One of the best parts of moving to London thus far has been that I get visitors! I really enjoy showing friends and family around London, especially bringing them to some of my favorite places and checking out new ones as well. My mom and Mark were in town this past weekend, so I enjoyed exploring with them and Markie. Here’s a look at what we did:

Saturday

Camden Lock Market

On Saturday Mark was in town, along with my mom, so what better way to please everyone at once than to bring them to a place with tons of food. We headed over to the Camden Lock Market, which is a huge market that has dozens of food stalls, and has a great view of Regent’s Canal. My mom and Markie enjoyed pizza, and Mark and I had a pulled pork salad and watermelon juice. I also got Markie a dessert that I had eyed a few times – Dutch pancakes with powdered sugar and Nutella. Delicious! The only downside of the market is it get SO crowded, so after a while we were tired of the excess of people and headed home.

Mini-golf & Molly Bakes

Mark is a huge mini-golf fan, so Markie, Mark and I headed to a mini-golf place that is a 15 minute walk from my flat. We enjoyed a few rounds of mini-golf, and then headed to a place that had been on my bucket list for several weeks – Molly Bakes. If anyone has seen (mostly likely on Buzzfeed or Instagram), there are places that are now serving basically jumbo/monster sized milkshakes. Molly Bakes is one of these places, so we ordered a chocolate shake that came with chocolate on the rim, a ice cream sandwich on top, along with whipped cream and a marshmellow. The three of us were able to share it – it was that big! Thank goodness we walked a lot that day to burn that sugar off.

Sunday

Museum of London & London Wall

My mom is a British history enthusiast, so on Sunday I brought her to my favorite London museum – the Museum of London. There is currently a special exhibit going on to commemorate 350 years since the 1666 Great Fire of London so we checked it out. We also enjoyed taking in the other exhibits – before London was “London”, Roman London, Victorian London, and so on. The museum is next to London Wall, which is the original wall built by the Roman Empire 1800 years ago to fortify the city, so we took a walk by that as well.

The Queen’s Walk & London Bridge City Summer Festival

After our museum visit we headed to The Queen’s Walk which is a promenade on the south bank of the Thames River. We had built up an appetite from the day and sat down at Côte Brasserie, a reasonably priced but good restaurant I had been to once before. From there we had views of HMS Belfast, Tower Bridge, and across the river of the Gherkin and of 20 Fenchurch aka the “Walkie Talkie” building.

After our dinner, we decided to walk towards Tower Bridge, and stumbled upon the London Bridge City Summer Festival. There was a outdoor colorful bar serving cocktails and food, along with DJs from Mi-Soul radio who played a mix of funk, disco, and R&B music while people danced along.

All in all it was a great weekend, and I love how London has so many places to explore, as well as places that are great to go time and time again.

 

Till next time all!