Bruce

Family Visit to London - Feb 2015

3:56 PM

We wanted to show off our city to our first family visitor! 

We walked from the Waterloo Bridge to the Shard. It's about a mile and a half walk along the river Thames so we got to see some iconic London sights on the 30 min walk on the Southbank. 

First stop: Get the view from the Top of the Shard. This is the tallest building in Western Europe. It houses a hotel, corporate offices and private apartments. It was imagined as a building where people can work, relax, and live. 73 floors up, you get views like this...

To the west. See if you can spot: Millenium Bridge, Blackfriar Bridge, Tate Modern, and the Coca-Cola London Eye

To the North (and east-ish): the Walkie-Talkie, the Cheesegrater, the Gherkin, London Bridge, HMS Belfast, Tower of London, Tower Bridge, City Hall and waaaay off in the distance is Canary Wharf. 

Larson's way up high above London Town

Love these guys

My favourite human

When you're on the Southbank, you HAVE to go to Borough Market. For a snack, for a meal, or just for browsing. 

Like this! Even if you don't love olives, doesn't it look beautiful??

After wandering all around the market, getting some samples (favourite was a mushroom pâté), we decided on Ethiopian food. YUM!

Next stop: St Paul's Cathedral tour

Secret picture of the inside of Sir Christopher Wren's masterpiece
The dome is absolutely incredible. Favourite architectural gem in London!

View from the top of the St Paul's dome. A great view from the other side of the river.

One New Change, Gherkin, Walkie-Talkie, Cheesegrater from the top of the dome.

After showing Bruce our flat and around our neighbourhood, we wandered over to St John's Wood. I had walked through this park before but never noticed the tombstones!  

We hopped on some Barclay's Bike (now red Santander) and biked down the canal in Regent's Park to get to Camden Town and Market. We had walked poor Bruce around like crazy, forgetting that the jet lag coming this way is REAL.

 
We got to check out the Camden Lock/Chalk Farm Market.

Busy and exciting place. TONS of food that looks like it would be worth a try!







A walk in the park

8:00 PM

After a quick trip to the LDS church, I decided to take a walk around the area. Take a walk with me!

The V&A museum. Victoria and Albert. Now there's a love story for the times. 

Charming London houses EVERYWHERE. If you ever visit London and attend LDS church services on Sunday travelling by tube, you would walk right past this.

Museum of Natural History. One of the most gorgeous buildings.

The streets around the Royal Albert Hall are wall-to-wall red brick. I love it.


Imperial College of Science and Technology

Royal Albert Hall

Prince Albert Memorial, commissioned by his loving wife, Queen Victoria. Both great lovers of the arts and music.

The America corner. The sculptures for America are always so weird... There's one in front of St Paul's that I wouldn't have even known was supposed to represent America if a tour guide hadn't pointed it out.

Hyde Park

A peaceful, desceptionally nice sun. It was freezing!

I can't wait to come back and take the same photo when the roses and shrubbery are all grown in and beautiful.

Full of charm. Even in dreary winter. London takes my breath away.

Hyde Park is amazing.

Larson's in London

Wicked lovely Valentine's Day

5:25 PM

I am catching up, slowly but surely. I will be throwing these posts up whenever I feel like they are done even if it's out of chronological order (which is what has held me back) and it'll all sort itself out. Here goes!

My sweet husband likes surprises. Because of how incredible he is at planning and executing a heart-warming surprise, I have decided to try and be more like him in that regard. 
Valentine's Day 2015 was no different from his usual romantic gestures (2013 was amazing, 2014 included a rented puppy so... I am spoiled on V Day with Taylor)


All of London was dressed up for the holiday. Lovely flowers and tinkle lights everywhere. 

The sweetest card from my love! The message inside brought a tear to my eye. Inside was also my surprise gift!!! Tickets to see Wicked!

We walked to St Johns Wood after I got home from Activity Days (a church activity for 8-11's where do crafts or learn a skill in a religious setting)

St Johns Wood church and gardens (on a regular old overcast day in London Town)

These adverts make me smile every time I see one. It's like the whole city loves me :)

Victoria Underground. The regal Victoria in silhouette all over the station.


We changed up our reservation and decided to go for Spanish tapas instead of curry some other place. It was delicious and we've been back for more. The shrimp was delectable! 


La Tasca is in the Cardinal Place Shopping Centre just down the street from Victoria Station. 

Westminster Cathedral (not to be confused with the Abbey). 

Inside the cathedral. We poked our heads in because we had a little bit of time to kill before the show started. I love seeing cathedrals. So much beauty. 

Leaving the theatre, Oz says goodbye.

Wicked is such a fantastic show and even though we've seen it before, seeing it in England made it a little different. The songs were sung in British accents and some British slang thrown into the dialogue. The talent was astounding! Great costumes, great dancers and unbelievable leading ladies. Elphaba and Glinda rocked the house. The actress who plus Glinda is a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints! So we felt an extra special connection in supporting her performance.

I love spending time adventuring with Taylor. We have a few of shows lined up to attend in the next couple of months. I love being married to musical theatre lover.

I recently read an article about being married to your 'opposite' (like, opposites attract). While Taylor and I have many things in common, we are incredibly different. But that makes life, like the article describes, a little more colorful and exciting. If we were into all the same things, we wouldn't have as much opportunity to find new things to experience. 
Bottom line: Taylor is crazy romantic and he loves things I love being exposed to and we couldn't be happier. Life is good. 

Afternoon tea

St Pancras Renaissance Hotel - Afternoon Tea

6:00 AM

I had a baby-sitting gig where the child was just visiting London for a few days with his dad. So my job consisted of taking him sight-seeing and being on pool duty during the children-allowed hours. A pretty sweet deal.
This Gothic marvel is even more breath-taking in person. I took the tube to St Pancras/Kings Cross station and took an exit that has a tall, brick wall blocking the view of the hotel and train station and you have to walk along it to get to the entrance of the hotel. It was an astonishing sight! And it's just as gorgeous inside as it is outside.

This building undertook years of restoration and is hailed as London's most romantic building. Queen Victoria opened this hotel in 1873.

There is a grand staircase that spans three massive floors. 

The wallpaper, carpet, sconces and railings are all just perfection. 

We were walking through the lobby and saw the hours for afternoon tea. What is more British than afternoon tea?? I set a time for us and the little guy was pretty into it (mostly for the sweets)

We sat down, ordered our tea (chamomile and mint) and discovered the strainer while we waited for our tea pot and sandwiches. In the picture above this one you can see what the strainer looks like in 'resting position'. It is perfectly engineered to catch any drips from the tea/infusion after the water has been poured through and set back on the table. It's hinge allows it to rest on the teacup without the threat of teetering off and causing a mess. Ingenious. 

The whole room. 

Our afternoon tea set up. Classic British Victoria sponge and other little cakes. Then an assortment of little sandwiches, of which my favourite was a cucumber sandwich on beetroot bread (the little pink one below) They refilled the sandwiches as many times as we wanted but we're stingy on the cakes ;)


Before we were done, they asked if we were ready for our scones. They waited until we were ready because it comes out hot from the oven! It came out piping hot and so delicious. 
The scone is eaten with clotted cream and jam. To make it even more schm-ancy, the method by which you put the two on the scone has a name. If you put jam first and clotted cream on top, it's Cornwall. If you do clotted cream with the jam on top, it's called Devon. 
A cream tea is a tea taken with a scone. There is actually quite a major debate about the origins of cream tea and which method is the correct way to apply the clotted cream and jam. 

Things like this make me love England so much. 

Pouring the tea. Because I ordered chamomile, the herb is finer so they switched my strainer to this one. 

The whole experience was so fun and fancy!

It was a lovely few days at the St Pancras Renaissance Hotel. I'll have other posts about my time because I did loads of things I wouldn't have done without that 4-day job!

Classy cars at the St Pancras Hotel. 
(Kings Cross station and St Pancras are right next to each other. Kings Cross and the imaginary Platform 9 3/4 are just beyond this car, to the north)

Like us on Facebook

Flickr Images