TRAVEL
Two Full Days in London
A little bit of everything to please 4 different people
I can see why solo traveling is so appealing. Making 4 people happy on a trip to a big city is difficult.
We have four different personalities to please in my household. Some of them love certain activities while loathing others.
The one who loves to eat that hates to walk
The Harry Potter Fan that doesn’t like to thrift shop
The shopper and music lover that doesn’t like to be rushed
The explorer and photographer that doesn’t like complainers
How was each personality and traveler pleased on a two-day trip to London? Well, technically it was 3 nights, but we were happy and jet-lagged the first night with no complaints.
Easy answer, we fit in a wide range of activities to somewhat please everyone, although there was still the occasional complaint.
The one who loves to eat
My husband’s favorite travel activity is eating. I mean, that’s his favorite activity anywhere he goes and at home. So, he is easy to please in this regard.
We went to two outstanding restaurants while we were here in London.
After we toured the Tower of London and Tower Bridge we headed down the boardwalk searching for a lunch spot.
We all go through a song and dance of searching yelp and other sources for a perfect amount of stars, location, and menu selection. We are all used to this process of elimination for a restaurant.
We settle on The Ivy, partly because we are all sick of searching or looking and just want to eat.
Pleasantly surprised with a full vegetarian menu that we weren’t aware of from our search, this was the perfect lunch spot for our family.
My husband’s burger was to die for, so he says. It came with a basket, a huge basket, full of skinny fries that we all dug into without permission.
My vegetarian daughter and I shared an Asian watermelon salad, and couscous, and we each got our own tomato soup.
Everything was divine, the whole family was happy, and I would recommend this place to any tourists traveling the Tower Bridge.
We dined at Circolo Popolare for dinner that evening, in Central London, and it was some of the best Italian food we’ve had, besides when we were in Italy. I highly recommend this restaurant and I can see why the reviews are top-notch across the board of travel sites.
The Harry Potter fan
The United Kingdom is a Harry Potter fan’s dream vacation. One of my daughters is a super fan, read all the books a few times, and watched the movies several times. She can’t even count how many.
My other daughter hasn’t read or watched any of them. Can you sense the divide of how to make both of them happy?
If we had more time in London we would have searched for more spots, but we were able to hit one point of interest while a bonus one was revealed without even looking for it.
Leadenhall Market in Central London stood in for Diagon Alley during the first Harry Potter film.
Hagrid and Harry walk through the market and then enter the Leaky Cauldron Pub through a blue door.
We soon became savvy with the “tube” that resembles our subways in New York back in the states. It is so easy to get around the underground transportation with google maps now.
Leadenhall Market is full of bustling bars so we just did a quick swoop through to check it out.
We weren’t sure what this was exactly, but it was a surprise when we stumbled upon it.
The shopper and music lover
My daughter that just graduated high school was given free rein to pick a place in Europe to travel to this summer. England was her pick, specifically London, but we knew as a family we couldn’t do the city for a full 12 days.
Being the David Bowie enthusiast that she is, she knew she wanted to visit his birthplace and his memorial/mural.
We were saddened to find that the sculpture by his mural was no longer there. But, the mural was impressive and worth the trek over to Brixton.
Again, we took the tube which was a fast and easy jaunt from where we were in Central London.
There is fabulous shopping all over London, as you would expect from a big metropolitan city. We were able to visit the shopping areas of Covent Garden, Soho, and Notting Hill.
Notting Hill was an unexpected find, as we just stopped in this neighborhood to eat lunch after we went to Kensington Palace.
There was a street fair going on and my thrifty daughter was in love. She was able to purchase some old silver jewelry for a deal. I’m not sure of the schedule of this street fair that went on for blocks but it was a Friday when we visited.
The explorer and photographer
I am not a photographer but I love taking photos. It’s one of my favorite travel activities along with exploring, but you have to explore to find the perfect places to take a photo, right?
On our first full day in London, we were up early and out of the door at 9 am, which made the start of our day at the Tower of London so easy. The crowds hadn’t arrived yet at this tourist stop.
Even though it was a tourist stop, I didn’t care because I love bridges and I needed to start the day off here followed by walking the bridge.
The Tower of London was incredible and we all loved it, not just me. It took us about 90 minutes to see everything before we decided it was time to walk the bridge. We all loved this, too, because you can walk across the glass to view the Thames River.
Later that day, we walked around central London and Soho, which boasts the most incredible street art and decorations in between the buildings. We could have spent a few days wandering around these areas.
On day 2, we took a bus to Kensington Palace and Gardens, which is the house of a royal family. The palace and the surrounding gardens were beautiful.
Pleasing everyone that you travel with is sometimes nearly impossible without someone complaining, but if you fit in different types of activities, it will make for a seamless holiday, as they say here in England.
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Thanks for reading!
Much love, Michele
