Walkin round london town

As you should be well aware by now, London is one of my favourite cities. I go quite a lot and this time it was because I had free coach tickets from complaining about the time National Express were late and nearly made us miss our flight to Morocco(!!). But anyway, we ended up getting to London around 12 so we made our way across the river to check in to our hotel. They always say it's not what you know, it's who you know and thanks to Katie working at a hotel, we got our room half price! So instead of the £160 it was supposed to be, we got it for £80 including breakfast and 50% off at the bar. It was in a really good location too; it was in southwark so about 5 minutes walk away from Blackfriars bridge. So after we dumped our bags in our room, we went off in search of food (I'd stupidly forgot to take any food for the coach so I hadn't eaten yet and I'd been awake since 6). We ended up at a restaurant called The Wharf because me and Katie are both a sucker for a view and they had outside seating on a little upstairs terrace. The food was gorgeous, even if the weather wasn't.

We had things booked for 5 o'clock so by the time we'd eaten, we didn't have loads of time until we needed to be back at the hotel to get ready. So we scrapped our plan to go shopping and instead just had a little wander along the south bank. The place where we ate lunch had a really cute little courtyard of shops, we got ourselves an ice cream and had a walk through a food market and then watched some street performers near the southbank centre; one group were doing a super low limbo and one guy managed to contort himself into a tiny box! The weather was a bit strange all day so it was really hard to know what to wear but I ended up going for black culottes, scarf print top and my trusty black espadrilles (which me and Katie have now nicknamed 'esperelders' because she couldn't pronounce it properly).

The reason for our early retreat back to the hotel to get ready was because at 5, we were booked onto a gin masterclass. It worked out so well too because without checking before we booked, The Distillery ended up being one building around the corner from our hotel! Me and Katie ended up in twinning outfits, both in leather mini skirts. Mine is embroidered with floral patterns and I wore it with this brown bardot slinky top (which I love) and black lace up sandals. Despite the fact that we (our whole friendship group) are never on time to a single thing in our lives, we actually managed to get ready super quick and got to the gin place at bang on 5. But in an ironic twist, the 3 other people booked on to the class ended up getting lost and didn't turn up until half past! But we got a free glass of prosecco out of it so all's well that ends well. Once the masterclass got going it was really good! It was really interesting learning about different types of gin (I previously just thought there was one) and how they're made and the history behind them. Of course the best part though was tasting them. All of them had been specifically paired with a different tonic and a different garnish. I think the rhubarb one was my favourite, and weirdly I thought the sloe gin (the last one) tasted more like sangria. The event was only £25 and you got 4 drinks which I thought was pretty good! And then once that finished, we set off in search of our next event, walking through the Africa festival as we went (which looked really good).

The next thing on our agenda for the night was a boat party going from westminster pier and taking us up and down the thames until midnight. When we first got there, the whole thing just seemed like a chaotic, unorganised mess. The people running it were all flustered and didn't seem to know what was going on, they ran out of wristbands after about 5 minutes and weren't great at crowd control either. But once everyone was on, it ended up being really good! The boat itself had a dance floor on the bottom deck where they were playing old school music, then there was another dance floor on the top deck where they playing dance and house music and there was also a bar and an outside bit up there too. It was at the perfect time as well because at 8 it was just starting to dark and by 12 the lights of London had totally come alive. The drinks were extortionate (£10 for a double vodka in a tiny plastic cup) but I suppose that's just London for you, and we had such a funny night! Once the boat pulled up, we went in search of more drinks and got a couple of gin prosecco cocktails (they sound nicer than they are) before getting a hilariously nightmarish Uber-pool back to the hotel and then going downstairs in our pyjamas to collect our Uber eats order. I don't know if it's just because we find ourselves so hilarious but we literally didn't stop laughing all night!

I was definitely feeling a bit fragile on Sunday morning when we ventured down to the breakfast. The breakfast was really nice though and it was so good we got it included! And to make up for the fact we were so bang on time on going out the evening before, we ended up checking out of our room half an hour late (oops).

Once we'd finally made it out of our hotel, we obviously didn't want to be dragging our cases round all day (yes we did both take a suitcase for just one night away). So we went to Victoria coach station and stored them there for the day and then stopped for a drink at a cute little area nearby. I'd love to say that we were already back on the cocktails but we were feeling a bit fragile and a little worse-for-wear so we ordered mocktails instead and did a bit of people watching while we worked out what to do with our day.

Our original plan had been to go shopping on Saturday but then time ran away with us. So we swapped it around and headed to Oxford street for some shopping on sunday instead. Shopping on oxford street always sounds much more glamorous and exciting in theory than in practice. In reality, it's hard work! There are so many people that you literally can't move and I'm pretty sure I've got some form of PTSD from doing battle in primark. We did get ourselves some holiday clothes though, considering it's now only 2 weeks until we go! There were loads of really pretty window displays too, especially in Selfridges. For my day 2 outfit, I wore this striped bardot playsuit which I have loved for years, and I added gucci belt and espadrilles.

By this point, we were absolutely dying for a sit down and some food and we thought it'd be cute to eat in Selfridges. Katie had some kind of salt beef place in mind that she'd been to before but when we walked in, we saw a sign for a rooftop terrace restaurant and as I said, we both love a view so we thought we'd go and see what it was like. Everything was so pretty from the lift to the walkway to the terrace itself; everything was covered in leaves and flowers! The prices weren't as bad as I was expecting, although they get around that by making all the portions smaller (supposedly 'tapas' but everyone was still just ordering one dish each). The food was amazing though! I had lobster ravioli which is one of my favourite dishes and then we shared a bottle of wine. It was much needed after so long walking around! And then we had planned to look around Selfridges after but we forgot it was a Sunday and it was closing by the time we went down. So we made our way to the coach station for a delayed journey home and it's safe to say I had a good nap on the coach! It's been fabulous as always London, until next time...