A few weeks ago, I was contacted by Katrina from Eating London about joining one of their tours. If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you may have noticed that I haven’t accepted many tours or trips; it’s just a personal thing. After reading Tom’s post about the same tour, though, and when I realised that the tour would take place in my neighbourhood, East London, I became very, very intrigued. Since moving to London I’ve decided that I’d like to do a bit more “backyard blogging”, which is writing about the place in which you live. As I live in the best city on earth, and in the best neighbourhood in the best city on earth, this means writing a lot more about East London and how much this part of town has to offer.
"why i love"
-
-
I went to Burning Man in 2011, and stayed the full eight days. I camped in the desert under the big clear sky, my days spent riding the playa on my bicycle, making friends, cooking grilled cheese sandwiches, my nights a hazy blur of stilt-walkers, fire-breathers, mutant cars shaped like scorpions and jellyfish. I wore outfits I threw together from a garbage bag of costumes in the trunk; I wore saris and glitter, fake fur and angel wings, tutus and sometimes nothing at all. When I first reached the gates on that very first day, a girl wearing pink fishnets made me roll around in the playa, coating my hair in the greyish dust. “Welcome home,” she told me, and hugged me. I was instantly in love with this alternate universe, this utopian dream of creativity and art and acceptance.
-
There are very few people I like to travel with for extended periods of time. Sure, most people can get along for a few days or so, but when it comes to the big adventures, the long journeys, you want someone on your side whom you can trust, someone who understands you, someone who shares your values and your interests. Then who better to travel with than your mum?
-
Despite writing online about my travels for eight years now, I’m relatively new to the travel blogging community and the subsequent social media. Since signing up for Twitter and Facebook in the past year, I’ve come across a lot of fellow travellers, and I’ve read a lot of biographies. One line that pops up a lot? “I’m a twenty-something traveller.” Recently, when reading another Twitter bio with the same line, I had a sudden thought: I’m not going to be a twenty-something traveller for much longer. I turn 30 next spring.
-
I don’t have one of those, “I quit my job and left my cubicle life behind to go and explore the world!” type stories. I’ve worked in offices, yes, and worked for companies I hated and companies I knew wouldn’t advance my career – hell, I’m working at an office right now, for six weeks. I’ve always known this work is temporary, though, and that the money earned would allow me to travel (or in this case, allow me to save money while I wait for my UK visa). I’ve been offered full-time positions and turned them down. I’ve never worked a day in my life that didn’t contribute, either directly or indirectly, to the life I’ve always known I would live, a life of travel.
-
I’ve written about how much I love Canada and about how much I miss Canada many times before – it’s my favourite country, and where I my mind wanders to whenever I think of the word “home”. Even though I’ve barely spent a collective year here in the past seven, I’m fiercely patriotic and proud to be from this beautiful and supportive nation. It’s no surprise, then, that occasionally I get homesick, either for Winnipeg or for Toronto. It’s usually on a bus, it’s usually raining, and I’m staring out the window, missing my family or reflecting on the past, present, and future. Oh, and I’m usually (more like always) listening to music.