Friday, 16 June
After arriving Sunday evening in London, we only had one mission: to find authentic English pub food.
Luckily, our hotel in the Bankside area was well located near many restaurant and bar options, so it did not take us too long to find a nice spot at The Boot & Flogger. I ended up getting a veggie burger and my mom went for the fish and chips. The food, while nice, was not spectaular; however, the charming, historic atmosphere of the restaurant set a perfect mood for the start of our holiday.
Although we did not travel far from the hotel on this first night, both my mom and I are notoriously bad with directions. We ended up getting lost for the first (but not the last!) time in our trip within 5 minutes of the hotel. Only with the help of Google Maps were we finally able to make it home.
Saturday, 17 June
We started Saturday by visiting the Borough Market, which is a HUGE open air market that was located near us in Bankside. The market was very busy, but we were able to get a number of high-quality items, including tea, cheese, chutney, and, most importantly, a delicious lemon blueberry muffin from the Bread Ahead Bakery, which also offers bread-making classes in their bakery school adjacent to the market.
Harry Potter studio tour
The Warner Brothers studio was over an hour away from Bankside, but it was well worth the drive! It was super interesting to learn more about how the Harry Potter movies were made, especially since neither of us had ever been on any other studio tours previously.
Sunday, 18 June
We covered a lot of ground on Sunday! We started by taking the Uber Boats ferry over to the British Museum, where we managed to see many of the top pieces, including the Rosetta Stone. After that, we wandered across SoHo and Chinatown. We stopped at one particularly charming and quirky bar called Mr. Fogg’s Pawnbrokers, which had many unique cocktails. The earl gray cocktail was especially well done and is one of my favorite cocktails I’ve tried! We ended up running very low on phone charge, but managed to barely make it back to the hotel despite several wrong turns that left us “35 minutes from destination” for quite some time…
Monday, 19 June
Monday was a classy day for us.
High tea at the Shard
We enjoyed high tea from the 35th floor of the famous Shard building in the TĪNG restaurant. The fancy finger foods and constant stream of teas were all you could want from an afternoon tea in London, especially coupled with the breath-taking views.
Exploring the city & Jazz night
After tea time, we again took to travelling by foot towards the city center. We made stops at a pub and the expansive Hyde Park before making our way back to SoHo, where we had plans to attend a jazz show at Ronnie Scott’s Jazz Club. Nikki Yeoh’s jazz trio gave a fantastic performance and the cozy environment of the club was perfect for our last night in the city.
Tuesday, 20 June
With our last day, we made sure to visit the Tate Modern Museum, which was conveniently close to our hotel. The museum was exhibiting works by Piet Mondrian and Hilma af Klint together, who both started by painting more conventional landscapes that later informed their abstract art. Even though we initially picked this exhibit due to our familiarity with Mondrian, we actually ended up enjoying af Klint’s artwork even more!
Our final stop before heading to the airport was lunch at the Frano Manca restaurant for sourdough pizza. While the service here was a bit iffy (we saw our server mix up multiple orders, including our own), the pizza was delicious. We headed out towards the London City Airport full and happy!
Last modified on 2024-06-15