Watching The Visitors

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Marius Holtan monitors the tourists looking at London.

‘We’ve been real tourists today,’ I hear them say as they jump off the tour bus and head into the railway station, London-bound.

Lisa Skogfeldt and Lauren Fusco are just two people out of the 16 million who visit London every year.

Lisa is a small town girl from Sweden; Lauren, a big city girl from New York. The diversity of London’s visitors is already evident in these two trippers.

Although Americans are listed as the No 1 visitors to London, and Swedes come in at No 10, for both Lauren and Lisa this is their first London visit. But neither is new to the travel game. London is Lauren’s last stop on a month long ‘Eurotrip’, and for Lisa it’s just a layover before moving on to Bali and Australia.

Even without fanny packs and long distance lenses, tourists must be the most readily recognisable group in the whole of London (and native Londoners shy away from them like roaches leaving the light). On the streets of London, though they aren’t the only people speaking a language other than English, tourists stand out from the rest because they still use photo booths for selfies and they seem to be excited – always, all the time.

Lauren and Lisa are no exception. Their faces are plastered to the window as sunlight sparkles on the river and bounces off the cabins of the London Eye, and our train creeps slowly, slowly across London Bridge.

‘It’s such a beautiful city,’ declares Lisa. ‘Maybe we should come live here.’

There they go again: tourists, almost totally unaffected by the real life of the city they came to see, such as the all but prohibitive cost of housing if you ‘come live here’.

‘London’s amazing’, Lauren confirms. ‘It always feels like you’re right in the middle of it.’

Funny how the people who get that London Central feeling are often anything but insiders.

But less than six months after I myself arrived here, perhaps I am already too cynical.

As I look around the carriage I see that Lauren’s loud American accent has failed to disturb a lonely Londoner who is gazing mesmerised at Big Ben.

Of all people, I ought to know that London is populated by tourists, including those who live here all year round.

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