“Courage and willingness to just go for it, whether it is a conversation or a spontaneous trip or trying new things that are scary – it is a really attractive quality.”
-Alanis Morissette
Sites/Topics covered in this post:
- Central London
- Gay Pride Parade
Go-Date: Day 165, Saturday, July 6
Lesson Learned: Kudos to the street cleaners and sanitation workers of London. Saturday, we saw mountains of garbage (mostly beer, wine and liquor bottles) piled high, I mean 4 and 5’ high. All over, I mean on every corner, in the middle of streets, alleyways were a sea of rubbage. I was amazed at how much was piling up, and we left the area long before sunset.
The next morning, it was all gone. When we walked about, it was as if it were a Tuesday morning, not the Sunday the morning after the largest party this city will see this year. Good Job, ladies and gents. The City of London had a plan for this event and the casual tourist would not be aware anything had happened if they arrived on July 7th.
Sights of Central London
The nice thing about staying in Piccadilly Circus or Soho in London is you are so close to many of the sights you need to visit. The other thing is the city is so very walkable. Leave the hotel, turn left or right and scan the skyline for the sight to see. If you get tired, find an underground station or hop on a bus. It is so easy to get around, and not so expensive, either. If you must, you can call up an Uber or flag down a black cab. Its really and easy city to visit. A bit crowded, this time of the year, but its nothing compared to Cairo.
Central London is the innermost part of London, spanning several boroughs. Road distances to London are traditionally measured from a central point at Charing Cross (in the City of Westminster), which is marked by the statue of King Charles I at the junction of the Strand, Whitehall and Cockspur Street, just south of Trafalgar Square.
The central area includes within its boundaries Parliament and the Royal Palaces, the headquarters of Government, the Law Courts, the head offices of a very large number of commercial and industrial firms, as well as institutions of great influence in the intellectual life of the nation such as the British Museum, the National Gallery, the Tate Gallery, the University of London, the headquarters of the national ballet and opera.
It also holds numerous parks such as Hyde, St. James, Green Park, Waterloo, Buckingham Palace park, Victoria Tower, and numerous others. So, there is green space within all that concrete, asphalt, and limestone. Lots of sights, and lots of people watching.
London Pride – 2019
Here’s what I’ve found out about London’s biggest LGBTQ+ celebration. ‘Pride’ generally refers to the annual Pride in London parade, which did take place on Saturday July 6 in 2019. As far as I can tell it’s all one huge street party with a parade thrown in for good measures. There are also gay pride parades in other British cities and all over the world. A huge celebration of LGBTQ+ identities, history and achievements, the Pride in London fortnight also features more than 60 events over weeks taking place until Sunday July 7.
This thing was huge. Trump inauguration crowd huge, probably bigger. My first question is how long has Pride in London been around? This is obviously not its debutante (tongue in cheek) debut. The first Pride weekend took place in New York in 1969. London got involved two years later when a group of around 200 activists from the UK branch of the Gay Liberation Front marched on central London – though not before a dozen drag queens had staged a ‘dress rehearsal’ the day before, pursued by police. The first official London Pride was held in 1972, with 2,000 people in attendance. Compare that to 2018, when Pride attracted one million party-goers.
It doesn’t matter what your sexual orientation is for this shin-dig. Everyone is welcome and encouraged to participate wildly. More than 300 groups and floats travel from Portland Place station to Trafalgar Square (the route is over 2 miles in length), where there’s a party, music, theatre performances and more camp fun. The headline act on the Traflalgar Square stage this year the magnificent Tony-winning star of ‘Pose’, Billy Porter, whose outfit will most definitely bring it. The parade began at Portland Place at 12pm.
Just by coincidence, we had to move from our apartment in Piccadilly Circus (which we really enjoyed) to another flat in Notting Hill, since the first apartment was not available for the rest of our London visit. The streets of Soho were completely packed with people and general merriment from around noon until well past when we went to bed. Trafalgar Square and Piccadilly Circus were Macy’s Thanksgiving Parade, Times Square on New Years Eve, or Superbowl kind of busy. Everyone is painted up, drinking heavily, happy, and outrageous, to say the least. If you want to dress up, great and if you can’t be bothered, that’s fine too.
Some people go all out, others just throw on a little face glitter. When people think of Pride, they tend to picture slim cisgender ( “male assigned male at birth”) white guys wearing hotpants and angel wings, and you’ll definitely see some ‘Angel Gay-briel’ types on the day. But they’re just a drop in the rainbow-colored ocean of the participants. Pride is a time for all LGBTQ+ people to come together, regardless of gender, ethnicity, age, body type, class, political allegiance and background. We didn’t dress up, but if I’d had planned ahead, maybe I could have found some glitter, high heels and hot pants. I could even get a pair of fishnet stockings. Well, maybe not.