Today I walked to Trafalgar Square. Walking through London is never just a way for me to get from one place to another. I walk whenever I can because the journey itself is part of the experience. It gives me time to think, to look around, to notice streets and buildings, to discover parts of the city I would never see from a bus or the Tube.

Sometimes I leave home knowing exactly where I am going, but I still don’t know what I am going to find on the way, and I think that is one of the reasons I love walking so much. The destination matters, but everything between my front door and the destination matters too.

Eventually I arrived at the National Gallery, and I spent a long time moving between completely different kinds of paintings. There were faces that stopped me because they felt extraordinarily alive, including one that looked almost androgynous and somehow incredibly modern, but there were also still life, colours, shapes and details that made me stop for completely different reasons.

One painting in particular was almost disturbing in its realism because it looked like a photograph. I kept getting close to things and then moving away again, looking at how something could appear so real.

That is one of the things I love about art: I don’t necessarily need to know everything about what I am looking at to be completely fascinated by it. Sometimes I just stand there thinking, “How the hell did a human being do this?”

When I left the gallery, I finally went to see “Lady in Blue”, the new sculpture on the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square.I had seen photographs of her online, and somehow they had made her look absolutely enormous, so when I saw her in real life, my first reaction was, “Oh! I thought you were much bigger!”

Then I started learning about the place where she was standing, and suddenly she became much more interesting to me. The Fourth Plinth was originally intended for a statue that was never installed, and much later that empty space became a place for temporary contemporary artworks. I love this idea: a space that was supposed to contain one permanent monument ended up becoming a place that keeps changing.

And I love Lady in Blue herself. She isn’t a queen, a general or somebody we are being asked to commemorate. She is an everyday woman, walking forward. Tschabalala Self created her as a contemporary “everywoman”, moving into the future with ambition, purpose and optimism. There was something about discovering that meaning while standing there today that made me like her even more. A woman walking forward through the city. Not standing still. Not looking backwards. Just moving.

I stayed in Trafalgar Square for a while. There was Indian music playing and I sat there listening to it, completely lost in it for a little while. It was relaxing, and for those minutes I wasn’t trying to get anywhere or thinking about what I should do next. I was just sitting in the middle of London listening to music, with everything I had just seen in the gallery still floating around inside my head. And I remember thinking how good it felt simply to be there. I didn’t need that moment to become anything else. I didn’t need to do anything with it. I just wanted to stay inside it for a little longer.

Later I went to a Japanese restaurant because I wanted okonomiyaki. I already knew exactly which one I wanted because I had eaten it before, but when I got there I discovered they didn’t have that version. They had Hiroshima-style okonomiyaki instead, which I had never tried. So I ordered it. It came with noodles and egg and was completely different from the one I had expected to eat, and while I was sitting there I realised something very small about myself that I actually really like: I wasn’t disappointed anymore. My brain had almost immediately changed from “this isn’t what I wanted” to “I’ve never tried this before.”

I really like that about myself. I like the fact that curiosity can take the place of disappointment. I can have an idea in my head of what I want to do, where I want to go or what I want to eat, and then reality changes the plan and sometimes gives me something I didn’t even know was an option. Today I could have been annoyed because the okonomiyaki I wanted wasn’t there. Instead I got to taste something I had never eaten in my life. And that tiny change somehow fitted perfectly with the rest of the day: walking instead of simply arriving, looking instead of rushing, discovering the story of a sculpture instead of only photographing it, sitting down because music made me want to stay, eating something I hadn’t planned to eat.

I ate half of my Hiroshima-style okonomiyaki and put the other half in a container to take home. And I remember thinking how much I like this part of myself, the part that still gets excited because there is something new to try. It doesn’t have to be a country on the other side of the world or some enormous adventure. Sometimes it can just be a different kind of okonomiyaki on an ordinary afternoon in London.

Today was one of the most beautiful days I have had in a very long time. Not because everything went according to plan, and not because something spectacular had to happen every minute. I walked through a city I love. I saw art that made me stop and stare. I discovered the story of a blue woman walking forward. I sat in Trafalgar Square and got lost in Indian music. I tried something I had never eaten before. And somewhere in the middle of all these completely different little experiences, I was ridiculously happy to be exactly where I was.

I didn’t get exactly what I wanted today.

I think I got a better day because of it.