{"id":2555,"date":"2015-09-28T18:19:07","date_gmt":"2015-09-28T22:19:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/social.rollins.edu\/wpsites\/letters\/?p=2555"},"modified":"2019-07-24T17:00:04","modified_gmt":"2019-07-24T17:00:04","slug":"down-the-rabbit-hole","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/2015\/09\/28\/down-the-rabbit-hole\/","title":{"rendered":"Down the Rabbit Hole"},"content":{"rendered":"

London, with its magical Underground that whisks you off from station\u00a0to station, is more akin to a microcosm than just a city. Considering that a third of its 8.5 million population was born overseas, the city represents a merging of languages, cultures, cuisines, and arts that has no parallel within the country, and very few in the world.<\/p>\n

Simply emerging from a newly-discovered tube station (sometimes quite unintentionally), is discovering \u00a0an entirely different London – was it built by the Romans, \u00a0in Medieval times, during the Regency, or is it a newly constructed skyscraper? Who inhabits the neighbourhood and what have they contributed – the intellectuals, the fashionable, the alternatives, or the elites? What smells waft from restaurant fronts – the spice of chicken tikka masala or freshly-fried fish and chips?<\/p>\n

Even though the previous paragraphs plays on some of the conventional London tropes, the city is truly as multicultural as it comes. Multicultural not only in the sense of a merging peoples all over the world, but an encounter of ideas and identities that live harmoniously – like side-by-side shops on Brick Lane.<\/p>\n

To best take advantage of this city, I highly suggest doing what my friends and I seem to be best at – getting lost on the Tube. Two weeks \u00a0ago, for my birthday, one of my close friends attempted to retrace her steps in Piccadilly Circus, in order to find my favorite Turkish delight. Long story short, she got hopelessly lost – Picadilly Circus is as massive as Times Square and just as difficult to manage.<\/p>\n

However, instead of finding Turkish delight, she came across London Fashion Week. The following day, we returned to SoHo (where she had ended up) and witnessed models, fashion bloggers, and socialites making their way to the biggest fashion event of the season.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
London Fashion Week<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

To reinforce this “getting lost and rolling with it” concept, I also present Exhibit B. Last weekend we set out to explore Covent Gardens, an area that is relatively close to our house and (in our opinion) a convenient adventure for a Sunday afternoon. Unfortunately, we were quite unaware that Covent Garden station is closed on weekends (for reasons unknown, as often happens). Instead, we got off at the following station – Leicester Square – and resolved\u00a0to take the first possible right and see what happened.<\/p>\n

This decision led us straight to the heart of Chinatown, and possibly some of the best dim sum I have ever had in my life.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
Lanterns in Leicester Square<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It’s safe to say that you don’t really need to leave London to find adventure, regardless of the typical study abroad experience. Forget RyanAir, sometimes the Tube is all you need.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

London, with its magical Underground that whisks you off from station\u00a0to station, is more akin to a microcosm than just a city. Considering that a third of its 8.5 million population was born overseas, the city represents a merging of languages, cultures, cuisines, and arts that has no parallel within the country, and very few…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":536,"featured_media":2560,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[110,143,229,313,324,335],"class_list":["post-2555","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-capa","tag-capa","tag-england","tag-london","tag-study-abroad","tag-the-underground","tag-uk-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2555","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/536"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2555"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2555\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17394,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2555\/revisions\/17394"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.rollins.edu\/letters\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}