Lying ass bitches, a dumb ass museum, and all the gravy {London 2016}

Day nine ~ August 1st

Today I woke up feeling great after having actually slept next to my adorable boyfriend. We had slept on the futon in the living room and put dad in the bedroom. He had his own Airbnb that he was checking into tonight, but that first night we got in so late that it made sense for him to stay with us. We were house sitting for a lesbian couple I had met in a women’s group on Facebook. All we had to do was feed their cats for two weeks while they were gone.

Dad hung back at the apartment to shower and get sorted while we walked into town for coffee. We went to the cutest little cafe and drank our flat white’s sitting outside on the sidewalk. He had a scone and I had an incredible slice of lemon cake. 

We walked back home, had some eggs and then went to Greenwich Park with Elizabeth and my dad. It was such a beautiful day and the park was so pretty. We threw frisbee for a while and then walked into the other part of the town center for fish and chips at The Golden Chippy

Kris pointed out a restaurant he and Elizabeth had tried to eat at, but the hostess said the upstairs outdoor terrace was closed because the lights of the terrace at night distract the water taxi drivers. 

Kris: "What kind of water taxi driver is fucked up over roof terrace lighting?"

Elizabeth: "Yeah - and later, we saw people sitting up there. So that lady was a lying bitch."

Then Elizabeth pointed out this shitty pizza place they went to and she said, "This place is good if you're single, lonely, and haven't had a good meal in a while. But we have fully developed palettes. So for us it sucked."

LOLOLOLOLOLOLOL. 

We walked around town a bit more and ended up at this really cute cafe called Peyton & Byrne having Victoria sponge cake and Chelsea buns.

Then we all parted ways and Kris and I headed to the store for dinner. We went back home and made yummy BLT salads and bread and wine and ate in the adorable kitchen at the adorable little table entertained by the cats. 

Day ten ~ August 2nd

This morning we started at the Sky Garden. I thought I had made reservations, but somehow I had fucked it up and thankfully the nice lady let us up anyway. It's a beautiful indoor garden on the top floor of a giant building. The walls are glass, there is a 360 degree view of London, and they have a coffee shop that is on point. It was a great experience. Even raining, the view was amazeballs:

And what the actual fuck with this little red headed angel just chillin with his comic book??

Afterwards we made our way to The Orangery for afternoon tea. The Orangery is attached to Kensington Palace and it's a beautiful light filled space with lots of windows. You eat off of proper China and it's a pretty classic experience. 

There was interesting commentary on what our various teas tasted like.....
A Rubber tire
Cough syrup
Like mine but with less flavor
Like you dipped your post workout balls in it
Like your taint stink

We spent the rest of the afternoon wandering up and down Portobello Road in Notting Hill:

Elizabeth: Is he, like, the duch......ess.....man?"

Kris: Uh. You mean The Duke?

My boyfriend stumbled into this adorable shop called Stumper & Fielding where he ended up purchasing a legit man satchel. The salesman was the cutest, most cliche looking British guy ever and he high fived me. A slap I'll remember forever

Day 11 ~ August 3rd

The Kitchen was our first stop today - it's right next to the Tower of London, they have great outdoor seating, and the full English + a coffee is only 6.50 if you get there before 11. 

We spent the next few hours exploring the Tower of London - I think it's the only thing we've paid to do so far and it's totally worth it.  

After we had our fill there we walked across the Tower Bridge and all the way down the south bank of the Thames to the grassy spot right next to the London Eye. We got food from Eat, a little cafe stocked with sandwiches and salads to go, and lounged for a while.  

My dad and Eizabeth went home after that and Kris and I took a walk through Covent Garden before heading home to watch the sunset on top of the hill in Greenwich Park

Day 12 ~ August 4th

Today we all met at Borough Market and started with flat white's from this magic coffee stand Kris discovered. We wandered all through the food stalls and picked up a few treats for later…

….before heading to Camden Town to wander through the market stalls there. 

Alongside the Camden Market you can duck down onto a little path that follows Regent's Canal and that is super cute and adorable.

We walked along that path all the way to primrose hill and that had a really amazing view of London

Then we had cream tea at a cafe in Regent's Park (literally all of the parks in London have one or more fantastic cafes on the grounds) and it was delicious and loaded with clotted cream.

Me: You're cute af
Him: I'm gassy af
Me: You know....some things you can keep to yourself.
Him: I can't keep that to myself. It's comin' out my asshole. 

After tea we walked down Regent's Street all the way to Fortumn & Mason. It seemed like a funny thing to go to a destination department store, but this place was no fucking joke. 

It was like walking into an alternate universe. I don't even know how to describe it. Chocolate fountains, glass cases full of truffles, champagne Popsicles, designer shoes and clothes, exotic bottles of wine and olive oil, it was crazy.  

We stumbled out of F&M into Piccadilly Circle and started thinking about dinner — my dad wanted to buy us all dinner (maybe he was sick of getting to-go food from M&S? Ha.) The Queen's Head was our dinner spot - a super cute pub that had been there since the 1700s. My dad had stuffed chicken breast, Kris had a meat pie, and Elizabeth and I shared a goat's cheese and asparagus pie. It was stupid good.

I wanted to watch the sunset and we were close to the south bank so we walked across the Waterloo bridge and ended up stopping for nearly half an hour to listen to a random band that was set up. They were seriously amazing. It was a great way to end the night.

Day 13 ~ August 5th

Today we planned to meet at the train station and head out to Brighton, but we never were able to find my dad so we had to go on without him since we didn't have phones or anything. 

Brighton ended up being totally worth doing - an adorable little seaside town about an hour south on the train.

It was too cold to go in the water, but we went down to the shore and sat on the beach. It was all rocks, but was surprisingly comfortable and in some ways was better than sand because it didn't get everywhere.

The town itself was filled with adorable vintage shops and cafes and was just super darling. Here’s us on the boardwalk:

There were just endless tiny cute streets full of tiny cute shops to wander through so we did that for some hours, stopping to pose for photos in an alley, as one does:

Then we walked way uphill to this pub I had read about called The Setting Sun. They had a great terrace that overlooked the town and the water and was full of beautiful people, one of them being an adorable gay man. His name was Drew, he lives in Florida and is traveling Europe for several months like us. We are going to be in Berlin around the same time next week so we friended each other so we could try to meet up there.  

After the pub, we got food at M&S and walked down to the beach where we had the shittiest beach sunset picnic of all time. Ha! The food we all chose was delicious, but the wind had picked up and obviously the sun was down and we were all chilled to the bone.

We ate super fast and ran back to the train to get warm and go home. Elizabeth had taken a bunch of pictures of us that day, including this one on the train home, and she posted them with the cutest caption:

“These two are the sweetest and realest lovers around. I've never seen two people laugh so often together. They even just look at each other every two minutes with the most adorable gazes. It sweetens literally everything. What makes this trip even better than being in incredibly beautiful places every day is being surrounded by their love all the time.”

Day 14 ~ August 6th

The Green Cafe is in the middle of Greenwich where we're all staying so we met there for breakfast today. It's cheap, the coffee is good and the portions are large and super yummy. I had a delicious freshly baked waffle and Kris had a Mediterranean version of a full English.

It turned out dad had been fine yesterday — he had been at the train station, but somehow we didn’t find each other. He ended up eventually just leaving and going to Borough Market to get some food — I thought that was really cool of him! I think maybe he even went to the Maritime Museum back in Greewich? And then he ended up doing laundry at his Airbnb and reading the paper at a cafe. I felt better that it sounded like he’d had a good day by himself.

Our next stop was The Geffrye Museum - a small, free museum that took you through the history of British housing from the 1600s to now. So it had a bunch of rooms set up showing how houses changed over the years. Totally fascinating. They also had a really beautiful large garden out back that we lounged in for a while. 

And a tiny chair that Kris sat in:

Afterwards we walked over to Victoria Park:

We hung out for a while and then Elizabeth headed home, my dad walked the canal path from the park to Cutty Sark, and Kris and I stayed behind and walked deeper into the park and played frisbee for a while, before heading over to this hip pub we had heard about called the Culpepper. There was a two hour wait to get onto the roof garden though so we just left and headed home to freshen up. 

A few hours later we got dinner at M&S and took it up to the top of the hill in Greenwich park to eat and watch the sunset.

Then we headed to The Vanbrugh, an adorable pub that we've walked by every day on our way home from the train and wondered about. It was so cute inside and has a great garden space out back to lounge in. 

Day 15 ~ August 7th

Parcafe was our first stop today. I had read about it being a fancy coffee shop experience on Park Lane and it totally was. It is attached to the Dorcester Hotel, which is equivalent to The Plaza in New York City. The cafe did not disappoint. The barista was so accommodating and we each had coffees and croissants and sat in the cooshy leather chairs lining the window. It was fabulous. 

The British Museum was our next stop and that was awful. It was gigantic and super hot inside on account of all the old shit that needed the proper humidity, and filled with gaggles of idiot tourists flocking to see the "greatest collection of art in the world". Maybe so, but it was not pretty inside, very poorly laid out and not engaging or accessible at all. We walked around for maybe 30 minutes and then got the fuck out of the there. 

Thankfully next we stumbled on Neal's Yard, which totally blew our minds. You duck down this random alley off of a main road and find yourself in an absolute wonderland. 

I also took this adorable photo of my boyfriend on the bus:

We had some time to kill before dinner so we wandered through the Victoria Embankment Garden:

And then got back on the train back to Greenwich for Sunday dinner. Elizabeth literally nearly finished a whole gravy boat all to herself. And she was rill sad when it was gone.

Dinner was super yummy and classic - roast beef, lamb, potatoes, carrots, cabbage, broccoli and a load of gravy.

After dinner we went to The Vanbrugh again and lounged outside in the back for awhile with ciders before heading to M&S to get dessert to eat at the top of the hill at sunset again. 

When we were walking home I said: That's the second snail I've seen without a shell.
Him: Uh....those are slugs.
Me: Oh. So that's like a whole other deal?

A great end to the second week of our trip!

P.S. here’s a few random cute pictures of me: