You go explore the Kew Gardens one weekend with a friend.

It’s refreshing to get away from the city, the pavement, the smoke.

All around you is green. Trees, flowers, sky.

Total peace and quiet. 

It’s a beautiful day. Not too hot and not too cold. 

Strolling among the grassy fields you nibble at a fresh pastry you bought from a local market. 

You can’t believe it took you this long to come out here. Had you known how beautiful it was, you’d have come here at least a few more times during your stay.

You find an old cottage. A plaque outside tells you of the original owner’s sweet romance. 

Farther into the gardens you find a pagoda, out of place in England, but somehow fitting in this royal retreat. 

A peacock crosses your path like a vision. All the colors in its feathers glistening in the sunlight.

You enter a giant greenhouse and are suddenly transported home. The humidity forces you to shed layers as you walk amongst the palm trees and artificial springs. It’s a jungle, but you feel like your back in Florida.

The next room is misty. Orchids line the glass walls, dripping with sweet dew. They make you think of your father, carefully tending his own collection.

Next door you find yourself in a desert. Hot, dry, and so different than what you just came from. Cacti soar up towards the glass ceiling. Was that a tumble weed?

You favorite room is at the center of the greenhouse. Grass carpets the square space, a small weeping willow in the corner. In the middle, a pond covered with lily pads make you feel like you’re in a Monet. 

You’ve seen this painting a million times at the National Gallery, but it’s different being here.

It’s magical.

//

London is great, but you can’t help feeling homesick. 

You haven’t seen your loved ones for months now.

You miss your father’s cooking.

Your brother’s laugh.

The music in your mom’s car: Juanes, Celia Cruz, Ricky Martin.

Walking down to Trafalgar Square for class in the National Gallery, you stop at a bookshop’s window plastered with posters. 

Among ads for concerts and art shows and lectures on The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction - whatever that is - is an old 1980s travel poster for Florida. 

The cartoon sun warms your heart. 

You miss the sunshine of your home.

The bright citrus and even the smell of the Everglades, both pungent and sweat.

You momentarily forget that you are surrounded by concrete buildings and smoke and people rushing to their destinations instead of blue sky and palm trees. 

You’ll be home soon enough, you tell yourself as you walk away.

 As much as you miss your home, you don’t really want to leave this city just yet.

You haven’t explored every single inch of it.

You’re going to miss having class in some of the greatest museums in the world. The scones your teacher makes your buy every week. The scones your teacher doesn’t make you buy.

The smells

The sights

The art

The people.

//

All this traveling you've been doing while living abroad has made you aware of how much more traveling you want to be doing. 

Walking along the intricate streets of Paris on a spontaneous, solo, weekend trip makes your adrenaline pump. You have never felt so free and scared and joyous at the same time. 

You can’t help but hope that you will run into someone at a Meet-Cute straight out of a movie script, your own Nadja, to give the rest of your time here a bit of romance.

Paris is the city of love, after all.

But no, you’re happy being alone. 

Being able to do all the weird things nobody else would want to do. 

No one to complain when you want to take a second - or third - or fourth - or fifth - tour around the cathedral.

Or wait while you take half an hour to pick out the perfect shotglass for your mother’s collection.

You’re so elated to be here.

You’re not thinking about what will happen when you go back to your new, temporary home, or in a couple months, back to your family and friends and school.

You have no idea that you’ll strike up a conversation with the weird boy who lives across the hall.

That you will be doing all sorts of things with this boy.

That you will meet his family and go on vacation with them.

That you will spend the Fourth of July with him in Miami. On a boat soaking up the sun you haven’t seen in months here in Europe.

You have no idea that you’ll find something to love more than this city you are in right now. 

//

Once the anxiety of being in a strange, new place wears off, you start exploring the city around you. You venture further and further, now purposefully getting yourself lost, hoping to find something breathtaking, knowing that you'll be able to get back home. 

The small winding streets, decorated with flags and the remnants of the Olympic Games that have just ended, lead you around an unknown area. 

Pubs and coffee shops and tiny boutiques all blend together into endless rows of doors and windows. 

You’re in Soho, the “cool” part of the city. Where musicians have gathered for decades to create anthems that will last for generations. Blue Plaques are everywhere to be found. Your favorite song was written inside these walls. Your favorite album cover was photographed on this street. Your favorite band played their first show in this old club.

Although you have never been here before, you have a distant memory of walking through here late at night. A line in an old song, maybe, playing softly in your mind.

This place feels to familiar. You want to find something new. 

You keep walking.

The sound of a crowd draws you around the corner. 

Leicester Square.

It takes you a moment to figure out the pronunciation.

The square is busy. Metal barriers and a red carpet are being set up in front of one of the many theaters. There must be a movie premier happening tonight. 

Other than a few smaller shops, there is nothing much to see. You pick a random direction, and look for a way out. 

At the end of the small street you choose is a burst of color. 

A red and gold archway greets you as you enter a whole new world. 

Suddenly, you are immersed in color and paper lanterns and new smells and a language you don’t speak. You feel like more of a foreigner than you ever did since arriving in the UK. You feel as if you have been transported to Shanghai. 

Everything is in a language you can’t read - and you though Leicester was hard, try speaking Chinese. The only indication that you are still in London are the cheap scarves priced at £1. 

The most delicious smell spills out of a small, open restaurant.

Lunch time!

//

Chinatown from Ed Young on Vimeo.

It's always strange living in a new place. 

The familiar palm trees and suburban homes replaced by rows of Georgian buildings and trendy designer shops. 

People marching to their destinations: work and friends and pubs and places they have established as home while you disorientedly make your way through strange streets back to the flat that will be yours for the next 4 months. 

Every street looks the same. The only thing keeping you sane is the pocket pop-out map your best friend convinced you to buy. How could a quick trip to the grocery store turn into a two hour journey trying to get back to familiarity?

Cigarette smoke and double decker exhaust as thick as the London Fog makes you lightheaded; it will be a month before your nose gets acclimated and stops leaking black smudge. 

Is that the same Starbucks I passed before?

The pavement radiates with the heat of an Indian summer that has Londoners excited and tourists confused. 

You duck into an alley to check your map. You don't want to look like just another tourist. This is your city now too. 

That street looks promising.

You keep going. You can't help but think that despite the frustration and fear there is something special about getting lost among these cobbled streets. 

You love the overwhelming clash between the stone and glass, the new and the old. The people walk through the streets like blood pumping through your veins and the cacophonous city sounds ring through your ears like music. 

It makes the fear worth it. 

Finally, that wonderful red circle, a beacon of hope.

UNDERGROUND

"You can get back easily as long as you find The Tube," they said.

Next stop: Tottenham Court

//