The London Trip: Day 1
After a week of recovery and trying to get back into the mode of college classes, I have finally found the time to sit down and tell you all about the awesome trip my brother Jacob and I took on fall break. Keep in mind that our fall break was only a week long, so our trip was relatively short. But man did we do a lot of cool thing while we were there!
If you haven’t heard yet, or seen on my social media, my older brother Jacob and I took a small trip to London on our fall break! In total, it took us 6 days (we originally planned for it to be 5 days, but something that I will get to eventually occurred and that postponed us a whole day). So we spent 3 days of this trip in the heart of London exploring all that we could! Here in this blog post, I am going to share some never before scene photos of our first day in London. There will be a post for each day so keep in mind that although there will be a lot of photos in this blog post, there are so many more to share with you!
The London Trip: Day 1
After spending the entire day before traveling and sitting on a 7 hour flight, we decided that our first morning in London should be spent taking a brisk walk to the adorable shop we decided to have breakfast at! The morning air was crisp, but still a whole lot warmer than the November air you would normally find in the Midwest. We were lucky, though, to have witnessed one of the rare sunny days in England. It was nice to stretch our legs out and just kind of enjoy the adjustment it took to get used to the idea that we were actually in London. Previously, my brother and I had only traveled to other states inside the United States so finally traveling to another country together was a real shock for us! Our first day in London was a Sunday, so everything opens late and closes early on Sundays in England.
The beautiful little shop my brother and I always made sure to stop by for breakfast was called Patisserie Valerie. It was absolutely delicious and I would highly recommend checking them out if you ever visit the U.K.! They have a ton of different locations, and many of them are near Tube stations (their version of the subway). I went with a classic bananas pancakes, and my brother went for scones with an assortment of jellies that were imported from France.
London is Calling!
Thought I would quickly share these photos of these phone booths that were across the street from Patisserie Valerie. These were the first phone booths we saw while in London, I got really excited because it made the whole trip a lot more real!
Visiting Kensington Palace
We purchased in advance of our trip a little card called “The London Pass”. This pass allowed us a way to get easy and quick access to locations like Kensington Palace, London Bridge, and the Tower of London. Because we paid for “The London Pass”, we were also allowed into all of these locations and a whole lot more for free. I would highly recommend getting a “London Pass” if you are planning a trip to London and you want to do all of the touristy things while there.
One thing I was really excited about seeing while in London was the Princess Diana exhibit that was on display at Kensington Palace. But there was so many amazing photos and cool details to include just in that one exhibit that I will be writing a special blog post for that in the coming days.
As we wondered through the palace (I can’t believe I can actually say I wondered through a palace!), we toured the King’s wing. This was basically a exhibit showing how one of the kings who lived at Kensington Palace lived, and the actual thrown he used to sit on while living there. The most beautiful room, in my opinion, was the king’s drawing room (the one pictured above with the gorgeous ceiling and red walls). They had this amazing music playing in the background that made this drawing room seem even more grand that it would have normally.
One of Queen Victoria’s dresses!
There was a full length mirror and I couldn’t help myself! Sorry!
Next we moved on to the Queen’s wing of Kensington Palace! There was an exhibit dedicated to Queen Victoria who lived at Kensington Palace. There was a beautiful dress on display to see how small she truly was, and I don’t mean just in stature. In addition, there was also a display of a few letters she wrote and some of the different things she used at her desk. Also on display was a beautiful crystal heart that Queen Victoria’s husband Prince Albert gave to her.
Exploring London
Without even planning on it, we decided to pay a little visit to M&M World! Although we didn’t take a lot of photos of this particular store while in London, I just had to get a picture with this sign that was inside the shop! Let me tell you, this store smelled soooo good, too!
Keeping with the sweets theme, we also paid a visit to the candy store “Kingdom of Sweets”. We didn’t purchase anything while we were there, but man the variety to choose from was overwhelming! They also had some fun music to bop along to while shopping there. Now I know this doesn’t seem like a big deal, but while in London I noticed how very few of the shops there played music.
There were a ton of beautiful holiday decorations that scattered the streets of London. Another cool attraction that you can easily find walking around the city are street performers. I haven’t ever quite seen anything like it before, but one artist seemed to be defying gravity right in front of us. Of course, there had to be some sort of trick to the trade, but as far as I am concerned it was pretty amazing!
Covent Garden
Covent Garden was one of my favorite spots to explore while in London. It had the most magical holiday decorations, and the live music that was preformed there only escalated the vibrancy of Covent Garden. I also particularly loved the charming cobblestone streets and sidewalks all around this area.
Piccadilly Circus
We ended our long and exciting first day in London at Piccadilly Circus. As a advertising major, it was so exciting to see the large Times Square style screens that were the main attraction here. Conveniently, there was a Tube station right in front of the large advertisements at Piccadilly Circus so locating where to go was super easy.
Those are the cliff notes on our first day in London. We still have three more days to cover and I will be writing a special blog post all about the amazing Princess Diana dress exhibit we saw at Kensington Palace. I will leave you here with this photo of me standing next to one of the iconic red phone booths!
Much Love,
Sarah
