VideoTravelAlex

“Why are the Christmas lights still up in March?” an American girl asked her mom as they waited to cross over Oxford Street.

Barely noticing the dormant wire fixtures against the tin-colored early morning sky, I wondered the same.

I forgot all about it until later that evening when I realized that the decorations weren’t London’s iconic holiday angels but the stars and moons of Ramadan.

“It makes sense,” I thought.

Between Commonwealth nations’ transplants and offspring, refugees, asylum-seekers, wealthy foreigners, and expat businesspeople, about one-third of current London dwellers are of international origin.

But the English capital’s multiculturalism is not always apparent from across the pond.

For non-English people, Britishness is almost exclusively associated with the Royal Family’s shenanigans, Double-decker red buses, or the Tower of London Beefeaters.

As a result, it surprises many Americans to learn that Britain is as multicultural or more than the US.

Not me. I joined those joyfully taking selfies with the pretty blue and yellow lights as a background.

I uploaded an Instagram post with the tongue-in-cheek caption, “London is more multicultural than New York City.”

Then, I called it a day and went to bed early in preparation for my day trip to The Cotswolds the following early morning.

I woke up to the wrath of the Internet.

“It’s not the flex you think it is” and “Your saying it like multiculturalism is a good thing” were two of the most respectful comments.

By the time I reached Victoria Coach Station, I was receiving dozens of nasty remarks by the second.

I sat in the terminal’s Pret, struggling to moderate the avalanche of hate.

Spanish and Portuguese-speaking baristas were already in full swing, serving Liverpool teenagers, Pakistani families, and Chinese grandmothers their daily caffeine fix.

With everyone sitting peacefully shoulder to shoulder, It was as though my real-life surroundings contradicted the digital loathing.

Then, a news notification popped up:

“Biggest Conservative Donor [Frank Hester] Said Looking at [Member of Parliament] Diane Abbott “Makes You Want to Hate all Black Women.”

As it turned out, Britain is not only culturally diverse but also highly polarized—just like good ole America.

And here I was, an LGBT New Yorker of Latin American descent, on my way to a rural area that some Brexiteers would dub “the real England.”

The farther our coach got from Central London, the more I felt we were going back in time (and the more my phone vibrated with new notifications).

But, just over two hours later, the Cotswolds’ timeless and magical rolling hills and golden-colored stone villages put me at ease and made me forget all about the social media drama.

In our first stop, Burford, it was hard to fathom that these peaceful and sleepy streets were once the bloodiest locations of the civil wars that ravaged England in the 1600s.

The Church of St. John the Baptist, one of its most famous buildings, was the site of captivity for hundreds of mutineers who left carvings and graffiti still visible to this day.

Also known as “The Gateway to the Cotswolds,” Burford was one of the main enclaves of the wool trade that built the region’s wealth in its heyday.

The prosperity is still evident today in the many posh clothing stores, tea rooms, pubs, and charming antique parlors up and down High Street.

The lavish real estate listings also indicated a trend we’d see in every subsequent town we would visit that day.

Aside from its natural beauty and historical significance, The Cotswolds has also been the location for many films and TV series.

No wonder it keeps attracting global tourism and wealthy international homeowners trying to own a piece of the chic English countryside.

The next stop, Stow-on-the-Wold, had more activity than the relatively small Burford.

Here, we saw some locals wearing stylish raincoats and Wellington boots while we dug our tennis shoes into the quick mud, holding our “Keep Calm and Carry On” umbrellas with one hand and trying to take selfies with the other.

The scene took place outside St. Edward’s Church, a mecca for followers of J. R. R. Tolkien, as it’s said to have inspired the Doors of Durin scene in the film “The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring.”

A market town by royal decree since the Middle Ages, Stow-on-the-Wold sits on top of an 800-foot hill at the intersection of major roads, including Fosse Way, built by the Romans between the first and second centuries AD.

Unsurprisingly, the town brims with antique stores like Tara Antiques on the main square, where you can find furniture, home decor, clothing, and merchandise from the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries.

I picked an album of cricketers issued by John Player & Sons, “Branch of the Imperial Tobacco Company of Great Britain and Ireland,” in 1938.

The memento, featuring the English and Australian teams, was completed with colorful trading cards.

Who collected them, and what was their situation during those tumultuous years?

Our third and final Cotswold village, Bibury, was more international than expected.

Arguably the most picturesque of all Cotstowlds towns, it is famous in Japan for hosting Emperor Hirohito in the 1920s.

Bibury is also known for Arlington Row, a famous line of cottages built in the 14th century as a monastic wool store and repurposed in the 17th century as weavers’ cabins.

If it looks familiar, it’s because aside from being one of the most filmed and photographed English locations, Arlington Row has also been immortalized on British passports.

As our last stop before returning to London, Bibury was also where we would enjoy lunch with other non-English-speaking fellow tours.

Our Inn’s quaint dining room indeed resembled something out of the United Nations that afternoon.

The designer-clad Chinese table to the left seemed to flinch when our group of mostly Americans, Canadians, and Australians walked in.

To the right, the Indian delegation, in beautiful traditional garb, stopped what sounded like a spirited discussion.

Wearing athleisure, we occupied the lone available table towards the back of the room.

I quickly realized the underlying tension was due to a somewhat hostile service bordering on cultural insensitivity.

The waitress, who acted like the country cousin of “The Devil Wears Prada’s” Emily Charlton, tossed some cold fish-and-chips and warm ale on our table.

When the Mexican American gentleman to my left asked for hot sauce, she looked at him like a British expeditionary when meeting a faraway tribe chief for the first time.

Apparently, we had begun to wear out our welcome.

Multiculturalism retook center stage the next day at the Daunt Books Festival 2024 in Marylebone.

During the presentation of the book of food essays “London Feeds Itself,” editor Jonathan Nunn and authors Zarina Muhammad and Ciaran Thapar addressed Britain’s diversity.

Most of their reasonings hit close to home as evidence that London and New York have much in common as big cities with large and young multicultural populations.

Then, Nunn made the point I’d been thinking about all week: multiculturalism in Britain versus America.

“We need to get better at mythologizing ourselves, just like the Americans do,” he said.

He argued that, despite being as culturally rich or more than the US, Britain doesn’t project this fact to the world.

Unlike New York City, whose global identity revolves around being a melting pot, London exports a more homogeneous image.

Perhaps that’s the whole point?

Witnessing the fascinating exchange from the first row, I couldn’t help but chuckle at some of the digs against America that kept piling up as panelists and audience members took to the Q&A session.

It seemed as though, despite internal divisions, most Britons from all walks of life rallied behind one banner when it came to the proverbial “US versus UK” debate.