Apologies that I haven’t written anything down since my last rant. You should be happy to know things picked up considerably during our time in London.
To save this becoming even longer than my usual posts, I’ll try and be as brief as I can about the last 48 hours.
In short, both days were amazing.
Day 5 – Ritzy Reunions
So we arrived to our Airbnb without me murdering anyone (or getting murdered by cat calling guys outside the chicken shop) which was your typical English house – tiny. We were so exhausted that we crashed straight away, although neither of us anticipated just how hot two people sharing a tiny bed with the boiler on would be, so it was a bit of a fretful night.
In the morning, the clouds slightly parted and the sky refrained from drizzling, so we were cheery. We took the bus into the city for our highly anticipated morning tea at The Ritz. I can see why they made a song about this place – it’s classy!
I brushed my hair, so ritz!
I was glad I wore my magenta socks, it was definitely the occasion for them! Tea was located in the most gorgeous room, and the sandwiches and cakes were so tasty. The clotted cream on the scones certainly clotted up my arteries, but it was worth it. I loved this experience, it was so quintessentially British.
This blog seems to feature me faux pouring a lot of tea from some pretty ornate teapots
From there, we took a stroll to explore queen Liz’s digs at ye old Buckingham Palace. As you can expect, it was tourist central, although I don’t remember the police holding AK 47’s the last time I visited, but I guess that was in 2012 and times have changed. We did the usual tourist things here and then wandered back to the city via Carnaby.
Pictured: The palace, Not Pictured: The guns and po po
Carnaby is cool! I’d never been there before but it was colourful and quirky and had a really interesting selection of shops. I had a 10/10 piccolo from a tiny hole in the wall cafe which was an unexpected delight.
We spent the afternoon window shopping and people watching on Oxford street before dinner.
Dinner was a really special event because it was shared not only with my sister (who lives in England now), but also with some of my best friends who also happen to live in these parts. We shared far too much curry at Dishoom in Shoreditch and the food was absolutely incredible. The black dhal curry, the okra chips and the cheese toast were the stand outs. Our catch ups continued well into the night and it really made me so happy to see everyone doing so well.
The other thing that made me happy was this guy stopping traffic in his car to give me his business card for modelling, but that’s a story for another time (#humblebrag #wasprobablyatrap #hiswindowswereprettytinted).
By the time we made it back to the east end, we were completely knackered. Unfortunately for us, the place we were staying featured the guests from hell (not us) who were so loud for so much of the night that we ended up making a 2am decision to flee to a hotel.
Day 6 – “Oh, I was gonna say…”
So basically at every point from here on in when we recounted the suburb we stayed in + having to bail, each audience said “oh, yeah, I was gonna say, why are you staying there?”
THANKS FOR THE HEADS UP AT THE TIME EVERYONE!
Ha.
I jest.
Sort of.
Today was an even better day because it began at the Cereal Killer cafe. This place is a visual delight. It’s pretty neat seeing all the old cereal packaging from throughout the years and around the world, plus they had a Simpsons arcade game.
More like Cereal Kool-er
I had the Unicorn Poop cereal, which was super sweet and very colourful.
Have you ever seen sugar take so many different forms?! (NB- the shake wasn’t mine)
From here (for some reason), we worked out we were possibly still just shy of eating 29430852 calories this morning, so we headed to Camden markets with my sister to visit Chin Chin labs.
This place is famous for their dense marshmallow hot chocolates which they blow torch into oblivion for you to then attempt to eat without keeling over and dying from a blood sugar level well into the hundreds. Naturally, that’s my kind of challenge. It was a (relatively) hot day so I had the ice-cream which featured this uniquely textured marshmallow being spooned all the way into the very bottom of the waffle cone for you to enjoy after you’ve had the most deliciously rich ice cream. The whole idea of the store was pretty groundbreaking in the important world of ice cream, and it’s well worth stopping there whilst in Camden.
The rest of the markets you basically have to see to believe. There are food stalls from all over the world, and the gifts are niche and funny. There’s also a Gambian clothes store there (Jekkah) who make a pretty mean African printed jogging pant.
From here, if I’m to tell the honest truth about what we did for the rest of the day, it gets embarrassing.
But I don’t want to lie, so please don’t judge.
Look, basically I’m not proud of this but we had planned our visit to London not by landmarks such as Big Ben (boring, half scaffold) or the London Eye (I’ve done it before), but by culinary experiences we wanted to enjoy.
It just so happens that our bucket list outnumbered reasonable eating hours in a day, so we kind of had to eat amounts that were shameful in order to have no regrets.
Now I’ve got that off my chest.
Have you ever heard of www.yorkshireburrito.com? The only reason I can think of to explain why I have, is that my SEO algorithm is horrendously skewed towards roast dinners (leave me alone, we all have our vices). To cut a long story short, after eating a bagel for breakfast (ugh, like I said, I’m just trying to be honest with you about who I really am), unicorn poop for morning tea and an ice cream for no good damn reason, we all thought it was an appropriate next step to try the roast dinner in a Yorkshire pudding wrap.
We went halves because I’m not a complete monster
And it was like heaven came down to grace my mouth. So I’m not sorry.
From here, I said goodbye to my sister (boo hoo hoo) and we spent the rest of the afternoon pursuing various hobbies (me: hating myself and getting a massage, Ellie: Having a nap).
It was then time for the ultimate dining experience ever which was visiting Sketch. For anyone who hasn’t heard of this place – google it. It’s an amazing restaurant/ art gallery/ art installation in itself. It’s also all pink. And I LOVE pink. I used it as an excuse to wear a dress of mine I have wanted to for close to a year. And the staff were pretty stoked. And given how fragile my self esteem was post this mornings gorging, that made everything better.
The food was visually interesting and tasted fabulous (like, really truly delicious), but if I may say something outlandish, the real highlight was the toilets. They’re these weird pod things and the mirror makes you feel like you’re in a submarine. It was bizarre.
The mirror actually made it incredibly difficult to apply my $2 lipstick
From this wonderland, stepping out into the cold (still very bright) light of the evening made me seem hilariously out of place in my dress after losing the context of Sketch. I made a distress call to one of my best friends and we spent the rest of the day and early hours of the morning having a prolonged catch up.
I’m so very sorry to leave London. It gets better every time I go, and there’s so much more I wanted to do with this visit, not to mention have the opportunity to visit my family. I am seriously considering packing up my life in Australia and giving the NHS a go for a year or so (but that’s a conversation for later).
Day 7: Feeling peckish in Peckham
Ok so the only things to note from today were that I went down to the south of London, ate chicken from the chicken shop and got the most epic corn rows (yes, what a stereotype but I am who I am). I then flew to Croatia.
Mug shot
Tune in later when I’ll give you the lowdown of my day in Dubrovnik. Thanks for being patient whilst I’ve been a bit slack with posting content. Also thanks for all asking when the new stuff is coming up, that means a lot!
Haddy x
THE HADDYMOON 