First impressions

How does it feel when you miss something that you cannot have? Well, I know that feeling and let me tell you that it’s the worst thing a person can feel (among other kind of feelings that are saddest but here they don’t matter).

When I was about to travel to London I was full of expectations, scared, thrilled, it was my first trip abroad, alone and for an entire month. What if I don’t like the city and I want to go back home? I wondered. What if everything I’ve been dreaming of is nothing but a fake?

I was really scared but I didn’t want to show it to my family and friends because it was, for me, like betraying the biggest present that my parents gave to me. I was full of “what if” questions about the uncertain and, for a person like me, that was really bad.

When I arrived to London the sky was clear and sunny and it was even warm. That was the first different thing from what I was expecting. I imagined myself arriving to a place dark, rainy, like the first scene of Sweeney Todd. But what did I see instead? A blue sky with a shining sun, as if the city was happy to see me.

I met new friends, I walked a lot (more than I did in my whole life), I took pictures, I stayed at a house, I was feeling like a local even though I knew I wasn’t. That was the best, because I actually had the possibility to feel like home in a different city, like starting my life over again.

I travelled, I met more friends, I took even more pictures, I talked with an artist in a gallery, I visited a friend, but the most important thing was that I felt free. I was alone, I was the captain of my time, I did what I wanted to do, I didn’t care so much about how anyone would have plan the trip because that was MY trip. I enjoyed that freedom, because everything depended on me.

And then of course I went to the theatre… You can’t imagine how happy I was, I needed so much the «theatre experience» and in London you have so many things to see that I felt as if I was in Disneyland (well.. they call it Theatreland so I was not so far).

Thanks to my friend Flor I could see Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, I bought a premium ticket to see The Phantom of the Opera, thanks to my bad luck at the lottery of The Book of Mormon I went to see Jersey Boys and let me tell you that I fell in love (but I’ll write about that in another post). Then I saw Once, Billy Elliot (which I didn’t enjoy so much…), We Will Rock You, Wicked and then again Jersey Boys.

I had to leave behind so many musicals that I felt a little bit bad but, you know, musicals are quite expensive (even though they worth every single pound I spent on them) and my budget was small. I did my best and I could have seen The Lion King but I HAD to go back to Jersey Boys.

I can’t explain it, I saw myself at the box office as a crazy girl saying «take my money, I don’t care» (I didn’t say that, of course) but I was bewitched by their charm. I promise I’ll write about all the musicals I saw and I’ll tell you my impressions and why I liked them more or less.

So, in all, London was better than what I was expecting. I absolutely fell in love with the city, with its people, with the fact that I could go shopping without feeling bad about the sizes or the prices. They have a screen where it says when the bus or the underground is going to arrive, you can see it online, they apologize for delays of TWO MINUTES… It’s so different from here that for me it was a paradise!