Saying goodbye for now: Letters from London girls are coming home

As the autumn leaves in London fade to winter’s chill (ouch, too soon), so too does our time here draw to a close.

It’s hard to believe that in just a few weeks, the streets of the city we’ve called home will be replaced with memories and photo albums. The final stretch has arrived, and with it, a mad dash to check off those lingering bucket list items – we’re making good progress, by the way!

This week also marks the final installment of this column from London. Writing these reflections has been a journey: capturing the joys, the mishaps and the occasional bout of dread that comes with living abroad.

As promised a few weeks ago, we’re peeling back the layers of London to uncover its hidden gems. Sure, Big Ben and the Eye get all the glory, but what about the things that the tourists don’t run to?

But first, our weekend recaps need to make one final appearance: first up is Summer and a weekend in Norway.

Oslo in a weekend? Challenge accepted. On my quick trip to Norway I hiked through landscapes that were so scenic they didn’t feel real, sweated all my worries away in a floating sauna, and then immediately regretted my choices by plunging into the icy North Sea (It was 36 degrees). The ferry ride to Island-hope was the perfect calm, but this trip wasn’t just about adventure- it was about family roots.

With family ties to Norway, the experience felt like a quick yet meaningful reconnection with my heritage (and a reminder of why my ancestors might have left the cold). The weekend was filled with fun and tranquility and quite honestly left me wondering how soon I could be back.

Next is Kayla and a day trip to Bath, England:

Anyone who knows me knows that author Jane Austen is a big deal to me. Six novels of rural regency England drama and romance with empowered female protagonists and emotionally intelligent male love interests (groundbreaking stuff, I know). And if you’re not a reader, you can enjoy one of 20 different film and TV adaptations based on her stuff – Colin Firth is in more than one of them, what more could you want?

Jane lived in Bath, the cutest town I’ve seen in England thus far, for 5 years of her life. It’s home to the Jane Austen Centre (with a gift shop that, you guessed it, I completely wiped out of stock) and a ton of other great Austen fan landmarks.

The ancient Roman Baths were also an incredible tour that you can’t miss, with a massive pool of water in the center that would make you very sick if you touched it – not an activity for the clumsy and uncoordinated. You can drink water from the ancient spring (treated and cleaned, by the way) at the end of it, but I’m not sure how much I recommend that. It was still warm from the spring and tasted as old as it is…ick. But otherwise, incredible scenery and history – took a top three trip spot for me easily!

Now back to your regularly scheduled programming…our hidden gems of London! Full disclosure – we aren’t entirely sure just how “hidden” these picks are – in a heavily populated city like London in the age of viral social media posts things get tourist-y pretty quickly. So, take this for what it’s worth: our favorite spots that we don’t feel overly swarmed by first-time visitors in. We like what we like, deal with it.

Admittedly you may have seen this location floating around social media, but it’s a favorite for us so we needed to include it: Sky Garden. This is London’s highest public garden, perched on the top of a 35-story building in the heart of London. This gives you 360-degree views of the city and is a better lookout point than the London Eye – plus it’s free to enter! We recommend grabbing a reservation for one of the bars or restaurants in the building, especially on that top floor – the vibes are great and there’s live music and DJs at night.

London’s food scene is a treasure trove of hidden delights if you know where to look (and if you are willing to elbow past the crowds at various food markets). Take one of Summer’s favorites, The Secret Sandwich Shop in Notting Hill, for example. A tiny spot tucked away in a street of seemingly mundane buildings, serving sandwiches so good they could make even a French baguette-snob weep. Summer stumbled upon this place while exploring Notting Hill when her family was visiting and claims it was one of the best sandwiches she’d ever eaten in her life.

Kayla’s personal favorite food spot is Pastaio in Soho. This place was found by complete accident when she was up in the London Eye and wanted a good pasta place for dinner (like she does every night) without shelling out a ton of money – and this one hits the mark. Every dish on the menu is consistently good so you can’t go wrong, and she’s ordered the fresh focaccia bread and pistachio affogato every single time. Every single friend and family member who visited her has made an appearance here, and at this point she’s on a first-name basis with multiple employees.

Then there’s The Tattersall Castle, a floating pub on the Thames where you can sip a pint with views of the London Eye. Along with drinks and great views there is also a small food menu with many London classics to try. On Fridays and Saturdays there is a (free) live DJ concert that plays music from 9pm-2am. Who needs Michelin stars when your meal and entertainment come with a side of river breeze?

No Kayla and Summer food guide would be complete without mentioning our beloved Megan’s. £5 drink Happy Hour is from 4-7pm and from 9 pm onwards and the Mediterranean food here is so incredibly good. It’s a chain so there’s tons of locations all across London which makes it super accessible, but we frequent the one on Kensington HighStreet, where they leave plenty of space for walk-ins, so we’ve never needed a reservation.

Shopping time! This one made an appearance on Kayla’s Tik Tok page so you may have seen it: The Poetry Pharmacy. This is a mini bookstore and cafe above the Lush store on Oxford Street of all places, and they sell bottles full of fake “pills” to cure your ailments – which are just a handful of poems rolled up into pill capsules. Each bottle has a theme which the poems inside are based on: Love, Grief, Chill Pills (Kayla’s favorite) to name a few. In a special side cabinet are what Kayla calls the “Evil Ones”, with bottles that say Revenge or Death or Shakespearean Curses – if you’re feeling a little melodramatic.

Cecil Court is a pedestrian street close to Leicester Square that is straight from the 17th century and lined with antique stores and secondhand bookshops. For the art enthusiasts and the secondhand shop fanatics, this is one to hit – each independent store adds its own unique feel. The history should be a draw as well, it’s got an incredibly rich past that you can read about on their website, and overall, it’s a nice break from the typical chain stores in Covent Garden down the road.

We also found that even entire neighborhoods of London can be off the beaten path for us when we’re feeling overwhelmed by Central London. While most people associate Canary Wharf with suits, stock prices and the kind of coffee that costs more than your monthly rent, there’s a side to this business hub that is often overlooked. Tucked away amidst the city chaos is a surprising blend of art, culture, green spaces and waterfront views.

If you are into shopping (like you know we are) the mall here offers a mix of high-end retailers and cute boutiques, with an added bonus: fewer tourists than Oxford Street. It’s getting steadily busier, but it’s still less crowded than Westminster – win!

Speaking of Canary Wharf, we had to throw an experience-based activity in here – Fair game is a funfair for adults where you can be a kid again. You can team up with friends to play typical fairground games while you get seriously good street food and drinks. It feels less like a childhood birthday party and more like a good nostalgic time with friends.

Reluctantly, this brings us to the end of our list because otherwise we’d be rambling on forever. London is a very big city with a thousand things to do (clearly). This isn’t even close to all the incredible spots we’ve found in our four months here, but these are the ones that are top of mind for us in our slightly fried and almost-done-with-the-semester mental state.

We’re hoping that we find even more additions to this list in the last three weeks that you’ll unfortunately miss out on hearing about. Chase us down on campus in the spring and we can tell you all about them (and by the way, if you’ve been to London and have something in mind that we cannot miss before we leave…our emails are above).

With that, our positions as study abroad columnists have come to an end. We hope you’ve experienced even half of the entertainment that we have gotten out of this, and we appreciate you because you’ve given us an excuse to keep a little weekly diary of our time here abroad to show our grandkids when we’re old.

We’re looking forward to making our epic return to The Record newsroom next semester, so please, don’t worry, you haven’t seen the last of us.

We wish you the best finals week you can possibly have in advance and hope you’ve enjoyed coming along with us to another country. Study abroad! It changes your life. With prayers that our non-stop Delta flight home doesn’t get canceled, changed or delayed, this is Kayla and Summer signing off.