Notting Hill: Not just a movie

I was as shocked as you are.

How was I to know that the film 'Notting Hill', a charming little love story released in 1999, starring Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts, written by Richard Curtis and directed by Roger Michell was also the name of a neighborhood in London? Gobsmacked, I tell you. I spent last Saturday perambulating the Portobello Road market which I had heard so much about, not realizing that if I, ignorant American, had heard so much about the Saturday market, it should stand to reason that every other person currently visiting London would be there as well. And so it was. At no other time during my 2 months in London have I been in the company of so many Americans, and I am including the times I have been with all the American students here in London. Even more puzzling was how the presence of these Yanks upset me. I haven't been here long enough to be a dyed in the wool Londoner, but tourists always bother me.

My particular method of exploring a city is to blend in as much as possible. I see all the major sights, but since I prefer to travel alone and understated I don't set off any tourist bells. I take photos discretely, and abhor any photos with me in them. I don't quite understand people that need to stamp every portrait of their trip with their visage--of course I was there, I took the picture. I think the picture of me standing in a red phone booth is tacky, and I prefer to remember the things I saw with that precise elegance that attracted me to them. In addition to the obvious sights, I like slightly out of the way things, and in London I am drawn to very small pleasures: four (real) men in suits having a (real) meeting at a kitchen table display in a department store, a bag of American beef jerky entitled "Extreme Dude", pleasant Georgian squares and Victorian houses. British streets have different designs, and in many areas one finds more continental European streets and cafes lying cheek to jowl by an American looking strip mall. I prefer the former, but the latter can offer it's moments of quiet comfort that Woolworths still thrives and I can purchase 12 socks for 4 pounds. Snapping back to the original intent of this paragraph, my excursions lead me to dislike the American method of seeing an area, which is to drag five people in USA hats into the street, take a lot of pictures of the children high-fiving under Tower Bridge or picking the nose of a statue, have a Whopper and go back to the hotel room. How can you really get a feel for an area by seeing only what tourists see? One must enter the tea rooms and the pubs to engage the locals. For example, after having lunch in a cafe in Notting Hill, I walked into a nearby pub to catch the last few minutes of a Chelsea-Tottenham football match. This pub was packed to the gills with Chelsea fans, and all were restless at the missed chances that kept the match locked at 1 apiece. In the 93rd minute, Chelsea's Gallas put a bulge in the old onion bag, and the pub cheered with full-throated joy. It was a wonderful moment to see, and afterwards I spoke with a few of the Chelsea fans, and they were pretty excited to explain their theories on why they love Chelsea but think Mourinho is a git. It was a true English afternoon, and I think the best way to see not just the sights of a city, but to know its character.

Anyway, I'm off to McDonalds. 99 pence menu, I can't compete with that.