Europe Adventure: Day Twelve, Part Three- Wandering around London

After settling into our hotel we left to do some exploring. 

Our hotel was pretty close to Notting Hill so we followed the navigation on my phone to walk over to that area. 

The houses were beautiful and colorful!

 

Finally we made it to the area we were most excited to explore.

We made a stop at the Biscuiteers shop. 

This store seriously has the cutest storefront. 

It was just as cute inside. They had just about every shape of cookie you could want. 

They are very pricey. But you kind of have to get one!

Picking out some biscuits!

Our next stop was The Notting Hill Bookshop!

I couldn't get a great photo of the store front because there were about thirty drunk people standing right in front of it (and sitting on the ground right there) but I got as good of a photo as I could. 

If you have seen the movie Notting Hill, you will remember this bookshop as the one that Hugh Grant works in. It was so cool to go there!

After that we walked along Portobello Road where they were just starting to clean up the Portobello Market.

We went in a few more little shops and bookstores as we walked along. 

At this point it was still just early evening so we hailed a cab (I wasn't sure which tube stops went where yet even with all of my research..) and went to Harrods. 

This place was so HUGE and so fancy. 

We walked around most of the departments. I am not a high end shopper so it was really interesting to see all of the expensive brands of clothes, perfume, and jewelry. 

We found the memorial to Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed. 

We walked around the huge food court that has pretty much anything you could want to eat. 

We decided we would get our dinner here to go and take it back to our hotel. 

My favorite place was the children's section. 

They had so many cute things. 

I put our hotel into my phone and it wasn't far (so we thought) and we decided to walk. 

We followed my phone and it took us all over the place. We definitely saw a lot of the non touristy part of the city as it took us through neighborhoods. It was a  cool walk but then soon we got to the destination. 

It looked EXACTLY like it should. A bunch of tall white buildings surrounding a small green park. 

But it wasn't it. 

We were so confused. 

We tried to put it in my phone again and realized we were in the wrong place and had a few miles between where we were and where we were supposed to be. 

We walked some more. 

We even walked right past a church.

We were getting so lost. Pretty soon we were on a busy road again and were very close to Kensington Gardens. We could see the Prince Albert Memorial (don't know why I did

We went into a store and asked a girl for directions. She wasn't sure but she was really nice and looked it up on Google maps and printed it out for us. 

But the printer ran out of ink and so we couldn't read the map. 

Ahhh.

So we walked some more and started to walk through the park but then it started to get pretty dark and we were a little nervous about getting lost in the park when it was dark so we decided to try to catch a taxi. 

But we couldn't find a place where they were pulling over. 

Finally I saw a taxi at a red light so I ran over to him and asked if he could pick us up. He pointed to a place for us to stand and said he would come back around for us. 

He was really nice. 

He didn't know where the hotel was but I told him what happened with the navigation. 

He told us that there was a 1-8 Kensington Gardens Square and a 1-8 Kensington Square Gardens. 

Our hotel was Kensington Gardens Square and apparently I had put the other one into my phone. 

Crazy that they had such similar addresses and looked the same!

But we safely got back to our hotel and I swore I would not leave the hotel the next day until I knew exactly which tube stations to use!

We settled back into our room and pulled out our food from Harrods. I was hoping it would still be good after our long walk and it was. 

We both had a roasted chicken and avocado sub. My mom had soda. I had water. 

It was really good. 

Then we had some hedgehog biscuits my mom bought at Biscuiteers. 

Souvenirs for the day: 

I bought the Queen and hedgehog biscuits and the little royal chocolates from Biscuiteers to take home to my family. I worried they would be stale and hard by the time I got home to share them with them but they weren't. Even the gingerbread was still soft and tasted great two weeks later. 

I bought the little bear Christmas ornament at Harrod's.

And from the Doctor Who Experience I got a Tardis key chain to use as a Christmas ornament. 

Today felt like such a big day and the stressful situations added to that. 

We were exhausted. But we were so happy. 

It was so cool to be in London and we were looking forward to our next couple of days seeing more of the city!

Up next: Tower of London!

Europe Adventure: Day Twelve, Part One- The Doctor Who Experience in Cardiff Wales

On Saturday, April 16th we packed up the car early in the morning and said goodbye to our lovely cottage. 

It was snowing as we drove away. 

We drove a few hours to our next destination. Wales!

I had my mom take a few phone pictures along the way.

We were hoping to stop at a few places along the way but we just ended up going straight to Cardiff.

Once in Cardiff I drove to the BBC studios area and to a small car park near this place...

The Doctor Who Experience!

We purchased our tickets well in advance because you can only buy them online. 

We stood in line for a little while chatting with some of the other people visiting. 

There were a few little boys that knew SO much about Doctor Who. It was adorable. I felt like I have only touched the surface of the fandom listening to them speak. 

Once the tour starts they take you into a room and you go through a fully interactive experience where you are traveling through time and space with the Doctor. It was really fun. 

I couldn't take pictures or video of course.

After that was over you get to go into the areas full of props and sets from the show and take your time wandering through all of it. 

They had all of the previous Tardis sets. 

While I was taking pictures in front of this Tardis set, the grandparents of one of the little boys asked if they could take our picture. We thought their little grandson was adorable (especially because he was the same age as Maddy and I was missing my girls!) so he got in the picture with us. 

Then we got to see all of the costumes and characters from the show. I won't explain all of them but if you are a Doctor Who fan you will most likely recognize all of it. 

My mom is so silly and awesome.

We ended in the gift shop and then walked along the waterfront of Cardiff Bay.

We came into the area known as Roald Dahl pass as the author was born in Cardiff. 

There was a demonstration of some kind going on that day. It seemed very peaceful but we didn't stick around and walked right on by so I am not sure what it was about.

The Wales Millennium Centre: 

The huge inscription on the front is written in both Welsh and English. 

It reads, " In these stones, horizons sing".

It is two lines from a poem written by the Welsh poet Gwyneth Lewis.

It was really fun walking along this area because there were so many places that we have seen in episodes of Doctor Who. They film all over this area. 

Our main destination on this walk was Eddie's American Diner for lunch.

That may seem like a weird choice for a place to eat when visiting another country... but this is also Doctor Who related. 

In the episode "The Impossible Astronaut", the characters meet at this diner.

The rest of the episode was filmed here in my state of Utah but the diner wasn't. 

They had a ton of pictures from filming all over the walls. 

We sat at table 13 which happens to be a lucky number in my family so I took a picture of Jennifer Rain by the number for my kids. 

We both ordered cheeseburgers, cheese fries, and root beer floats. 

The cheeseburger was good. The cheese fries were good at first but after a few bites they stopped tasting good. And the root beer float, well, I wasn't convinced that it wasn't alcoholic. It tasted like it was made with the root beer we bought from the Amish farm a few years ago. Fermented. 

But it was a fun experience!

After our meal we walked back around Cardiff Bay to our car. 

I drove into the inner city to the Enterprise building and we dropped it off. 

That was scary as would become a pattern. There really isn't anywhere to park so I pulled into an alley next to Enterprise and hoped for the best. Luckily it worked out and the guy there drove us over to the train station where we bought our tickets for the train that would take us to London. 

Up next: The scariest moment of the trip....