Sara’s abroad in Paris, France, until Dec. 13.

After a much longer than expected EuroStar ride, I’m back from my trip to London for the weekend. In my own version of A Tale of Two Cities, I set off again from the City of Lights to see my boyfriend, Jamie, who is conveniently studying abroad in London. Anyone who has studied abroad while dating someone, which on my program is a significant percentage of people — sort of odd given the general trend at Northwestern — knows that the distance, time difference and culture clash is trying, at the least. But we’re lucky to be within three hours of each other, a welcome change given that I lived in Chicago and he was in California over the summer. Even though we’re both having an amazing time abroad in our respective cities, I was more than happy to wave goodbye to Paris and spend sometime in the UK.

The journey getting there was a little rough. After finding out that my train was canceled due to a low number of passengers — perhaps due to the fire that broke out in the Chunnel last Thursday — I had to scramble to make the earlier train. Luckily I made travel friends, an American couple that looked like they were on their honeymoon (aww) was next to me in line to board the train and ended up sitting next to me. Even though I love life in Paris, I’ve come to appreciate the English language more and more while being here. About two-thirds of the way through the train ride — which took about an hour longer than it should have — a strange Italian man started snapping pictures of me, even though I asked him not to. There is something about public transportation that brings out the crazies. I practically ran off the train when it finally glided into St. Pancras/Kings Cross (yes, the home of platform 9 ¾ — I didn’t end up finding it though) to find Jamie waiting for me at the gate. Between seeing him and finding myself surrounded by English speakers, I won’t lie -– I breathed a huge sigh of relief.

The other blogger in London has probably already covered the beautiful architecture, bright red double-decker buses, and of course the cute accents that make you feel like you’re in the middle of Bridget Jones, Love Actually or Harry Potter. I was expecting London to be more or less the same as Paris, though. I’d been to London when I was 17 — it was in fact the first foreign city I traveled to — but I forgot how similar it is the United States when compared to Paris. Obviously, everyone speaks English. Spending four weeks in France has made me realize how nice it is to be surrounded by your own language. I’d missed that automatic understanding of what’s going on. In France — though I speak French — it’s always somewhat of a guessing game. Also, there is a sense of modernity that Paris lacks. While London has been around for a while, the lights at Picadilly Circus brought me back to Times Square, something that’s hard to find in Paris, even on the Champs-Elysees. And of course, there are things like Subways and supermarkets that will make a homesick traveler feel like they’re back in America, sort of. People dress a lot different too. Gone were the rigid and fierce looks the French sport every day of the week. Instead, people wore loose jeans, polos, Northfaces and flip-flops. Hello, Evanston. So between all these elements, combined with seeing Jamie, it was almost like going home for the weekend — that is, if people at home said “cheers!” and paid double for everything.

While a lot of my friends in Paris spent the weekend intoxicated in Munich for Oktoberfest, I felt surprisingly grown-up on my weekend vacation. Traveling alone to meet my boyfriend and then spending the weekend sightseeing together might have had something to do with it. We saw a play at the Globe, caught sight of Buckingham Palace, toured a museum and spent an evening at a traditional English pub. Given that I’ve been more or less single for the past 20 years of my life, spending a romantic weekend in London with a significant other was definitely not something I expected to be doing this fall.

At the end though, like the other trips I’ve taken so far, this weekend definitely made me appreciate Paris. I’ve slowly come to find Paris the most beautiful city in the world. It was sad to leave London and I wasn’t too excited to find out what other creepers might be on the train back (luckily, no creepers, just a baby that cried the entire trip). For now at least, my traveling days are over. The next few weekends I have here will be spent touring Paris until I go to Spain at the beginning of November. I have no complaints though. I’ve got big plans this week — seeing the Pompidou Center and watching the debates live at 3 a.m. on Thursday night at some little pub we found. Stay tuned.

Read Sara’s previous post | Meet the rest of our abroad bloggers