A friend once told me that you can live a thousand lives in London and still not discover every nook and cranny of the place. Sure enough, I was reminded of this a few days ago after a work meeting when we wandered into Shoreditch, a too-cool-for-me neighborhood in East London.
There’s a new, industrial, hole-in-the-wall ad agency around every corner, and boutique shops and coffee houses with patrons that look like they’ve come straight out of Rolling Stone magazine. One minute you see a punk-rock ballerina with blonde hair, pink tank and polka-dot tutu saunter across the street and the next minute a mirror image of Lucille Ball from I Love Lucy walks outside to have a smoke, curlers still in her hair. And every single time I land in this borough I can’t help but feel like I don’t quite belong. Actually, I feel like a fish out of water. But that’s what London is. A city full of surprises.
