This post has been way overdue, ever since I decided to revamp The Mindfulness Company to become a mental health and lifestyle blog. I decided to finally write about our family trip to London in October 2019.
Being that we are in the middle of a global pandemic, it may have not been the most fitting to put up this post. But at least I have these memories to look back on. I’m also very thankful I was able to make the trip to London, UK & Paris for the second time since 2018.
I knew I always wanted to go back to London & Paris ever since our first trip in July 2018, if you don’t already know, summer is Europe’s peak season for travelling and its always filled with tons of tourists and the weather is scorching hot, crows flooding every part of the city.
We decided to go during autumn where it was much cooler. There were definitely much less crowds and more enjoyable because of the weather, the off peak travel season in the UK.
Picadilly Circus
Sketch, Gallery
- We decided to book a few months in advance for one of London’s most instagrammable restaurants. It’s a building with a collection of 5 restaurants.
- On our second night we decided to dine at the Gallery, it is literally my blush pink dreams come true. Overpriced for the food, insanely beautiful architecture is what you’re paying for, definitely worth a trip if you have the budget for it.
When we returned from an 8 day trip around UK & Ireland (continued in the next post), I met up with a nutritionist who reached out to me during my 8 day trip via my instagram, and we decided to meet up in London, the loveliest Anna @tramuntanna and we caught up at Bafarat in Soho and walked around covent garden for the afternoon.
Because Anna isn’t from London, we found ourselves getting lost in covent garden, running around in circles trying to find where the famous neal’s yard is in covent garden but we finally made it there.
After lunch , I headed back to the hotel to meet my parents and we had burger and lobster for dinner for the very first time and it was so good. Burger and Lobster opened up in Singapore but is always crowded, so we decided to see what the hype was all about in London. The lobster meat was so juicy, paired with their butter sauce and they are really generous with the meat.
Since then, B&L has opened up a second outlet in Singapore at raffles hotel which takes reservations, because the one at Jewel Changi airport doesn’t, is too far from our house and doesn’t take reservations, being it is at the airport is ALWAYS crowded.
One of the things I wanted to do was head to borough market and found the most amazing truffle cheeses (which i’ve since shipped 6 more back home) that started my obsession with truffle, everything truffle, they had truffle white chocolates, oil, butter, chips, I bought them all. Nonetheless, I went quite food crazy there.
I also arranged a photoshoot via Sweet Escape which is a platform that allows you to hire professional photographers worldwide. It was always my dream to do a photoshoot in London and be able to keep those memories. We shot at the houses of parliament, the London eye and Notting hill because of the coloured houses and doors.
I could go on and on about these photos. The photographer I had assigned to me was Alleksana and she is a London based photographer from Russia. The loveliest girl and she didn’t make the entire photoshoot feel awkward at all because I’m very cautious of people around me and people staring at me.
One of the things that really helped was that it was Autumn and off-peak season and there weren’t many tourists crowding around and taking photos, which usually happens in summer so that was a bonus. She made it feel so natural as well for these photos to flow!
One of my dream bucket list items ticked off my list!
We spent our last night having dinner at Aqua Shard at The Shard London before catching the Eurostar to Paris the next day.
In total, we spent about 8 days in London because we only had 5 days when we went in July 2018 before we took a 12 day trip around Europe which was such a mad rush.
Our goal for this trip was to make it more relaxed and not explore the entire Europe as we had explored Switzerland, Amsterdam, Rome, Florence, Germany, Brussels in 12 days and ended in Paris.
This time, we planned our trip way in advance by pre-booking all the restaurants. Here’s the list of all the restaurants we went to:
Sketch London
Burger & Lobster, Dean Street
Hawksmoor, Air Street
Aqua Shard , The Shard London
Trust me, if you plan to visit London and you’re not a fan of the hot weather like I am, and you want to experience the cold but not winter freezing my butt off cold weather, I highly recommend coming to London in Ocotober.
Also, get yourself an oyster card for the tube, because the tube gets you EVERYWHERE in London, we only took a taxi if we were really tired because in London even in tube stations, you walk a lot, but the tube gets you to most places within central London in less than 30 mins. It is really warm and stuffy in the tube but it’s the quickest and most efficient way around London.
If you’re coming from Heathrow airport, catch the Heathrow express, it’s only a 15 min ride and gets you to Paddington station, if you catch a taxi it’s about a 1 hour ride or more if there’s a traffic jam.
I can’t wait to share the rest of my UK, Ireland & Paris adventures in the upcoming posts!
