My boyfriend, Andrew, and I spent two days in London at the beginning of the new year, and stayed in a hostel Northwest of the city center called Palmers Lodge Hillspring. The hostel provided a simple complimentary breakfast and was well-kept, but there were, of course, many people staying in one room (especially since we booked one of the large bunk-bed rooms) and with that came risks of poor nights’ sleep. However, we pushed on and filled two days with lots of sightseeing and activities.
On our first day, we ate breakfast at the hostel before taking a bus to the Notting Hill neighborhood. We walked down Portobello Road, went into the famous antique shop, Alice’s (I’m a big fan of the recent Paddington movies, the first of which features the shop), and walked around St. Luke’s Mews, a street of colorful homes that were originally carriage houses.
From Notting Hill, we took another bus to Hyde Park, the largest park in London, where we walked around and saw Kensington Palace, the King Albert Memorial, the Peter Pan Statue, the Princess Diana Memorial Fountain, and many, many birds. After wandering around the park, we made our way to lunch at a pub just off Piccadilly called Rose and Crown, a Greene King restaurant, passing by the Wellington Arch on the way. We then walked to Harrods, Europe’s largest department store, and nearly got lost inside its over one million square feet of retail space.
The beginning of our evening was spent on one of Brigit’s Bakery’s 1960s refurbished red double-decker buses for a late afternoon tea and a tour of the Christmas lights that were still up around the city. After tea, we walked to the Natural History Museum where there was an outdoor ice skating rink beneath trees covered in string lights. Andrew is a great skater. I, on the other hand, just tried to keep from falling onto the ice.
After our busy first day, we were planning on taking the second day in London a bit slower, but that didn’t happen. We started our day in Covent Garden and ate brunch at Le Pain Quotidien in the Apple Market building before walking to see many of London’s popular landmarks including Trafalgar Square, Big Ben and the Palace of Westminster (unfortunately, they were covered in scaffolding), the London Eye, Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace, and St. James’s Park.
We ended our day with exploring the Churchill War Rooms, the underground complex where Churchill and other British officials lived and worked during the Second World War, which included a museum on the life of Winston Churchill. Set aside a few hours to explore the War Rooms, as there is a lot to see. Finally, we had dinner with a cousin of Andrew’s, who was doing research in the British Library, at The Clarence on Whitehall, just down the road from the War Rooms and Downing Street.
The following morning, we made our way to Stansted Airport for our flight to Copenhagen, Denmark, where we spent the next few days, before heading back to Exeter.
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