A weekend in London

So I spent the weekend in London and it was fairly amazing. I'll leave out the extra curricula activities and focus my planner's brain observations. The first one is that I can finally agree that the North and its people are much more friendly! In some parts of London I felt like I could be getting mugged and people would just keep walking, this made finding our way around a but of a nightmare. I felt like it was best to always know where we were going before leaving because asking directions from anyone seemed like a seriously risky move.
 
One thing I did love was the public transport system, it seemed to run almost 24/7 and at least every 8 minutes. I was also amazed that it didn't matter that it was a Sunday, trains, busses and the tube still ran constantly, unlike Australia when public transport is impossibly difficult on a Sunday.
 
Unfortunately London was also very dirty, everyone that has been there before me did say this but its hard to picture a city as 'dirty', but it was. The whole experience made me re-evaluate my views of home, both Australia as a country and Bendigo as a place to live. I found myself wondering how people live with such little space - their homes, gardens, most things are cramped and overcrowded and this made me appreciate the space we have, even my one bedroom flat seems spacious compared to some places in London. The other thing was class, there seems to be a big gap between lower and middle class in the city. we stayed in an area called Elephant and Castle and I couldn't tell what kind of area it was. Every where seemed to have large concrete pubic housing blocks juxtaposition against privately owned or rented town houses that were quaint and looked really nice.
 
We are off to Leeds and York tomorrow and we've been told (mostly by Emma) how nice York is so I'm excited to see what experience that brings!
- Alexandra Jefferies (Bachelor of Arts)