I don’t remember the first time I traveled to London, mostly because I was only an infant when my parents first took me. My father used to travel a lot with his business, so we went there frequently, as well as other places in Europe. We continued to go there when I was younger, until our family grew a little bit more and things busied up enough where we didn’t have the time. But we had our fair share of family adventures, most of the time accompanied by our favorite cab driver, Charles. It wasn’t until I was eleven that I ventured there on my own with a student group.
I’d always been prided with being a fairly independent child, but I’ll be honest: I was quite homesick the first couple of days. My group leaders put up with me (thank you a zillion times over to them) and then eventually, it passed. But luckily, most of my homesickness had passed by the time we came to one of my favorite cities in the world: London.
My fascination with London cannot be traced back to any particular reason. But I am in love with it all, even only having journeyed there a handful of times: the history, the architecture, the accents, the culture, the tea, and just everything. You know when you go to a place and you just sink into the atmosphere and feel at home? That’s how I felt when I stepped foot in London, and when I got onto the Tube and rode it like a local. The entire time we were there was a whirlwind. Including one particular day, when the unexpected happened.
The day was July 7th, 2005. I don’t remember what we were supposed to do exactly, other than that we never got around to completing our itinerary for the day. Our group of twenty or more kids piled onto the Tube, heading for another museum. I was already geeking out, because (if I remember correctly) it was a history museum, and I couldn’t wait to see what artifacts we would be viewing. Just days earlier, we saw the crown jewels in the Tower of London and my little anglophile heart couldn’t take it.
Somewhere through the course of the morning, our group leaders received news. Perhaps you already know what I am going to tell you happened that day. It wasn’t just local news. My parents heard, way back in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, and were freaking out.
At around nine in the morning, terrorists detonated three bombs on trains near four different stations: Liverpool Street, King’s Cross St. Pancras, Edgware Road, and Tavistock Square. Luckily, our group was nowhere near those stations during the time of this occurrence, but we rode the Tube just minutes prior. Needless to say, I was freaked out. We were all freaked out. So our group departed the city for safety, heading for Windsor Castle, where we spent the day under blue skies, soaking up the sun, and enjoying the majestic views.
The day’s bombings happened to be the first of a couple bombings in the London area, but it was one of those moments where you remember where you were, what you were doing, and you sit back and realize how lucky you are. Life is so fragile and no matter where you are in the world and what you’re doing, I think we all can agree how blessed we are to wake each morning and simply be alive. To walk among the world, spend time with the people we love, and do even the smallest of tasks that we believe to be mundane. Life is a precious gift and we only get so much time to make an impact.
The rest of the trip–fortunately–went by without any other hiccups. We finished up our time in London and took a ferry headed for France, another destination I have wanted to return to. There, I sunk my toes into the beaches of Normandy, walked along the streets of Paris, gazed at the gold trimmed walls of Versailles, and spent a day at Disneyland Paris. Perhaps, that’s another story I will share with you in the near future…
