Photo Diary Adventure – London

I have literally just got back from a trip to London to visit my friend Sophi, and it was very much needed! They house has been very stressful to say the least and my trip to London came up in good time. I booked the trip back in April/May, and due to that it cost me next to sod all! Only £6.00 each way! Can I hear a woo to the motherfuckin’ hoo??!!

Anyway… I decided I would do a little photo diary of my trip down to “the big smoke” (as my dad calls it), because why not?

Due to my anxiety I was really nervous about traveling on my own, but it was really straight forward. I just had to get on a train and sit for just over two hours.

My dad gave me a lift to New Street half an hour before my train was due, which I liked as it gave me time to grab a magazine, a drink (I drink a flat white with vanilla if you were curious), and get to my platform in time to get a good seat.

I managed to grab a good a window seat with a table which was good as it meant I could lean on the table and do some writing. Throughout the journey I did just that whilst listening to my music and wrote some blog posts. I was also talking to a lovely woman from New Zealand throughout the journey, and she was telling me how she had been traveling around Europe for nine weeks, and was getting close to her trip ending.

Finally after the two hour and a bit journey I arrived at London Euston, and was greeted by Sophi up by The Body Shop. YAY! I was pleased that she was able to meet me as I was anxious about getting lost attempted to get out of Euston, or going down to the underground. London does set off my anxiety a tad, even though from this trip I feel more comfortable about it now.

Day I Arrived:

As soon as we met up we decided that food was needed, and went to YO! Sushi for some lunch. We had a good gossip whilst we had our food and it was pretty standard for YO! Sushi really. If you know what I mean.

Soon as we finished our food we headed to the shops, starting off at M&M World. Me and Dane were meant to go there when we were in London last year, but we never did and so I wanted to see what I missed out on! Not going to lie… I didn’t miss much.

Don’t get me wrong, M&M World was good and is definitely somewhere you need to go at least once, but the only thing I liked about it was the pictures I got to take with Sophi. A lot of the products for sale were well overpriced and whilst they were nice, I wouldn’t buy them for myself. Only a massive M&M fan will get a kick from this place. Alas, I didn’t. It was cool though, and I loved nosing at all the stuff that they had on offer, especially the create your own M&M’s! But they were extortionate prices so I left it… Otherwise I would have bought some for me and Dane for when we move into the house.

The next shop we popped in was just next door, which is the Nickelodeon Shop. I prayed that they would sell some Adventure Time goodies, but sadly they didn’t. The majority of stuff for sale in there wasn’t anything I was really interested in, such as Spongebob Square Pants, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Paw Patrol, and Dora the Explorer. They did have something I was interested in mind, even if the section was only small. The Rugrats selection they had wasn’t very big, with only four pieces of clothing on offer, including the t-shirt that I picked up. I will show it off a lot better on a haul post soon, but I love this t-shirt so much! I loved watched the show growing up, so it has some nostalgia to it.

After that we had a walk around various places all the while including (name of shop) which is an old sweet shop, where I got a few goodies, Hamley’s, Japan Centre, and then we went to Choccywoccydoodah!

Choccywoccydoodah is a chocolate shop that also make cakes. But the store in London has a café at the top of the shop which me and Sophi ventured to for a naughty chocolate lunch. I had never heard of it until she told me about it, and insisted that we go. It was pretty damn amazing to be honest… The café that is! It was all done out and reminded me of Moulin Rouge. We had orange lemonade and some dark chocolate melted in pots with biscuits to dunk. It was a real treat to say the least and I’ll definitely be going again, especially with Dane.

As much as I loved the café upstairs I sadly can’t say I felt the same about the shop downstairs. I’m being honest, but I just found that it looked tacky and was crazily overpriced. I guess I’m just a boring cow and love my cakes plain and simple. Is that such a crime? Although I say this I bought me and Dane some chocolate to try, because why not?

After a spot of chocolate overdose we headed to Oxford Street, what I was most excited about! I don’t know why I love shopping on Oxford Street so much but I have a feelings it’s due to how big the shops are. Of course the first shop we had to go into was Lush, why would I pass that up?!

I had some black pots that I wanted to exchange for a face mask, and I knew for ages that I wanted to give Prince of Darkness a go. A lovely member of staff let me try it, as well as a few other face masks on the back of my hand. I knew I’d like this face mask due to the charcoal, and I cannot wait to try it and now and review it for you guys. Alongside that I also picked up a few other goodies including my Oxford Street favourite Supertramp bubble bar, and the new bath bomb Lava Lamp. I was very good to say the least and didn’t buy more things, even though strangely I didn’t want much more.

After this we looked around various other shops on Oxford Street before our final destination being Topshop. Oh my God, it was huge, I couldn’t believe it to be honest. The floor you walk into is just nothing but accessories, no clothes or anything. I was taken back by how much stuff there was on the floor, including a Bubbleology, and a Lola’s Cupcakes. We bought some bubble tea from there to drink, and I’m not going to sugar coat it, the staff were rude and it wasn’t made properly. I drink bubble tea a lot and watch how it’s made, so I know when it’s been right or not.

Other than that, I wasn’t completely disappointed by my trip into the Oxford Street Topshop. I ended up buying a real treat from there that I will love for years, my new yellow raincoat. YES I said yellow! 😛 I will talk more about it in my haul that will be up in a few days, but I wore this for the majority of my stay in London, and it was so cosy, and warm, and of course was waterproof for all the crap rain we had down there. I cannot wait to do some look book posts with it.

After that we finally decided to call it a day and headed home. We stayed up until late nattering away about all sorts, as well as planning what we could do the next day!

Day One:

I woke up bright and early for the long, and exciting day ahead of us. In fact I woke up a whole two hours before Sophi did! It was because a delivery van woke me up and I couldn’t get back to sleep so I decided to text Dane for a while as he got ready for work, and was at the house. I also sorted out my suitcase by putting stuff in there what I had bought the day before.

The weather wasn’t exactly amazing whilst I was down there and the majority of the time it rained… The full day I was there wasn’t any different and it rained a lot! Good job I had my new raincoat, eh? 😛

Something I loved about getting the train from where Sophi lives (Harlow) is on the way into London you can see the gherkin, and The Shard! I had to of course get a sneaky picture of this.

We had already decided months before that we would be going shopping at the Stratford shopping centre, but not until we had gone to Bubba Gump Shrimp for lunch! I wanted to go when me and Dane were in London but as never really got time, and we worried we wouldn’t like what was on the menu, as he isn’t a massive fan of fish.

I really enjoyed going there, and I loved the food we shared too. Sophi had been before, she knew what to recommend for us to eat. When I had looked at the menu back when I ordered my train tickets I decided on a chicken burger, but what’s the point in going to a shrimp restaurant if you eat chicken??? Exactly! In the end I decided on a cherry fizzer drink, and for food we ordered garlic bread (which let me tell you were HUGE!), shrimp shack mac & cheese, and Forrest’s seafood feast.

Not only did I enjoy the food, but I loved the decor of the restaurant too! To make it better, they had Forrest Gump playing in the background, which I loved. It isn’t the cheapest place in the world, but £39 for two people and drinks wasn’t bad in my eyes. I would and will gladly go again.

So our next stop was the Stratford shopping centre! Which I was really excited to go to as I have heard nothing but good things about it from Sophi, and I also heard how big it is before I went down to London. If you’ve never been, it is like two Birmingham Bullring’s, if not bigger than that!

I saw various things I liked and wanted to buy, and various things I liked and ended up being naughty and picking up. These are in my haul post here.

The one thing I really regret not picking up was this Deadpool picture from HMV. I can’t even find it on the website to order! As I always say on majority of my posts these days, I love Deadpool, and so does Dane. I would love this picture to put up in the spare room, as it would just look awesome! It wasn’t cheap at £14.99, but to be honest I don’t mind paying that for Deadpool. I can see me picking this up next time I’m near a HMV.

I also eyed up this Totoro bento box in The Japan Centre, but I didn’t get it because of the size of it, and I don’t really need it. It was only £12.99, so maybe next time I’ll pick one up!

Then after I was shopped out and very tired, me and Sophi headed home (aka her flat) and relaxed for the evening. We had something to eat, and watched Lilo and Stitch before we went to bed. I was shattered so we got an early night. Before I went to sleep I tidied my suitcase so that I wouldn’t need to do it the  next day.

Going Home:

It was time to head home, and as my train wasn’t due to leave until 2.13pm it meant we could chill out for a while in the flat before heading into London. We didn’t do much really, just made sure my bag was all packed and such, as well as have some breakfast and get showered and dressed.

We left the house nice and early to make sure we were in Euston for time to have a coffee before I left and a chat. We popped to Starbucks and Sophi treated me to their new S’Mores drink (which was really nommy!) and a toastie. I showed her Bee & Puppycat, and we chatted about what she could do with the rest of her day.

Eventually it came to be time for me to get onto my train, and I was really sad to be saying goodbye. I had an amazing couple of days with Sophi, and I honestly cannot wait to do it again soon!

My train journey wasn’t as quiet as it was going into London, and I couldn’t wait for people to get off at stops so I could just chill out. I was going to try and get a blog post or two written, but in the end I just played games on my phone and listened to music.

Eventually I got back to New Street, and good ol’ Brum with my dad waiting to pick me up.

As much as I loved London and seeing Sophi, I just wanted to get back home so I could give Dane his box of goodies, as well as start working on the house again. It was nice to have a break and escape reality for a while, but you can’t run away forever.

I’m hoping to go down to London again soon to stay with Sophi, as it’s just too much fun to wait until Christmas to go again! I also apologise for not having so many pictures towards the end of this post, I was kinda too busy to take anymore. 😛

I’m hoping to start doing more photo diary related posts, as I love reading things like this myself. Did you enjoy this style of post from me? Make sure to let me know in the comments! If you liked it, I’ll certainly do more.

Until next time, take care all and I hope you have a great weekend.

So I’m Back From London…

And it was amazing! I don’t think I have had such a busy weekend in all my life, and if I have I can’t even recall it.

We’ve been back home nearly two days now and I’m still feeling sluggish and tired. London is such a huge place, bigger than I expected it to be and not to mention very busy too.

We had so much to do everyday and night that we never ran out of things, so much so we didn’t get to do half the things we had written down and planned, which sucks but that can be for another trip to London in the future.

So I’m basically going to explain to you what we did! There will probably be mostly iPhone pictures used for this post as I only took my camera out with me one day and that was the last day we were in London.

We set off pretty early in the morning and it was a nice trip down… The only thing I hated about that day mind was my hay fever. I suffered really badly that day and I was trying so hard not to let it get to me. I Bristol last year my hay fever was awful and I let it get me down on our first day there.

The hotel we stayed in was lovely and in a perfect location. Not only that, the staff were amazing! We arrived two hours before check in and the receptionist sorted it out so we could check in early. After having our packed lunch and sorted everything out in the room we headed out to the center of London to go shopping. We weren’t planning on doing much as we didn’t go to shop. We were meant to go to the Natural History Museum that day but if we weren’t getting distracted, we were getting lost.

Let me just talk about The London Underground. Oh my God. I hate trains and how fast they go, it can make me anxious and only recently due to traveling back and forth from Coventry to see my boyfriend and Cheltenham for university I’ve started to feel a little less anxious. The first time I got on one of the trains I felt so anxious. But I felt a little better after that. Our experience with The Underground was a pretty good one! We didn’t get lost, found our way around each line with ease, and even got on trains in good time. No delays and half the time the train we needed was there, or was just turning up as we reached the platform.

I won’t lie, I wish we had an Underground in Birmingham… But our trains are pretty decent anyway. Also the DLR was pretty awesome! Although it didn’t feel like a train to be honest… OH and speaking of trains, The Underground train was TINY! I don’t know how tall people deal with it to be honest. It was also baking in there due to the heat outside.

That was something else we were blessed with, gorgeous weather. The only day the weather was crap was the day we were due to leave and we had prepared ourselves for it with my huge umbrella and less summer clothing.

So onto what we did on the Friday! The first place we went to was the Lush store on Oxford Street and boy, was it big! Three floors and plenty of yummy things around to sniff and test out. I don’t want to talk too much about that here as I want to write a separate post for that. I spent quite a bit of money in there, but it was so worth it. I already can’t wait to go back to the store, or at least hear from Lush that they’re releasing the limited edition products into  more stores very soon.

As we walked around by Oxford Street we ended up getting onto Regent Street, we don’t even know how and we saw so many awesome stores, including Hamley’s. We only have a look on a couple of floors as we intended on going back but alas, we never did. I saw a cute plushie German Shephard I was going to buy my boyfriend… But due to how much it cost I left it. BUT that being said, the plushies and toys in the store were gorgeous and well worth the money.

We went for bubble tea before this and I can’t remember for the life of me what the stall was called… It wasn’t the best matcha bubble tea I’ve had in my life but it wasn’t terrible either.

Stumbling upon Trafalgar Square we ended up watching an awesome street performer from Australia for about half an hour. His performance was amazing and we made sure to give him some money before we left. It’s a shame that we didn’t catch his name as I would have mentioned it here otherwise.

Not long after this we headed towards where we were planning to go and watch The Book of Mormon and I got so excited by how many posters and decorations were around for it on the building. I was literally “star struck” even though there weren’t any stars around…

Before we headed back we ended up walking to Westminster and I felt so touristy and stuff when I saw The London Eye and Big Ben. I took so many pictures on my boyfriends phone and on the Sunday we went back to get loads of pictures. That moment I really did feel like a tourist. I had zero fucks to give!

We went back to the hotel and got freshened up and dressed into our evening wear for the musical.  Once again I don’t want to talk about this too much here, as I wish to talk about that in a separate post.BUT it was amazing! I’ve not been a huge fan of musicals for years and I can imagine due to how many cheesy ones are around lately… And hyped ones too. This isn’t one I had heard about until my boyfriend and his friends discussed it around the end of 2014 as they had been to watch it. But this has definitely converted me again to watch more musicals as it was just mind-blowing. Very different and as it’s written by Trey Parker and Matt Stone, the creators of South Park, it’s just made me realise how much I love those guys.

We were wanting to have dinner beforehand, but had no time so ate afterwards. We went to a really nice Japanese restaurant called Shoryu which we had spotted in the daytime and wanted to visit. I won’t lie, I was a little sad that they didn’t have any sushi on offer as it was purely for ramen… But the ramen we both had was delicious! I had curry and it was super yummy, with one of the nicest boiled eggs I have ever had. I would recommend it if you want some good ramen at an equally good price.

We didn’t get back to the hotel until late and went straight to sleep, as we had an early start the next day…

On Saturday, we spent pretty much most of the day at Hyper Japan and it was just as good as I imagined it was and more. We wanted to be awake at 7am to get ready, have some breakfast, and head over to the O2 where it was being held. This didn’t go to plan… We woke up at 8am, was ready for around 9am and went to eat. Our breakfast was perfect and not long after we were on our way to the O2.

We ended up getting on one of the cable cars over to the O2, which I was shitting myself about! I hadn’t been on one since I was in year 7 at school when we went to Alton Towers and then my anxiety was that bad. I was anxious for the majority of the trip over, however back it wasn’t so bad and I really enjoyed it. We were sad that we couldn’t go onto the cable cart again when we were going home from Hyper Japan, as it closed at 8pm. We wanted a late trip over as it was dark, alas we will have to wait until winter when it’s dark early to get a gorgeous light view.

Anyway, Hyper Japan! Once again I won’t go into too much detail as I want to write a post about this too. But it sure kept us busy for the day and it was so much fun. However, me and my boyfriend have read nothing but negativity about the event which were a little sad about… But of course I’ll talk about that in the other post.

When we got home from the event we had a lovely bath with one of the bath oils I bought my boyfriend and we had a snuggle together and then went to bed. We were shattered and were making sure we had a lie in.

Which we did as we woke up at 9am the next day. We both grabbed a shower and got everything ready to head home. The hotel was lovely enough to let us leave our car in their car park which we went up to London for the day. But before we headed into the centre, we decided to go to Shoreditch to check out the Cereal Killer Cafe for breakfast. It was somewhere I had discovered online and we knew we had to go! Once again, I will be writing a review about this place. I just wish so badly that we had something like this in Birmingham as it was amazing. I regret not having the cereal my boyfriend had. But mine was yummy and I can buy it (for a hefty price!) if I really want it… More about that though in the post.

We headed back to London so that we could go to the Natural History Museum and get some Japanese lunch from the Japan Centre. We also intended to do a little more shopping but we never got around to doing that purely because the weather went from okay to worse in a matter of minutes! We luckily had my umbrella but it was busy and the weather was crap. Plus we were exhausted after two days of constantly being on our feet. So we headed back to the hotel and we were soon on our way home.

I won’t lie, I wasn’t sad about leaving London… Not like I was about Bristol anyway. I was crying on my way back from Bristol as that was a city I really do love and want to go back as soon as I can. London was just too big and busy and there’s just enough time in a day to do everything you want to do. You do need to live in London, nearby London, or at least stay there a week to get everything done.

I would like to go back for Hyper Japan’s Christmas Market in November but due to how expensive London has been, this may not happen…

So, would I recommend London? Hell yeah! If you wanna go see a musical make a weekend out of it for sure. If you wanna go shopping, definitely go as there’s so many shops and most of them don’t shut until something crazy like 10pm! The only thing I had a problem with in London was food… I didn’t feel like there was anything special, but me and my boyfriend experienced this in Bristol too… But that might just be us.

Japanese related, I loved London. There was the Japan Centre, as well as some Japanese shops we visited nearby that we loved.

I will be making a separate post of places I still want to go into in London, but that may not be for a while.

I apologise for how long this post was, but I just wanted to share with my readers how much fun we had and all the things that we did. I just cannot wait to talk more about the things we mainly went to London to do. This is the order they’re going to go in:

Lush Oxford Street and a Haul.

The Book of Mormon and a Haul.

Hyper Japan and a Haul.

Cereal Killer Cafe.

London Haul.

As well as a couple of more. When these posts are written I will link them back to this post.

I cannot wait to share these experiences with my readers. The rest of July is going to be London heavy, which I apologise about.

I hope everyone had as good a weekend as I did. Until next time, take care all.