returning to cities

I'm back now in London and feeling more hemmed in and intruded upon. Cities are strange places. I've spent the bulk of the previous week in the middle of the French Alps in the Ecrins, in a summer only village called La Berarde. About 40-50 people live there in the summer and only one in the winter, though others stay on too. It was also the very end of the season, so really quiet.
The difference between that sense of emptiness and the competitive, hectic noisy and smelly city life is great.
I still quite like cities, even London, but being this crowded makes people snap at one another.
Against that I doubt I could live somewhere like La Berarde all year round, I've become too used to my comforts and culture. I like my cinema, my wide range of restaurants, the diversity and quality of the food, the bars and the shopping.
So like many tourists it is the change of states that makes one notice things, be it the ice on the glacier or the chewing gum on the Strand.