Feeling right at home in a city struggling with the "Mutant Virus"

We can’t visit the UK without actually spending time in London, right?

London, England, United Kingdom

When: December 2020

Where, exactly?: Clapham Junction

Why/how we picked it:

As Eric also had plans to return to the US for Christmas (lucky Americans and their freedom – I couldn’t go back to Singapore without paying an additional $2000 to quarantine in a luxury hotel), basing ourselves in London made sense – he could fly out easily from Heathrow, and I could chill out in the comfort of the city and know that if anything happened to me (say if I got Covid), we know there’s Marie (my secondary school friend who lives in London) I could reach out to.

What we did:

• Buckingham Palace, Victoria Memorial and its surrounding parks

• Piccadilly Street, Burlington Arcade and Piccadilly Circus

• The beautiful Regent Street

• Chinatown (of course, lmao) and Leicester Square

• Covent Garden (it was so crowded that we nicknamed it Covid Garden hehe)

• Trafalgar Square

• Whitehall (street of government buildings, which we walked through and saw some guard changing ceremonies)

• Big Ben – which was covered completely in scaffolding it was so sadddddd

• Walked up and down the Thames River

• …and up to the London Eye

• Borough Market

• Saw the sad London Bridge and the stunning Tower Bridge

• Butler’s Wharf Pier

• Shoreditch (where we snagged ourselves a table without queueing!)

• Bricklane market

• Backyard market

• Spitalfields markets

• St. Paul’s Cathedral

What I did by myself:

• Columbia Road Flower Market

• Sky Garden

• Tower of London

• Tate Modern & Tate Britain

• Millenium Bridge

• Buxton Memorial Fountain

• Westminster Abbey

• Palace of Westminster

• Clapham Common Park

• Battersea Park

• Church of Saint-Magnus the Matyr

• St Dunstan in the East Church Garden

Our favourite part about London:

Eric doesn’t have a POV on this because he didn’t think he spent enough time there. So… here’s just my take: what I liked most about London was how diverse, vibrant and accessible it was to everything! Oh, and we both also really loved Tesco. Yes Tesco, the local supermarket.

Key takeaways

I arrived into the city with little expectations, as Eric didn’t have a good impression of London when he first went a few years back. It would have turned out to be just as nice as I thought IF I had higher expectations! I loved that at every turn you’d find something new. It was bustling even during Covid season (so I can’t imagine what the chaos would be like during normal times) and there was a huge variety of everything! We didn’t get a chance to go to many restaurants, but we did make it to the highly raved Indian restaurant, Dishoom. I definitely liked London a lot more than New York :P

Most of the UK REALLY didn’t give a shit about Covid. From the time we entered in September and stayed in the Cotswolds, till when we finally arrived in London in December, public areas really tried their best to keep as close to a sense of normalcy (as seen as how much we were able to sightsee in the four months we were there despite everything). This really culminated up to Christmas period when the “Mutant Virus” was announced and shit hit the fan – again. Nevertheless I still managed to spend some quality time with Marie. Even though it was freezing outside, we planned a picnic and played board games in a public park, just to hang out safely in an open space.

As scary as the "Mutant Virus" situation sounded (by this point Eric had already left for Christmas in America), I spent so much time just relaxing, chilling, and of course working in the cosy airbnb we booked. Our hosts were a couple stuck in South Africa, which was also fighting another variant of the virus at the time, so I presume they were simply subletting their home in London in the meantime. I loved the apartment's proximity to supermarkets like Marks & Spencer, Waitrose and Tesco.

Despite all the odds, I oddly felt right at home.