with more of an agenda this time. Not only were we going for a photography exhibition that I was desperate to see, but we were also there for ten hours, so there was a lot of time to just mooch around and see more of London. Plus, we caught the train rather than the coach, so that cut out two hours of travelling too.
We arrived in Paddington in the morning, and – as the exhibition didn’t open until midday – decided to head towards St James’ Park. Rather than take the tube we decided to walk – save a bit of money and see more of the city. We never made it to the park, we got distracted by Big Ben and the Thames.
The exhibition was amazing. It was Levison Wood’s photography from his travels, held at the Leica Gallery, and, although it’s a small venue, the photos were really touching – if you haven’t heard of or seen Levison Wood, he’s definitely worth looking up. He creates travel documentaries that go to places you wouldn’t usually see, like war zones and places deemed to be too dangerous for travel, but also meets the people behind them.
After the exhibition, we decided that we wanted to go to another book shop where he’d been signing copies of his book – it’s also a travel book shop, and after watching Notting Hill how can you not take the opportunity to visit a travel book shop?
The bookshop is Stanford’s, and it’s my new happy place. It’s two storeys of travel related books – fiction and non-fiction – and they always host events with related authors, so you can sometimes pick up a signed copy of books there too. I managed to get the photographic book from the exhibition that had been signed (the link copy isn’t signed) – which has now been smuggled away by my mum until Christmas. I also left with a copy of The Kindness of Strangers, which is short stories.
After that we walked around the city – 24,000 steps in total by the end of the day – and just looked at the sites we came across. We ended up in Soho, China Town – as I always do – and Camden Market.
We headed back to Paddington two hours before our train was due to leave, just to give us enough time to grab some dinner on the right side of London – I’d learnt my lesson last time. We kept it simple and went to Garfunkels for dinner.
I think I’m done with trips to London for a while now, but I’ll definitely be returning to Stanford’s and keeping an eye out for any future Leica Gallery exhibitions. What do you go to London for?
xx
