The Top Floor Flat

After our morning at Windsor, Erin and I returned by bus to London and had a bit of time before her friend, Christine, would be arriving at the Top Floor Flat. Instead of wait around at home, we decided to do a walking tour of some of the major cultural locations and buildings of West London and so started at the Kensington Palace in Hyde Park. Although not nearly as impressive as Windsor when it comes to classic Castle architecture, it has its own Royal significance, most notably as the home of Princess Diana. A quick walk though the grounds revealed that this would have been a much more manageable castle for everyday life if, you know, we were on the market for a castle at any point.

We then walked through the west end of Hyde Park, stopping at the Round Pool and the Royal Albert Memorial before crossing over to the Royal Albert Hall. Unfortunately the Hall was closed in preparation for an event later that night so Erin didn’t have a chance to see the inside, but the outside is certainly impressive enough! From there, we trekked down Exhibition Road to see the stunning Victoria and Albert and Natural History Museums, some of the most impressive buildings, in my opinion, in west London.

By that point it was just about time to meet Christine at the station so we walked back to the flat to have a quick snack, some water, drop off Christine’s things and make a plan for the afternoon before launching back into London beginning with a bus ride all the way through west London from Hyde Park to Piccadilly Circus. It was a chance to see quite a bit of the city without exhausting ourselves walking and we arrived in Piccadilly late afternoon to see the beginnings of the afterwork commute home. Piccadilly Circus is always busy – it brings to mind Time Square in New York with it’s LCD screens and tall(ish) buildings and is right near the heart of West End London Theatre scene so most of the hustle and bustle was related to the evening shows. We quickly made our way south towards the Mall, an impressive road that leads directly to Buckingham Palace. We bypassed the Palace, however (it was on our to-do list for the next day) and instead walked down the Mall to Trafalgar Square.

From the Square, which sits in front of the impressive National Gallery, Erin and Christine caught their first glimpses of Big Ben, houses of Parliament and the London Eye. We took a few minutes to stop into the National Portrait Gallery and admire some of the more famous pieces in the stunning collection – Monet, Picasso, Manet, Degas, Van Gogh and Klimt were all on display and in a relatively short period of time, we managed to see most of the heaviest hitters of the impressionist era.

After Trafalgar Square, we headed to Covent Garden, one of London’s most famous and popular tourist areas. The space is dominated by the glass covered market in which numerous stalls are filled with London and UK brick-a-brack from flags to photographs alongside posh pubs and little cafes. There is also a great deal of entertainment that takes place on the cobblestone plaza making the area fantastic eye candy.

We didn’t linger too long in Covent Garden after browsing through the market stalls and decided that it was time for a pre-dinner pint at the Lamb and Flag, a famous pub in the area that was already crowded with Friday post-work revelers. Although in the 17th century this same pub was known as the Bucket of Blood because of all the fights that took place, now it is a much calmer, throughly enjoyable and historic pub.

Our walk back to the bus stop took us through Leicester Square, home to a number of famous movie theatres and the location of just about every London film primier (once last summer, not paying attention to the date, I accidentally had my way blocked by a Batmobile on the opening night of Batman). It’s another busy hub of London activity and sits right between Piccadilly Circus and Covent Gardent making it a busy thoroughfare even without the hundreds of people there for the film, theatre or food entertainment it offers.

Before catching the bus back to west London and dinner, we took a peek in Lilywhites, home of possibly every sports jersey that could possibly be for sale in Europe. By that point, however, we were absolutely starving so made our way by bus over to Notting Hill for dinner at the Churchill Arms, a pub that I’ve written about before as a fantastic place for cheap, filling and incredibly tasty Thai food. We had a great dinner and were exhausted so made our way back to the Top Floor Flat for a long rest and prep for the next day of London exploration.

Take a look at the places we visited on Friday! Click for a Google map with pinpoints marking all the places we visited.