It has taken me less than a year to realise that there are two ways to get to know Kingston. The first is practical. You learn where to catch the bus, do your banking, buy groceries and, because every newcomer has priorities, where to find the best flat white with oat milk. The second way takes longer. You stop treating the town as a collection of destinations and begin noticing what happens in the spaces between them.

When I moved to Surbiton from Trinidad last year, Kingston became an unexpected pleasure as I found my feet here. It seems to have almost everything you might look for in a city; theatre, cinema, galleries, libraries, shops, restaurants, a university, a busy market and the Thames running through it. Yet it does not feel like a city. There is energy without quite so much hustle, and variety without the sense of being swallowed by anonymity. The centre is compact enough to cross on foot, but lively enough that no two visits feel exactly the same.

Additionally, the university helps shape that rhythm. During term time, students bring youth, energy and a changing social life to the streets and public spaces. Things feel quieter when they break for summer, but it never feels empty of things to see or do. That changing character is part of Kingston's appeal. The town gets busy, but rarely feels impersonal. It offers many of the pleasures of city life while still allowing people to linger in what the sociologist Ray Oldenburg called "third places": welcoming spaces beyond home and work where people gather simply because it feels good to be there.



I love drinking coffee by the river (Credit: Joanne G Johnson)

Cafés, libraries and parks are the examples most often given, but Kingston's Market Place feels like one. So do the riverside cafés, where I can sit with a coffee and look out over the Thames, and the public benches that become prime real estate the moment sunshine parts the clouds. And then there is the river itself. More than once, a quick coffee has become an excuse to sit and watch the sailing instead.

One of my favourite slow-me-down places is no secret. The rooftop terrace at Curzon Kingston sits atop The Bentall Centre, and its view from above rearranges the town. Looking towards Market Place, you can see how compact the town centre really is. The pedestrian streets, rooftops, and buildings, old and new, sit comfortably within a single frame. From above, Kingston stops looking like a shopping destination and begins to look like a place stitched together by all our comings and goings.

David Mach's Out of Order, Old London Road (Credit: Joanne G Johnson)

Kingston rewards that kind of attention, and the reward is not always visual. Waiting for the 411 to Hampton Court, I've heard the bells of All Saints ring before Sunday Evensong and during weekly practice. One afternoon, a soprano's voice drifted across the pedestrian streets while an accordion sounded farther along. I once stopped to sway with a young busker, sheltered beneath his umbrella, while he chirped his way through "Singin' in the Rain" as the rain continued around us. The buskers do not stop the town. They become the soundtrack. Thus, Kingston becomes less a place to move through and more a place to share: almost everything you might need from a city, but without feeling consumed by commerce.

The longer I look, the more Kingston's age shows through. The Market Place has been trading since the thirteenth century, while the nearby Coronation Stone carries the town's older royal story. Yet all that history sits comfortably among fruit stalls, bus stops and the ordinary business of the day.

Artists Gillie and Marc brought the Wild Kingston trail to the town centre in November 2024 (Credit: Joanne G Johnson)

Look again, and Kingston reveals a playful side. Since November 2024, ten bronze sculptures by artists Gillie and Marc have appeared around the town centre as part of the Wild Kingston trail, drawing attention to endangered wildlife. I love watching children insist that the adults stop too: to stroke the elephant, climb the tortoise, stick their heads inside the hippo's mouth or pose for one more photograph. And beneath the Old London Road arch, David Mach's Out of Order sits with twelve red telephone boxes tumbling across the walkway, one of Kingston's best-known public artworks. Once ordinary fixtures on every high street, the boxes are time capsules.

There are so many reasons I keep finding myself in Kingston even when I have nowhere in particular to be. I go in for one thing and come home lit up by something else: a busker's song after the bank, church bells instead of the bus schedule, a lift-the-rhino photograph after browsing the shops with a friend, or a meandering walk over Kingston Bridge that somehow carries me farther than I'd planned. I hope I never become so familiar with Kingston that I stop noticing all the small detours.