I didn’t go up the London Eye. I didn’t take a photo with a guard. I didn’t even go inside Buckingham Palace.

But I did have the best chai latte of my life in a quiet café tucked behind a bookshop in Soho.

London is huge — fast, cold, expensive, overwhelming. But once you stop trying to see it all, something shifts. You start to notice it.

I wandered through parks I couldn’t pronounce. I browsed secondhand vinyl in Camden. I got lost in the British Library for three hours and accidentally read half a novel I’d never heard of. And I loved it.

One afternoon, it started raining hard. I ducked into an old pub with wooden walls and low ceilings. A group of older locals were playing cards in the back, one of them humming along to the music. I sat at the bar, ordered fish and chips, and watched the rain hit the windows like tiny drums.

No rush. No pressure. Just London doing what London does.

I didn’t leave with a selfie in front of Big Ben. But I did leave with something better — a sense that I’d really been there, even if no one else saw it.