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@The_Seldom_Killer
I miss London a lot. Not quite enough to leave my girlfriend, but on many a day I wish I could be right back there in the thick of it.
There are so many examples of what I miss about London and what makes it amazing, but what it all boils down to is the full on whimsy of the place. I love that you can do so many things at the drop of a hat at any time and with relatively little planning you can do something different, fascinating, interesting and exciting. Although that said, London can be a very hard place to live. If you don't make the effort it will chew you up and spit you out. You do need to take a break from the place every now and again.
The one example that really sums it up for me that I've never seen anywhere else is riding along the near empty roads and the riverside on Christmas Day morning with 80 other cyclists being congratulated by families and groups of pedestrians for being great fun. At London Bridge there was sherry and cake, at Putney I propped up the bar with an excellently made espresso a homemade mince pie and a lovely 15 year old malt (go on do a paedo fixed joke, you know you want to), in Edgeware the owner of a Lebanese restaurant kicked his family out so he could seat as many of us as possible and the Christmas dinner was spicy, refreshing and wonderful as arabian fashion TV played in the background. As I left the restaurant, a guy commented to me that he didn't have any family to be with on that day. Usually he found Christmas lonely and depressing, but this was the best one he could remember since he was a kid and it used to snow. That's the kind of magic that I miss.