London, England

We're having a great time traveling together; learning the in's and out's of planes, trains, and automobiles.  We're doing a pretty good job of packing light to avoid excess airplane fees, and our backpacks fit just about everything we need for a jam-packed 4-day trip.  In this post we cover the first part of our 4-day October vacation to England.  After the Brexit referendum tickets into London were are at a jaw dropping low, so we took advantage of a great purchase that landed us in the heart of England... First stop, LONDON:  

Let me preface this post by saying, Jordan and I have both been to London before, and by no means have we seen close to the whole city.  On this trip we decided to visit places off the beaten path, skip most of the more famous sites, and explore.  I guess this means we will have to go back, because there are so many places I want to re-visit.  Before landing we downloaded a great travel-app, get ready guys you need to download it: CityMapper.  It is really the ultimate transport app, and helps users navigate the city they are in with all transport needs: helping to show which trains, buses, ubers will get you from point A to B, and it calculates the cost of travel. It also helped with directions, and came in handy for us many times!

When we touched down we purchased our Oyster cards at the airport. I think it was a necessity to purchase a card, so don't delay...I love cities that use public transportation, and I love cities even more that make traveling with a pre-paid card easy! You can seriously access anywhere in London easily on their tube, and the Oyster card made it easy.  With are cards in hand we made it to our hotel in Kensington.

 

We woke up and went to the ever-so-charming Notting Hill.  I'm loving the colors!

Notting Hills is certainly one of the more "posh" areas in the city, and has such cute neighborhood charm.  I absolutely love the doors #DesignGoals....

When there are so many different colors, it's hard to choose which is my favorite.  I think our future home will have to have a colored door...I'm obsessed.

Local stores have such charm:

Wandering the streets we found ourselves at the Portobello market.  They were selling everything from antiques to vintage clothing, it seemed like a market that was the go-to stop for everything London style.  All vendors are out selling on Saturdays, and it's a place you want to show up early, and on an empty stomach-all the food looked pretty spectacular, here's a glimpse:

Of course we couldn't just look, not when we see good pastries.  We tried a strawberry tarte and the most delicious chocolate muffin filled with chocolate ganache-it was better than chocolate cake!

My heart skipped a beat when I saw these girls going to school.  It reminded me of Madeline, and I love love LOVED their uniforms.  Reminded me of when I was in a uniform at an all-girls school, except we didn't get the adorable hats.

Seriously Madeleine-esque...Twelve of us, in two straight lines...I see a correlation here...

As we walked through Kensington we enjoyed a stroll through the Billionaire walkway of embassy row.  The houses and embassies are beautiful, and almost too big for my liking.  For your entertainment (and ours) check out who's living next to who:

At the end of the row is where the best neighbors are found, in the the Kensington Palace, home to many royal families.  We walked around and enjoyed the grounds but didn't catch a glimpse of any royals.

 Queen Victoria in her prime:

We continued walking the streets.  Man I felt so turned around! I think lots of people do too, because they had reminders on every corner...everything was backwards; they drive on the opposite sides of the street!

...after a few rights.... and a few lefts, we landed in a place tucked away into my childhood memory: Harrods.

Jordan and I both enjoyed going into Harrods.  He tried on some high-end watches that he has dreamt of owning, and I got to explore their specialty markets...I loved all the different rooms

I remember going to Harrods as a kid and getting a red tin double-decker bus filled with cookies...I'm not going to lie, I did look for them when I went, and what do you know, look what I found...

I think my favorite gourmet room was where they had the chocolates.  I am a big fan of Charbonnel Chocolates, and when they had all of their truffles out to be hand-picked you better believe we had a few.  The dark sea salt caramel truffles that were soooo yummy! Posh Chocolates anyone?

 Harrods was fun to explore, it is SO big, and has just about everything you could ever want, but I'm not sure if they have everything you'll ever need.  With only carry-ons we walked out with not many shopping bags, although I did get a perfume (if you want to know my new smell let me know!).  Let's keep going:

We walked to Buckingham Palace.  We didn't have tea with the queen (although we did have tea together in Bath) but we still got a good glimpse at her spacious house... I couldn't get the Queen to answer her cellphone, so we couldn't get past the gates.

 I also couldn't convince everyone to move out of our photo...they were waiting to see the Queen too!

We met up with a friend of mine who is living in London, at The National Gallery.  It was a perk that she has some background in art curating, and we wandered the halls looking at some of the finest collections of paintings in the world.  The painting below, on the upper right, looked like a famous one, so I was inclined to take his picture.  Jordan made fun one me when I shouted, "I need a picture of that painting I know it's famous!". We're still not sure how famous it really is, but I like it.  We also saw paintings by Raphael, Rembrandt, and the famous Englishman Turner.  I have to say, Turner's paintings were more impressive in real life than they were in the cinema.

We stumbled upon the free 2pm tour in the gallery and learned some history on some of the most famous works in the museum.

Beverly Hills anyone?

I didn't know museums allowed you to set up your studio actually INSIDE the museum.  It was so cool watching this man paint the painting...and I was amazed that he was allowed to have open containers of paint thinner out where they could easily spill!

We wandered around the SOHO district, I love the colored buildings in Covent Garden. 

We continued to stroll into Chinatown for dinner before we saw a show!

It was so nice to be in an area where there is authentic oriental food-and man have we missed it.  In every window there was a hanging Peking duck, and my mouth was watering!  We found a little Chinese bakery that was making porkbuns, so we had one as an appetizer as we looked for just the right restaurant to order our  duck from.

 Jordan enjoying his bun

 At this point he told me he could go for a second...

But, this is my all-time-favvvvorite, and I have missed it so much!

We enjoyed some Cantonese cuisine at Haozhan. The sweet-and-sour soup, Peking duck, and other healthy sides were so good, and I would recommend it when going to Chinatown. 

After dinner we headed into the theatre to see Les Misérables.  

I would see it again, and again, if I could.  The music, costumes and performers were amazing!  I even stayed up the entire time, which is pretty impressive.  We had great seats a few rows back from the stage, and it was so wonderful to hear a live orchestra play. 

We headed home because the next day we took an excursion to Leed's Castle, Canterbury and Dover. We woke up and took a nice walk around Kensington to our meeting spot.

When I was doing some research on foods we needed to try on this trip, I read that the pastry chef of the original cronut had opened a bakery near Victoria.  I was so excited to put the bakery on my list of "must  eats" as I ditched my diet plan, but we didn't know if we would make it since it was out of our way but to our surprise right across from our meeting spot for the tour on Elizabeth Street was the bakery! And early enough that there were NO lines at all!

...The space looked so fresh and so clean!

...and so many amazing sweets to choose from.  Maybe sweet, beautiful pastries will be enough to hold Great Britain together during the Brexit?

Here's what we went with: The Cronut (half-croissant, half-donut with some kind of caramel inside)

 in four bites it was gone... and SO good!

We had a Welsh Rarebit Croissant on the left: with a Guinness Worcestershire Cheddar Béchamel and Whole Grain Mustard and Fontina; and on the right a DKA-“Dominique’s Kouign Amann”: Caramelized on the outside, flaky and tender layers within.  These breakfasts hit the spot...

Buckle up, next post onto: Leed's Castle, Canterbury and Dover.