Assignment 8: Hampstead Village

Originally, Mallory, Nic and I had made a trip to Hampstead to watch Ryan play rugby before we knew it was an assignment.  That didn't exactly work out as planned.  After being given few to no directions, we decided to ask a woman where the nearest rugby pitch was to the tube station.  She was extremely friendly, and seemed much more willing to chat and help than someone in the center of London.  She informed us that she was waiting for the same bus that would take us to where we were going, so she would just direct us from there.  She started asking us why we were in London and we explained we were studying from the US and she just began raving about it!  This was the first time that I had experienced that reaction when we've brought up The States, so it was pretty refreshing.  She told us that she visits Arizona every year, and she is always depressed to come back to the cold, dreariness of London.  We told her that we went to Iowa, and she proceeded to tell us she thought she'd been there.  "That's close to Arizona, right?"  We just smiled and nodded...

After following her directions, we made our way to Parliament Hill, where she said that would be our best guess.  After walking up the whole hill, we had just about gotten our exercise when we realized there was no rugby match happening anywhere close.  As we got to the top of the hill, the view was absolutely amazing.  From the park, you can see just about all of the city, even though it didn't seem like we were very close.  We decided to just spend the afternoon laying in the park, because the weather was extremely nice.  We did a bit of reading, napping, and watching fellow Londoners fail at kite flying.  It was nice to see the amount of families there.  It seemed to be the perfect place to escape from the city, while still being in London.

As we made our way back to the tube station, we bought our groceries for dinner at a local street stand close to the park, and took our time on the walk.  I absolutely loved the area.  It seems so quaint, but still has a bit of the hustle and bustle that the city area has.  There were a lot of shops that looked to be individually or family owned small businesses that specialized in one area.  It reminded me a lot of the other parts of England that we've visited, like Bath and York, and was a nice escape from the chaos that comes with living in the center of London.  We ended up going out to the park again the next day to read and relax, and it was a good way to see what many of the business people and families do to spend their weekends.