Autumn in London

London was the first stop on our 6-month trip, and despite having been there a couple of times before, we’re always happy to go back. We were lucky enough to be able to stay for a couple of days at Cristóbal’s cousin’s house, which certainly helps with our travel budget since London is on the more expensive side of the places that we’ll be visiting.

We arrived Thursday night to Stansted, took the Stansted Express into the city where we bought our Oyster cards at the station and took the underground to the house. We met up with Cristóbal’s cousin’s husband Andrea for a bit of a walking tour towards South Kensington and dinner at a fabulous Lebanese restaurant, Maroush. Afterwards we stopped at a little speakeasy hiding inside the Chelsea Cloisters hotel and had ourselves a couple of fancy drinks.

The next day was packed, but really great. We started out by walking and ended up at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Something I really like about London is that a lot of the museums have free admission with optional donation, making them accessible for everyone. The V&A reminded me a lot of the Met in New York, beautifully curated with paintings, anthropological items, fashion and sculptures for every taste. We spent a couple of hours wandering around the Middle East and South Asian sections before deciding that if we didn’t move on we would spend all day there. It’s November, so the ice skating rink outside of the Natural History Museum was set up, and we watched the ice skaters for a while before continuing up the street towards Hyde Park. I love ice skating, but Cristóbal managed to break his toe while we were in Madrid and I’m sure that we’ll have plenty of other options to ice skate in the next couple of months! I also would have loved to visit the Natural History Museum and Science Museum as well (also both free admission with optional donation), but when we only have a couple of days in a place we sort of hate to spend it all indoors.

We made it to Hyde Park and cut up through the Kensington Gardens side. It’s Autumn here! Which is not so exciting for most people, but considering I’ve lived in Miami for the last 6 years and mostly grew up in California, changing leaves are a rare sight for me. We saw an area in the park where there seemed to be a lot of people, so we naturally went over to check it out. There were parrots! Lots of them! And they were perching on top of people! A nice couple gave me some peanuts from a bag they had brought and I was able to join in and have parrots climbing all over me to snag peanuts as well. Note to self: bring a bag of peanuts to the park next time.

After walking through the park we were cold, tired and hungry so we took the underground to Marylebone Station to eat pasties from West Cornwall Pasty Company. Pasties are my go to cheap food whenever I’m in London. They’re basically like hand-held pies with different fillings, such as spinach and cheese, beef with veggies or curry chicken. There are always tons of options.

In the afternoon we went to Little Venice, thanks to a suggestion by Cristóbal’s cousin, and took the water bus cruise down the canal to Camden Market! It was such a nice trip and was only 9£ for a 45 minute ride. Camden Market was also worth walking around once we got there. It’s a good thing I don’t have a lot of extra space in my bag right now or I would have bought all sorts of goods at the market that I would be carrying around with me for the next 6 months. I’m trying really hard to pace myself and not add much extra weight!

In the evening we took advantage of the fact that we had already capped our Oyster cards for the day and took the double decker bus around town to Oxford and Regent Streets to see the Christmas lights (when you use your Oyster card on public transport there is a maximum per day rate, so once you reach it, you ride the rest of the day for free!). That way we also got to enjoy the sights of London without being underground, and we got to ride on the top level of a double decker bus.

Day two we got up early to take the train out to Richmond. Since we had both been to London a couple of times before, we planned a couple of less typical things to see. It takes about half an hour to get to Richmond from Chelsea, but it was so worth it! The town itself is adorable and very nice to walk through, but the real gem is the park. The park was about a 20 minute walk from the train station. Richmond Park is huge. We had seen that there were supposedly deer and other wildlife in the park but didn’t expect to see much since we were so rushed. But since we had to take a shortcut through the woods to get back to the entrance, we happened upon 8 deer!

The reason we were in such a hurry in the morning was because we were meeting up with my friend Francis later in the day to go to Greenwich. Again, it wasn’t something we had done before so we thought it would be nice to see. Greenwich is a cute little maritime town and we walked around the naval college, saw the Cutty Sark, and ate fish and chips. The thing that Greenwich is really known for is the observatory where the Prime Meridien runs through (which is also an incredible lookout point). You can actually go into the observatory for a fee and take a picture straddling the Prime Meridien, but we realized that if you just go through a little gate right below the observatory, you can take a picture standing over the line for free! Since our budget has to last us for the next 6 months, we take whatever we can get.

On the way back from Greenwich we made a couple of stops. The first was to see the Tower Bridge lit up at night. The second was to Brick Lane, because I was craving Indian food and was told that this was the place to go. The whole street is lined with Indian restaurants and people trying to convince you that their curry is better than every other place on the street. We ended up at Meraz (which had the best online reviews) and had delicious (albeit spicier than I’m used to) Indian food–the best I’ve had in years.

Our time in London was short, but I felt like we made the most of it. We got to see a lot of new places that we hadn’t seen before and experience a lot more of all of the amazing things that London has to offer.