Travel

As you may already know, Lindsey is incredibly familiar with London. She had been there for a two-week class trip and studied abroad through Marist there for an entire semester! I, however, had never been to the city. Personally, I was thrilled to have a personal tour guide. I loved that I didn’t have to worry about any itinerary-related stuff, because Lindsey had been there, done that, and had it all covered. 

Exploring South London 

We ended up staying in Elephant and Castle, a neighborhood in South London near where Lindsey lived while she was studying abroad. We chose to stay at the Travelodge, which was a super comfortable, cozy hotel that was conveniently located and had everything we could need. We paid for early check-in, since our flight from Dublin to London-Gatwick was nice and early in the morning. However, we breezed through the airport – a very lucky convenience that seemed to happen to us a lot during this trip! – caught the train from the airport into South London, and were at our hotel even before the early check-in time. Completely ravenous at this point, the front desk was kind enough to store our luggage while we headed out for something to eat.

Since it was Saturday, Borough Market was in full swing. Borough Market is a wholesale and retail food market in Southwark. Frequently making it to many “Things to do while in London” lists, Borough Market had goodies from all corners of the world, as well as local products like honey, syrups, and produce. When we first got here, I found myself slightly overwhelmed at the sheer number of people in the market and the array of options presented to me. We ended up walking through the entire market before settling on a burrito place, where I ordered a burrito that was probably as big as my head – no joke. Safe to say I had to break out the fork and knife to dig into that one. Lindsey opted for a simple sausage and egg breakfast sandwich, which definitely did not disappoint, either. From there, we headed east along the River Thames to go to Lindsey’s favorite coffee shop in London – F*ckoffee. Between the tongue-in-cheek name; the eclectic, cozy vibes inside the cafe; and the really, really good coffee – this was a winner in my book! 

We circled back to our hotel after this to check in and get freshened up. We ended up getting a room on the top floor, which made for a spectacular view of the skyline at night. After getting settled in, we headed towards Westminster Abbey to see some of the attractions that you simply have to see while you’re in London. 

While it was super crowded everywhere we went, it was also a lovely day and made for a wonderful walk around. Also, I was happy to get the tourist-y spots checked off of our list at the beginning of our time in London so that we could spend the rest of our days exploring freely. 

We saw Big Ben first, which stands at the north end of the Palace of Westminster, more commonly referred to as the Houses of Parliament. We then wandered around the Parliament Square Garden (although we were prohibited from walking on the grass), and looked at all of the statues, before getting in line to take a picture with one of the iconic red telephone booths. 

After walking across the Westminster Bridge, we headed for the Waterloo tube station (London’s version of the subway), and made our way to Covent Garden, where we did some window shopping and picked up some souvenirs. Finally, after grabbing another coffee and taking in all of the sights, we hopped on a bus and headed back to our hotel. 

We spent some time freshening up in the hotel room before heading across the street to grab dinner at Mercato, which is an industrial market featuring food vendors with cuisine from all over the globe. Looking for something comforting and filling, Lindsey and I both opted to order pasta from one of the Italian vendors. It was delicious and everything we needed to fuel us up for the night ahead. After Mercato, we hopped on the bus to head toward the Bridge Theatre, where we were going to see Richard II starring Jonathan Bailey (Read Lindsey’s full review of the show here!).

One brief intermission so that I can rave about how fantastic London’s public transportation system is. Lindsey had a leftover Oyster card, so she was able to refill that and use it on buses and the tube, but I just used my credit card for every trip. When you get on and off the tube, you tap your card, and the system knows how much to charge you. When you get on the bus, you only tap once, regardless of how far you’re going, because it’s a flat rate. We used the CityMapper app to find when buses and trains were running and to figure out what the cheapest and easiest option would be for us. There are bus stops nearly every block, with many buses running all night, and tube stations are also easy to come by, incredibly convenient, and quick. After touring much of Dublin on foot, I was thrilled to have an easily understandable and accessible public transportation system at my disposal. 

Columbia Road Flower Market, Brick Lane, and shopping

Since we had such a late night on Saturday, we allowed ourselves the luxury of sleeping in a little later on Sunday morning than we had been while on our trip. After emerging around 9:30 in the morning, we hopped on the tube to head towards Angel, which is right near where Lindsey will be studying for her graduate degree! We stopped at Blank Street Coffee to grab breakfast before heading towards Lindsey’s campus. It was super exciting because it was the first time she had seen the campus in person, so we wandered around for a bit while she got a better lay of the land.  

Next, we headed over to the Columbia Road Flower Market. As a flower gardener, this was heaven for me. I loved getting to walk up and down the street, looking at all of the beautiful flowers, some of which were imported from Holland and other Scandinavian countries. I even grabbed a small dried bouquet of flowers that I stuffed in my suitcase and brought home with me. Happy to report that they survived the flight quite well with minimal damage. 

While we were there, we also popped into some of the shops along Columbia Road. Continuing our shopping excursions, we headed over to Brick Lane next, which is regaled for its vintage shops, history, cuisine, and weekend markets. We wandered in and out of countless shops for a few hours, grabbed lunch at Upmarket, the Brick Lane Food Hall, and then stopped in for a quick coffee at Oat Coffee before catching the bus back to our hotel to drop our stuff off. 

Later in the afternoon, we headed over to the Courtauld Gallery to explore for a bit before our dinner reservation at Faros, an Italian restaurant in Holborn. The atmosphere was fantastic, the food was delicious, and the service was great. We were completely stuffed by the time we got out of there, so we hopped on the tube, made the quick trip back to the hotel, and turned in for the night. 

Notting Hill and making our final day count 

On Monday, we set out early to ensure that we checked everything off of our list that we had left to do. First, we took the tube out to Notting Hill and grabbed coffee and breakfast at Blank Street again. Next, we went in search of the infamous blue door from the ‘90s rom com Notting Hill, starring Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts, before walking around the market that was setting up along Portobello Road. The weather was gorgeous and I loved walking around and looking at the cute colorful houses along the side streets. On one block, each townhouse was a different, vibrant color, giving the street a warm and welcoming vibe. 

Around lunchtime, we got back on the tube and headed for the iconic Victoria & Albert Museum. It’s the world’s largest museum of applied arts, decorative arts, and design, and houses a permanent collection of over 2.8 million objects. 

The museum itself is enormous, so we knew we weren’t going to be able to make it through all of it, but we were still able to see a good amount. We did a lot of museums on this trip, but I have to say, I think this one might have been my favorite. The architecture of the building as a whole and each individual exhibition room was truly stunning, as well as of course, the art that was throughout the museum. 

After wandering around the museum for a bit, we were sufficiently hungry and headed towards South Kensington to grab lunch at Kensington Creperie. After lunch, we went to see Buckingham Palace, which I was sufficiently underwhelmed by. It’s a beautiful landmark, don’t get me wrong, but it was just “meh” to me. It was also incredibly crowded, so we were both happy to get out of there and move on to our next destination, which was Marylebone! We walked around Daunt Books and then headed over to The Monocle Café to grab coffee (like always), before taking the tube back to the hotel. 

We spent the rest of the afternoon packing up our stuff and getting ready for our big day of traveling home, only emerging briefly to pick up dinner from the Nando’s down the block, and turned in early so that we were ready to order our Uber and get up to catch our 8am flight back to Dublin, and finally, back home to New York!