I said I’d return someday, and now I’m making good.

I boarded my early-evening flight with a whiff of excitement harkening back to boyhood, when sleepless, eager nights preceded overseas journeys. Even the debut of my round-the-world adventure, two years ago, mired as it was in melodrama and angst, could not equal my feelings as I tromped aboard this stately, lumbering 747–400 onto my first eastbound overseas flight from San Francisco, my adopted hometown.

I knew that any follow-on overseas journey to my grand world tour would — at least if I wanted to do it anytime in the near-ish future — involve a shorter jaunt. So I made a pledge: I’d confine big, expansive journeys to utterly new locales – the Mediterranean, sub-Saharan Africa, Brazil. Shorter trips overseas would, by contrast, mirror my domestic trips in one way: I’d use them as an opportunity to visit friends, to revisit favorite locales, and maybe – just maybe – see a smattering of new spots I may have missed on the last go-round.

A silky-smooth arrival into Heathrow boded well for this visit:  a reasonably quick trip through Customs (albeit with an immigration officer as gruff as any in the States), effortless “baggage reclaim,” then off to the Way Out and onto the Heathrow Express. Clean, speedy, and festooned with TV monitors pleasantly delivering a mix of information and events — I learned the origins of Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament in my fifteen-minute ride.

Arriving in Paddington Station, I felt it: I’m back, baby! The cavernous arched canopy of the trainshed covering the sleek conveyances may be a banality to the crowds hurrying to and fro… but for me it was a spectacle worthy of reverance. Ditto the cute statue of a childhood pleasure, the eponymous Paddington Bear.

Fatigue and jetlag notwithstanding, I was determined to give this town’s legendary nightlife a nod. Hopping back on the Tube across town to Notting Hill, I met Renaissance Man — my London pal and host both this visit and last — and a couple of his mates at an outdoor pub table. I’d wandered through this area in my last visit to the city, but strolling the tranquil streets of whitewashed townhomes this time truly made me gasp: London’s sprawling hodgepodge of districts makes for a less perfectly-wrought a city than, say, Paris, but the backstreets of Notting Hill are, in my estimation, as majestic as anything on the rives of the Seine. And at least as pricey: “freehold” townhomes list for three-and-a-half million pounds according to the neatly-framed listings in a realtor’s shop window off the high street.

At our comfy, narrow outdoor bar table, Renaissance Man embraced me warmly as he recounted to his chums the circumstances of our meeting: Calling himself a “male fag-hag,” he told of how he’d gotten up the gumption to talk to an attractive young lady out with her gay pals some years back at (of all places) a gay nightspot in Soho some years back. The lady in question was my sister, who in her sisterly way made sure to link me up with this fellow with the crazy name and an equally crazy background living in London’s trendy Ground Zero.

New York may bill itself as the city that never sleeps, but for my money the once-staid British capital has it (and practically everywhere else in the U.S.) beat by a country mile. On every commercial street of any size, at all hours of the day or night, I saw hordes enjoying the evening (the weather was gloriously warm, as Europe’s been enjoying a magnificent spring); while I’d already remarked on my last visit how Londoners are able to tipple outdoors, I was doubly bowled over, this time around, by the sheer volume of late-night places: it was past midnight when I arrived to a carnival atmosphere on the medieval-wide amble of gay Soho. I didn’t stay out too late as fatigue overtook me, but the crowds and vibe were intoxication enough for one night.

Ten more hours of sleep later, I again met up with Renaissance Man and some friends in Regent’s Park for “a bit of spliff and mellow hanging out,” at a European-themed folk festival. Alighting from the Tube at bustling, over-touristed Piccadilly Circus, I strolled up curvy Regent Street, festooned with shops and endless hordes and classical buildings wrapping around the curve of the street like life-size parentheses. Then, as the park approached, the crowds vanished, to be replaced by quiet, townhome-dense structures bearing colleges and embassies.

We parked ourselves under a broad shade tree a bit of a distance from the small festival, taking place just outside the park’s historic carousel. With jugglers, kids, teenage folk-dancing troupes, and all manner of euro quick-serve fare (fries – ahem, “chips” – with mayonnaise… blech), the place looked like a near-cartoon version of a Saturday in a park, something Renoir might have painted more than a century ago.

“New candidates for the Ministry of Silly Walks,” said another of Renaissance Man’s friends, motioning to two guys on the nearby walking trail doing lunges with Pythonesque absurdity.

After all this we headed out of the park toward the Baker Street tube station. The Sherlock Holmes Museum, at the not-really-but-who’s counting 221B Baker Street, offers up the usual touristy kitsch; we skip it and instead – thanks to one of Renaissance Man’s friends being a photographer – snap some creative poses in front of the London Underground’s Lost & Found office. Some truly remarkable specimens in the window, including mobile phones from the late-1980s that were anything but mobile. Inside the tube station, we continue the fun, as I played dead on a bench like a Holmesian character.

Next day, Sunday, was Lightmans day. This now-sprawling clan of de facto family inhabiting various parts of London’s northwest had graciously scheduled in for a full day of meals and catching up: I began the morning at Joy and Bertie’s, my hosts for part of my last visit. Their adorable daughter Bella, now five-and-a-HALF (as she told me, emphasis on the fraction), played with stickers and such while Joy, Bertie and I catch up on events in both our lives; as an interracial couple they’ve got lots to say about the U.S. presidential situation. Closer to home, Bertie’s had some surgery on both his legs, prompting much discussion of the health care situation on either side of the Atlantic. Happily, he’s doing well.

But first, off to see more of the family: David & Kate and their three kids, ranging in age from 20-year-old Nathan to tween-aged Noa. She at first forgot who I was from last visit, when she posed endlessly for my camera, but a quick chat about America and Justin Bieber (“he’s from Canada, you know!” she says breathlessly) and all is remembered.

After that it was off to eldest sibling Susan and her husband Richard, a soft-spoken fellow also in the technology business. I spent a glorious afternoon in their back garden with some fellow friends of their from Susan’s days at the London School of Economics, and here I felt right at home: smart, savvy academic types doing interesting work in a range of sectors.

As the day wore on, family patriarch Sidney — 87 and still sharp as a tack — comes to get me for a dinner of more Indian food. His wife Ray, in more up-and-down health, remains sharper than I’d expected but as a heavyset diabetic, mobility is necessarily an issue. Still, she’s of reasonably good cheer about it all, and her devoted husband’s caring for her borders on the heroic.

The following day, my last full one in the city, saw me meet another fellow certain to become another pal in my ever-growing roster of friends in the city: Rob’s a techie who lived in San Francisco for nearly ten years before his series of visas ran out and he was forced to return home (he hails from England’s northeast). A former co-worker of a current colleague of mine (also named Rob), this Rob and I compared notes on the IT scene in both cities.

“You’re either in the financial sector, or not in the financial sector,” was how he summed it up. Yep, as I suspected, London’s much like New York or Chicago in that way: there are a scattering of startups and such, but a lot of the work is in the money business, and his friends and colleagues in it report some of the same mixed experiences that I had in that business. And salaries in pricey London aren’t quite as good as in San Fran. He’d only planned to stay here a year before returning to the States, but three years have gone by and he’s still here and for the most part enjoying it.

Heading off the next morning, I mused why I love visiting this town: London, for me as a visitor offers people whose company I adore, coupled with a pulsating, vibrant scene that seems unmatched in the American scheme of things. Although I’m once more settled in San Francisco, the nagging “would I live here?” question always bubbles up in my mind. Not at the moment, I’d say, but if the right opportunity arose, I’d do it in a New York – nay, a London – minute.

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