Taking a Tea Break

Sometimes you just want to eat Chipotle and lie in bed.

Okay, a lot of times.

Travel can be difficult for a homebody. Not that I’m complaining, because I love my experience here more than I can articulate on this blog.

But this weekend, when many of my friends headed to Dublin for St. Patty’s in freezing temperatures to party in the streets for seventy-two straight hours, I was glad to be here, in my mini-home.

Friday was great — sunny enough to feel it on my face and warm enough for me to get by in my thin, trendy European peacoat whilst exploring central London. Saturday, however, was 0 (Celsius) and snowing. Hopefully this’ll be the third and last wave of Fake Spring.

I wanted to go to the big St. Patty’s party/festival/parade at Trafalgar Square, but after vintage shopping in Shoreditch for five hours, toes frozen, that was not going to happen (luckily, I was later informed by friends that it was a bust this year because of the weather anyway).

I felt bad, though. Shouldn’t I be taking advantage of every single opportunity? There were no cute Instagram pictures this weekend, just me walking around in my ugly puffy coat (I might chuck that thing off the London Eye pretty soon) thinking about how I was in a swimsuit last week.

But sometimes, my days spent in the corner of a cozy pub or tea room alone or with friends, sipping Guinness or Earl Gray, are the ones I cherish the most. Everyone here can be so desperate to cram every travel plan into their free weekends that there are no moments to just sit and realize that this experience doesn’t have to be a constant holiday whirlwind. Even London can feel like an enveloping monster, waiting to swallow you up if you don’t. slow. down.

It’s been hard to balance exploration and “down time” without feeling like I’m wasting the precious time I have left here, but I know that without it I wouldn’t enjoy my adventures as much as I could. And I sit here in the library on a Monday night (supposed to be writing a paper), laughing at the fact that study abroad is a whole lot of being overwhelmed at all the new stimuli being thrown your way and the actual schoolwork that comes with the “study” part, and only a little bit of the picture-worthy moments that I’ve curated for you to see.

But that’s most of the fun: those in-between moments of figuring it out and realizing that by choosing to slow down the pace and just eat my fish ’n’ chips or read or take a nap, this city becomes mine. That’s when I’m no longer a tourist, but a cog in this great, big, messy but beautiful machine that is London town.

So tonight I’ll curl up, watch The Crown, and sip my tea.