London has a way of lowering your volume.

Not because it demands silence — but because it offers it so naturally. The city moves in muted tones: grey skies, beige stone, copper leaves on the ground, the kind of cold that doesn’t sting… it just settles. And in that setting, the museums feel less like destinations and more like rooms you temporarily borrow, to breathe differently.

This part feels like that: a Side B that doesn’t try to impress you. It just stays with you.

Entering the National Gallery feels like stepping out of time

The first thing you notice isn’t the art — it’s the space around it.

Tall doors. Heavy frames. A kind of air that feels older than the conversations happening inside. You walk in, and suddenly it’s not about where you came from, or where you're going next. It’s about what’s in front of you. What’s looking back.

And there you are — standing alone in the middle of a room that doesn’t belong to you, but somehow feels familiar anyway. Like you’ve walked into the inside of your own mind.

Some paintings don’t tell stories. They hold them.

There’s a painting of two men standing in front of a green curtain, surrounded by objects that feel like clues: instruments, books, a globe, something sharp, something delicate.

And you don’t need to know its title to understand what it’s doing.

There’s something beautiful about looking at portraits from centuries ago and realizing how little has changed. We still pose. We still try to look like we belong. We still want our lives to mean something when someone looks back at them.

The most powerful paintings are often the quietest

A woman in black, turned away from you.

It feels modern, but it isn’t.

That’s the thing about art: sometimes it doesn’t age. It just waits for you to catch up.

London outside feels like the negative space of the museum

Then you step out again.

The road in front of Buckingham Palace is wide and open, but the sky feels like it’s pressing down gently. There’s no dramatic sunset, no postcard colour. Just the reality of the place: crowds in coats, people moving in different directions, no one trying to be poetic.

And still — it feels poetic anyway.

This Side B is less about travelling and more about observing

Not every part of a journey needs a highlight.

Some parts exist simply to teach you how to look again. How to slow down. How to be present without needing a reason. This chapter feels like that — a small pause before the next city, before the next storyline, before the next shift.

Because we’re leaving Paris now.