England: Natasha Davis (Dérive)

Dérive

Wanting to get out of South Kensington for a little bit to see something new, I found myself curious about how much the city of London changes based upon where you are. As I stay in an extremely beautiful place with fantastic Georgian architecture, I was wanting to see a part of the city that may not be as nice to compare. This curiosity is what brought me to my walk from Angel station and around Islington. While Islington is still considered a very nice area of London, it’s the differences between Islington and South Kensington that drove me to explore there.

The first thing that I noticed about Islington was the very different looking housing and buildings there. While in Kensington most of the buildings are colored white, with few bricks when you stray from the big roads. However, here in Islington all of the buildings were brown brick. While I thoroughly enjoyed the architecture, and felt that it had a much more ‘British’ feeling than what I had seen, I have to say that the all brown brick architecture did make Islington feel dirtier. Taken along with the streets also being quite brown and dirty, Islington definitely didn’t have the same ‘clean’ feeling that South Kensington had.

I imagine that the time of day that I went affected my impression of Islington. As most places in London, your impressions are built upon more than just your surroundings, it’s built upon weather and time of day as well. Visiting a borough of London in nice warm and sunny weather in the middle of the day would be a much different experience than visiting in different circumstances. As for my visit to Islington, I can say that my impressions were somewhat dampened by the dreary weather and the lack of sun.

With that being said, I still really enjoyed visiting Islington. The atmosphere was inviting, and there were a lot of interesting markets on the streets. The markets ranged from having things like jewelry and watches, to selling fresh foods. There were also a ton of teenagers around the streets, and the streets itself had a warm environment. Since I went at night, much of the streets were lit up by strung lights. This created a very peaceful atmosphere, and made the buildings and streets look a lot nicer. Overall, my trip to Islington helped me see the differences between neighborhoods and boroughs. While they are all a part of the same city, each neighborhood/borough has a much different feel, and is full of different cultures.

Natasha Davis 

Major: International Studies and Legal Studies

Hometown: Middleton, Wisconsin