🇬🇧 London IV – Around London

Around London

One great thing about London is that if you combine walking and the underground tubes you can have many adventures in one day. Some of the areas we explored were;

Little Venice

This is a pretty canal front near Paddington Station. The canal is lined with colourful houseboats. Flowers were bursting out around nearby parks. The waterways were full of carpets of duck weed which added character. The dockside building were live with many cafes and of course there was that special beloved bear called Paddington.

We then couldn’t resist checking out iconic Paddington Station and visiting The Paddington Bear Shop, which in turn lead us to watch both beloved Paddington Bear movies which were really well done.

At Notting Hill we checked out the oldest cinema in London called The Electric Cinema which is just stunning. It was built in 1910 specifically for motion picture exhibitions. It is fitted with some double lounges and elegant lighting which resembles a very classy gold class cinema in a trendy area.

Rob was keen to take me to the Notting Hill book store famous from the Hugh Grant movie Notting Hill though we don’t think it was used in the filming of the movie. Rob being a true romantic he brought me a hard cover back vintage style copy of my favourite childhood fairytale story Beauty and the Beast. This is a stunning book as it is written in old style language and is full of hidden pop out treasures.

We wandered through Portobello Market which is great for antiques.

On another outing we wandered around the streets of Chelsea. This is a playground for the young rich ones but nothing out of the ordinary!!! With the right lens TV can make anything look more glamorous than it really is. Sorry to the producers of Made in Chelsea!!! We stopped near a fountain in Sloane Square to grab a little shade from the heat and we admired some cute statues.

At West End I got to relive my favourite fairytales at the Disney Shop.

Every underground station we passed felt familiar, oh why!!! Yes that would be because of Monopoly. I am sure I bought houses in Bond Street!!

Soho and Covent Garden was an area we just had to visit again. It is full of theatres, cafes and great shops even though we don’t have extra money to waste we were just enjoying the atmosphere of this pretty area.

We explored some new sights we didn’t see last time we were in London. One new place we were eager to explore was St. Dunstan in the East a peaceful public garden surround by the remaining ruined walls of the church bombed in the Blitz. This was another hidden gem not far from Tower Bridge that tourists didn’t seem to know about.

Near Borough Markets we wandered upon Winchester Palace which took us by surprise as it is one of the most largest and important buildings in medieval London!!! Founded in the 12th century it was built to house the bishop comfortably when he was in London on royal business.

Near here we also saw a reconstructed replica of the 1577 Golden Hinde sailing vessel.

We combined our days with lots of walking and then we caught the tube home after each adventure.

And there were many old favourite sights that make up iconic London like the beautiful Tower Bridge, The Shard, The Gherkin, Town Hall and the Monument tower for the great fires of London in 1666. Only one fifth of London was left standing from the devastating fires. This was a community of people who had only a year earlier had survived the plague and now were left homeless. A positive note was only 5 people died in the great fire which took hold around midnight and burned for 4 days.

During our stay you could liken the weather here in London to that in Melbourne. We had unbearable high temperatures reaching 38 to moderate temperatures around 20 degrees. There were blazing blue skies to angry lightning and thunderstorms and threatening hail. We saw heavy rain to light rain. Then the winds came whirling through causing the leaves to drop their leaves as if Autumn had arrived in every tree lined street.

One of Rob’s favourite things was buying every Saturday British Newspaper he could get his hands on.

We also took advantage of the special Monday cheap movie deal at the local cinema. We we surprised to be nearly the only ones catching a movie during peak school holidays in the heat of the day. Brits love to get in as much sun as possible before it disappears!!!! Whereas we were glad for a little relief from the hot summer weather!