Seven Things I Love About London:

Tea Drinking: I am a tea drinker, and in a world of mochachinolatte drinkers, I feel a bit out of place ordering my usual cuppa with milk and sugar. But I fit right in in London, where tea drinking—and a lovely afternoon tea with scones and tea cakes—is as normal as bobbies and royalty. I’ve always liked tea, but when I was in England in college I decided to do as the British do and take milk with it. It is a habit that stuck, and when I met Jason and he took milk in his tea, too, well…

Buskers in the Underground: Navigating the tunnels of the Tube is so much nicer with someone playing “Silent Night” on the saxophone, even if you keep calling the Central Line the Red Line.

Book Shopping: The nice man who tried to help me get my suitcase out of the overhead compartment about threw his back out. I tried to warn him; my bag was full of books. Maybe it was the three months I spent in the library, but bookshops and London just go together…especially the iconic Blackwell’s, whose flagship store is across from the Sheldonian Theatre in Oxford. I stocked up on all the things that I can’t get in the U.S.—another volume for my Shakespeare collection, the British versions of Harry Potter, and a couple more adorable little Jane Austen editions that sell themselves as modern chick lit. Mmm… Just sitting among the stacks in Blackwell’s makes me happy.

Whirring around on the wrong side of the street: It’s sort of exhilarating to turn right in an iconic British taxi—it feels splendidly out of control for just one second. Actually, what’s really a treat is sitting in the top of a double-decker bus and spinning around the streets of London. Remember that scene in Harry Potter where the Knight Bus squeezes through London? Sometimes it almost feels like that. I also like looking right first when I cross the street. It makes me feel like a local—and, after all, I did sort of learn to cross streets in Oxford. It took a long time to learn to do it the American way when I moved to DC. (Yeah, this picture doesn't match. Go with it.)

British Money: No offense to U.S. currency, but there is nothing like a pound, sitting gold and weighty in your hand. Or like the five-sided 20p coin, that always looks worn and stable. Or like the little 5p coin, which is actually smaller than the 10p coin—imagine! Rational money! I like holding it and feeling it and being able to pick out the right change quickly. And I like spending it, especially when that uninspiring dollar is buying me more pence for the penny than I expected!

Pub Eating: You go to London for lots of reasons, but eating isn’t one of them. Pub food is warm and cozy—shepherd’s pie, stew, fish and chips, bacon sandwiches that I love—but nothing to write home about. It is the experience of eating in pubs that I like. It’s the names, like the Lamb and Flag or the Dog and Gun or the Eagle and Child. It’s the dark wood and the tiny, rickety tables with the numbers on the corner. It’s mastering the art of ordering your food in a pub, which is trickier than it seems. It’s the atmosphere that makes you laugh heartily and talk books and swagger just a bit more than you probably should. (Of course, it totally weirded me out that the pub we lunched in offered a choice of white or whole wheat bread. And they came and took our order, like a normal American restaurant. What the--?)

Christmas: We joined the mobs of people oooing and ahhing at the Selfridges Santa window displays on Oxford Street and listened to the Salvation Army band play "Joy to the World" on the street corner. We spent Saturday afternoon eating nutella covered waffles at a German Christmas market on the South Bank of the Thames. Nothing like London in December to get you into the spirit for a happy Christmas!

There are, of course, lots of other things I love about England, like the way the rows of stovepipe houses look when you fly by on the train or American candy bars with British chocolate (soooo much better) or the green parks where people walk their babies and dogs past palaces or words like “lovely” and “gorgeous” sprinkled throughout sentences in the most unexpected places. Really, it’s sort of amazing that I come home at all.