London Calling (again)

Well, last week was a busy week! My parents came to visit, so, of course, we had to do some exploring.  Anyway, since we were so busy last week, I didn't get a chance to post, so it'll have to be this week instead!

Since London is just a quick train ride from Slough, that is where we started our week. We would have a car the rest of the week, and we definitely did not want to drive in London - there's really no point, the tube goes everywhere... Besides, traffic is crowded and unpredictable, drivers are impatient - not a good environment for a tourist used to driving on the OTHER side of the road!

Quick tip: if you are going to be traveling around London, get a travelcard or an oyster card (the contactless payment card for London transport) onto which you can load a travelcard. You get unlimited travel in London. If you are traveling from outside of London, for instance from Slough, you can get a combined return train ticket and travelcard. It is a great deal and costs only a few pounds more than the return ticket itself. One or two rides on the underground is DEFINITELY worth it, more than that and it's a total bargain. 

Trafalgar Square

Our first priority, thanks to my artist mom, was the National Portrait Gallery, which is behind the National Gallery at Trafalgar Square (http://www.npg.org.uk/). It's a pretty cool place to visit if you are interested in portraiture - there's so many different styles from across the centuries for you to absorb. It's also interesting if you are fascinated by the stories about people. There are a lot of portraits of celebrities, historical as well as contemporary, and each one includes a brief story about the subject of the painting. It's a smallish gallery - compared to the National Gallery - but there's a lot to see and read. We spent a couple hours there. If you're not so interested in portraiture or people, but you do like art, I recommend the National Gallery (http://www.nationalgallery.org.uk/).

National Gallery - Unfortunately I didn't take a picture of the National Portrait Gallery, but it's right behind this one. Take the tube to Charing Cross and you will see this gallery on exiting. Walk down the street to the right of the National Gallery and you will find a door to the NPG.

We had planned on taking a boat to Kew Gardens, but once we had finished at the gallery and eaten, we had missed the last boat. So, instead of going to Kew, we headed on a boat tour down the Thames with a different company. The tour was probably about an hour and a half altogether, which seemed pretty short. However, there is an option to "hop-on, hop-off" which we didn't take, since we had already visited most of the sights on a previous trip to England, but I imagine it's a pretty good option. We did that with one of the City Tour buses last trip and it really is pretty convenient - especially if you don't know London very well. Of course, the advantage of the boat tour is that you don't run into traffic and you get great views! (Link for both the bus and boat tours:  http://www.citycruises.com/sightseeing.aspx)

One of the many wonderful views from the boat

Victoria and Albert Museum

Because we hadn't made it to Kew, we didn't have a plan for after the boat tour, so I suggested the Victoria and Albert Museum (http://www.vam.ac.uk/), which I had loved when I visited a few months ago. It was only open for another hour and a half but we decided to go for a quick visit. The V&A Museum was founded in 1852 and named after Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. It's a design and art based museum, showcasing all different types of design, from ceramics to ironwork, furniture, architecture, fashion and any other design-related subjects you can think of. Since the opening of the museum, it seems as if the collections have just grown like crazy. There are millions of objects and artifacts, spanning continents and millennia, all spread through about 145 different galleries. It is now the world's largest museum of its kind. Though it is huge and impossible to see everything in one full day, never mind a mere hour, it was definitely worth the short visit and my parents enjoyed what little they saw.

Quick tip: the wonderful thing about London is that all the galleries and museums are free. If you're not sure about one or you're running low on time, just pop in and check it out. If you leave after a couple minutes, there's really no loss to you... or you might find a new favourite to return to another day. 

After a pint and pub food, we headed home for the night.

Good food in London:

Waiting in line at Leon

• Poppies Fish and Chips - delicious, though a bit on the greasy side. Portions were huge and we ate two regular size Haddock & Chips between the three of us. We visited the Spitalfields location, but there is another one in Camden. http://poppiesfishandchips.co.uk/
• Leon - Before visiting a Leon restaurant, my mom and I owned 3 of their cookbooks between the two of us. Their cookbooks are sold at Homesense in Canada, but, as far as I know, there aren't any Leon restaurants in Canada. The recipes in their cookbooks always turn out well, so we thought we should probably give the restaurant itself a try. It's a chain of restaurants with the logo "Naturally Fast Food." There are about 20 locations throughout London, so chances are you can find one nearby, especially in Central London. It was excellent and healthy, but some of the recipes I had tried at home tasted very different. Both tasted delicious just... different. It is worth giving Leon a try if you would like a quick, delicious lunch or dinner in London http://leonrestaurants.co.uk/

Until next time,

xx from London