London for me is like the cave of Alì Baba, a place rich in priceless treasures, a place that leaves me with shimmering eyes and wide open mouth every time I return home, the city that always has something new to make me discover every time I visit it.
This time again London did not disappoint me, indeed, it enchanted me like never before. It will be that this time I visited it in solitude, letting myself be guided by instinct and my interests, letting my legs give rhythm and heart and eyes take their time to internalize everything.
I discovered some little-known places in London, places I had heard of but to which I had never dedicated time during the previous raids in the city, small treasures that when you are in the English capital for the first time and you have a few days to get to know it, you tend to leave aside in favor of the great - and not to be missed - classics.
Here are the five wonderful places that added a pinch of news and amazement to my last trip to London.
Little Venice
Little Venice is a happy island of London, a kind of secret garden located a short walk from Paddington, one of the busiest stations in the city. At Little Venice I lost the knowledge of time walking along its canals, photographing the houseboats that are reflected on the water and the colours of an almost past autumn.
I imagined myself living among those canals in my colourful houseboat, with the lettering peeled out of moisture, the seedlings growing up in their pots, the bicycle parked on the roof of the houseboat.
I spyed through the windows looking for shreds of life, to understand who and how he decided to live in the heart of London and yet so far from it.
I lost hours riding along a channel that seemed to never end up looking for new details, colors and reflections and I fell in love with my heart town a little more.
Have you ever slept in a houseboat? I have, yes in Amsterdam!
Kyoto Gardens in Holland Park
Of parks is full London, some are really vast, almost everyone has a little treasure to unveil. Holland Park's Japanese gardens are now famous, close to Notting Hill, its tidy houses and colourful arcades, yet I had never seen them before.
Between dry leaves, trees still dressed in autumn and curious and fearless squirrels I made my way through the meadows of Holland Park looking for Kyoto Gardens. After crossing the entrance I was teleported into a Japanese zen oasis with colorful trees and a lake full of multicoloured carp.
I stopped to look at the children accompanied by mothers and nannies seated on the edge of the catwalk, happy while watching the silent fish gliding under them waiting for some crumbs, the old boys resting on the benches and squirrels laborious laborious and from the movements beashes.
Queen Mary's Garden in Regent's Park
That's why I love nature is understood, and that's why I love London so much: it knows how to combine the chaos of the cosmopolitan city with the peace of thickets and silent meadows.
Even in Regent's Park I also discovered a little unexpected treasure, Queen Mary's Garden, gardens covered with rosebeds: the largest collection of roses in the city. 12,000 roses in 85 different varieties.
Visiting it in the peak flowering season must be spectacular since the roses made their beautiful figure even at the beginning of November.
Brompton Cemetry
I discovered the magnificent sects of London, the Victorian cemeteries of the city, thanks to Roberta who talked about it on this blog and I was struck and intrigued by it. For the Catholic culture that associates the cemetery exclusively with a thought of death and sadness walking among the tombs as if you were in a park crossing mothers with their children in the wheelchairs, people who take the dog for a walk and runners jogging, it is very strange. But here it seems to be normal.
Brompton like the other cemeteries of his time is located a little outside the heart of the city but always in the 1-2 metre zone. By now, no more people have been buried here for some time and the cemetery has become a real public park where the paths are flanked by unexpected stone tombs. An image that clashes in my head but that doesn't seem to be anything strange here.
In some places of Brompton Cemetery the tombs are very many, crowded one on top of the other as if there had been a need to make us stand as many corpses as possible, the black ravens graze on the trees and perch on the tombstones while the squirrels with their thick tails chase each other in the lawn and then on, on the trunks of the trees.
Highgate Cemetery
Highgate is a cemetery located even further outside London, in the small district of Highgate on a hillside, just a short walk from Parliament Hill. The tombs are immersed in a forest of edere and dark green trees, nature seems to want to prevail over life (or death) by swallowing gravestones, crosses and inscriptions of love left by loved ones.
A mystery aura envelops this cemetery, especially if you walk through the tombs far from the marked path: creaks, small animals that move stealthily and screams and voices of children who actually come from the courtyard of the nearby school but who also do a goose skin effect if heard in that context.
The cemetery is divided into two parts, one of which is open to the public for a fee during the day, the other can only be visited with a guide by appointment: if you have in mind of going to the hill among the resting souls of Highgate I recommend you to book your visit.
Who knows which other little-known places in London I will discover at the next visit, do you know someone else who would suggest to me? Have you already visited them or are they intriguing?
I'm curious to get to know London better and to let myself be captivated by its timeless charm.