Summer is up and cities across the globe have planted palm trees and trucked in tons of sand to urban riverfronts to create the feeling of a lazy day at the shore. Urban beaches are a hit and Momondo guides you to our favourites.
Beach Life in London
Photo: Mrlerone
This year marks my seventh summer in London; the seventh time that I have chosen to spend the hottest months in a place where it’s impossible to pack away your winter clothes for the season because it’s quite likely that you will find it necessary to wear a cashmere jumper at least a couple of times in August. Being a passionate lover of sunshine, at some point at the height of every summer I find myself shivering at a table at a sidewalk café, clutching a mug of tea for warmth and thinking, ‘What is wrong with this place?’ But the rest of the time I find that making the most of the limited sunshine on London’s beaches is enough to keep me here for another summer.
‘London’s beaches?’ you are thinking, ‘isn’t that illogical?’ And you are right: this is a land-locked city. But innovative Londoners laugh in the face of geography: just because nature hasn’t given us a beach, not exactly, doesn’t mean that we can’t approximate the seaside lifestyle. It just requires a bit of imagination. In the past, some witty entrepreneurs have dumped piles of sand in parking lots to create urban beaches, but with no signs thus far this year of these grown-up sand piles, Londoners are looking elsewhere for beach living in their neighbourhoods.
