" There's no where else like London. Nothing at all, anywhere."
Quote by Vivienne Westwood
We entered the Metro (aka "The Tube") station to a blaring voice announcing "MIND THE GAP" (If you visit London and plan on riding the metro, be prepared to hear this phrase A LOT). We hopped on the metro to Gloucester Road and stayed in an apartment pretty close to the metro station (about a 5 minute walk) which was extremely convenient as the metro was our main source of transportation.
Our agenda for the trip was packed and included many museums (we visited the National War Museum, National Gallery, and the Natural History Museum), strolls around the city, grabbing a quick bite at Pret-A-Manger (the super fresh boxed salads there are amazing) or Borough Market (which has the BEST Indian food - the Dosas are too die for!). The mini supermarkets scattered across the city were another great option for fresh food! The packaged falafel was the. best.
Our favorite part of any trip is strolling around and immersing ourselves in the culture and lifestyle and this trip was no exception. From our daytime strolls in some of London's finest neighborhoods such as Chelsea (where we sat down for afternoon tea at arguably one of London's most "instagramable" spots - Peggy Porschen Cakes!) and Notting Hill (cutest houses you'll ever see... we promise) to night time walks and bar-standing around SoHo and Trafalgar Square, our days were packed with activity.
And of course, we didn't forget to visit some tourist highlights such as Buckingham Palace, Big Ben, the London Eye, Royal Albert Hall, and Hyde Park. Buckingham Palace was absolutely stunning but very crowded as well which we had anticipated. Hyde Park was beautiful, laced with gorgeous flowers and the Kensington Gardens. But our favorite thing about Hyde Park was definitely the SQUIRRELS. You'll see in our London Travel Diary Video linked in this post that we were obsessed (to put it lightly) with the squirrels, which are for some reason WAY friendlier in London than they are in America.
During our stay in England, we hopped over to Windsor to visit the Windsor Castle, which was absolutely stunning! We were able to walk around the entire outside of the castle and go inside as well. Afterwards, we walked around the cute town and sat down for some pasta and delicious gelato.
Another amazing experience for us was watching the FA Cup! Our dad is a major soccer fan but an even bigger fan of his favorite team, Arsenal. Being around his love for soccer has definitely turned us into Arsenal fans as well, which is why we were so excited to watch the FA Cup (and Arsenal win!). If we're being completely honest though, we were commenting more on how hot the players were than what was actually going on in the game 😂.
On one of our last days, we finally made it to the London Eye. Kalina does not love heights and was barely convinced to go on the London Eye, while Ivana was literally laughing 😂 (not nice haha). But the whole family ended up really enjoying the experience and seeing London from high up!
We made some amazing memories in London this summer and fell in love with the vibe of the city! The architecture was beautiful in true European style and being able to walk everywhere was a major bonus! Like we mentioned earlier in this post, we relied on public transportation such as the metro and double decker buses to get us around the city, but we still somehow managed to get lost. In our video travel diary, you'll see that we got "LOST IN LONDON" quite a few times but we eventually found our way. We are so lucky that we got to check another country off of our bucket list! Thank you for the memories, London ❤
