Returning

Hello again, my friends!  We are back from London, and I am bursting with stories to tell and pictures to post in the coming days.  First, I need to unpack, do laundry, catch up on emails and phone calls, and do all the other nonsense one does after a week away.  In the meantime, I just had to share with you these spring flowers from a beautiful street stall in Greenwich.  One of the things I love most about traveling ever since I started The Magpie's Fancy is that I often take photos and collect memories with you in mind.  It sharpens my eye and broadens my perspective, which is, I do believe, a good thing.  

More specifically, one of the things I love most about traveling to London now is that since I have been there many times before, I feel less and less obliged to be a tourist, to skim the surface of the place.  These days I spend more time meeting and talking with people, eating at local haunts, and getting to know my favorite neighborhoods almost as well as the ones back home.  I do love the feeling of visiting a city for the first time, but there's something to be said for gradually getting to know a place well.  Like a good friend whom you see only every year or two, you rediscover that depth of connection every time you visit, yet the friend always holds surprises in store.  In this way, the best discoveries are made and the friendship grows stronger with the passing years.

More very soon.  Street art, food, flowers, markets, crumbling buildings . . . only the good stuff.  xo Gigi