Weekend Trip To London

The Three Musketeers

This weekend I went to London with these wonderful girls, Ros and Viki, and some friends of ours from church. Having previously visited most of the touristy places I had wanted to go on our last London trip in June of 2015, we focused on spending more time in certain places instead of traveling to as many as possible. I only had one location request. The one place I hadn't visited last summer when we went was Blackfriar's Bridge and all I needed was one picture. (After reading The Infernal Devices it was a major bucket list destination. I didn't need to stay super long but I had to go see Jem's favorite place in London and get a picture.) So naturally we ran across four lanes of traffic to get it, and then ran right back to jump in the car again.

Blackfriar's Bridge

After that we went to what we discovered was the largest Paperchase. Let me say that again. The Largest Paperchase. Three floors of notebooks and notepads, stationary, pens, art supplies, decor, keychains, phone cases, and paper paper paper. Did I mention the coffee shop bit on the second floor? Yeah that was there too. So we might have spent two and half hours there, and yes all three of us thought it was the perfect Saturday afternoon destination. There was also free coffee involved because we have membership cards for this place we love it that much. Also on the second floor, an entire wall was covered in coloring paper so it looked like a giant coloring book that was slowly being filled in. We might've asked if we could color. Unfortunately we weren't authorized. 

Second floor of Paperchase

I was extremely good and managed to walk out without getting any notebooks, since I have soooo many at home already. I still firmly believe that there is no such thing as too many notebooks but I have to keep in mind that whatever I buy in England I have to fly across the ocean to take home and I already have soo many at the moment. Instead I got a pass case for my train tickets that has the London underground map design on it, and also a ladybug pen because why not. In all honesty I could've spent even more time in that shop but it was probably best that we left when we did.

We rejoined the others in Covent Garden a short while later, another place I hadn't gotten too last summer, and we spent the rest of the afternoon/evening watching street performers, browsing through markets, and going in any shops that had anything resembling an owl in the windows (okay maybe that bit was just me). There was one shop where we tasted what was absolutely amazing white hot chocolate and ended up getting some of the mix to share at home. For dinner we went to a place in Chinatown and I had way too much egg fried rice but it was really really good.

The second day we woke up to snow flurries outside. (If I thought walking around the previous day was cold I was about to think again.) Our last stop was Greenwich, yet another place I hadn't been,  and we did a lot of what we did the day before. Looking around really cool markets, picking a place for lunch, oh and let me just say again it was absolutely freezing. I even wore a hat and I was still freezing the entire time, and that's saying something. I am beyond happy that it didn't rain this weekend though. It was pretty sunny compared to the last week or so of rainy weather we've had in Portsmouth. Still there's something exhausting about walking around in the cold all day, and when we piled into the car for the return trip back all three of us fell asleep in the first fifteen minutes. All in all the weekend was amazing and I loved spending time with these girls as they show me around London bit by bit.