Tuesday we started off by going to a cafe called Pastisserie Valerie. It's a chain so there are several of them throughout London. We went to the one by the Victoria tube stop. I had a delicious croissant with ham and cheese and a small pot of tea. Mark had a croissant with tomatoes and mozzarella. Yum!
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| Ham and Cheese Croissant |
From there, we walked to Harrod's. "Wow" is a good word to sum up that place.
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| Harrod's Door Man |
I'd never been to Harrod's before and didn't really know anything about it except that it was a department store and my grandma had told me that they sell a lot of food there. I wasn't really sure what to expect, but I was in awe of the place. It is essentially a really neat high end department store. They have a huge toy section they call "Toy Kingdom," a "Christmas World," and even a "Pet Spa." There were some dogs being groomed in the pet spa and they were so cute! They even had a treadmill with a flatscreen TV in front of it for the dogs! Talk about pampered pups!
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| Buzz Lightyear--made of Legos |
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| Also Made of Legos |
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| Giant Harrod's Bears--They were about $3000 a Bear! |
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| Christmas World |
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| Christmas World |
The food halls at Harrod's are a sight to see. There were about 4 huge rooms with all kinds of foods--fresh fruits from all over the world, cakes, pastries, sandwiches, tea, chocolates, sushi--pretty much you name it, they had it. Seeing how much I love food, I was in heaven.
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| One Room of the Food Halls |
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| Tropical Fruits from All Over the World--Including my most favorite fruit, mangusteen |
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| To give you an idea of the size of the rooms, this was probably about half of one room! |
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| Dates from all over the world |
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| Dates Up Close |
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| Lots of Chocolate! |
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| Desserts |
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| More Chocolate |
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| Sandwiches |
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| All Kinds of Meat Pies |
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| Cakes |
After seeing the pictures, aren't you impressed now too?! Seriously, you name it, they had it! And it ALL looked delicious!
We didn't actually have lunch in the food halls, we went to a French restaurant/tea room in Harrod's called Laduree. We each had really expensive sandwiches (because nothing there was cheap). They wouldn't allow you to take pictures inside, so I snuck one real quick of my sandwich. We were pretty full after the sandwiches, but we had to buy some of their iconic macaroons, so we bought some to go and had them later that day and the next day.
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| Sandwich with Lox, Hard Boiled Egg, Lettuce, Cucumber, and Mayonnaise |
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| Macaroons |
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| The Bag and Box were so Chic!! |
There's also a memorial for Princess Diana and Dodi Al-Fayed in Harrod's--actually there's a shrine and a statue/sculpture thing.
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| Shrine |
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| Statue/Sculpture--It Says "Innocent Victims" at the Base |
We had concert tickets for a classical music concert at Royal Albert Hall for this evening, but we had a few hours to kill before then. It wasn't really worth going all the way back to our hotel and then coming back into the city again, so we walked to the Hall and found a cafe around there called CocoMomo. Mark had some Guinness and I had some tea and we had a nice table at the window to do some people watching. One note about the Guinness in England--it's delicious! It's so smooth and has this coffee-like taste.
Royal Albert Hall was
amazing. It was so beautiful on the inside and pretty cool to think that it's been open since 1871. The concert was also enjoyable--it was essentially a "best of" classical music, so I actually recognized a lot of the pieces they played.
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| Royal Albert Hall--Gorgeous! |
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| Inside Royal Albert Hall |
After the concert, we were feeling confident enough to take our first public bus ride! Up until this point, we have been sticking to the underground or walking because the buses were kind of intimidating to me. I didn't have a map of where the buses went and I wasn't sure I would know where to get off if I got on a bus. But we got on a bus that was going to Notting Hill, where we could then transfer to the Tube. The bus ride was fun--we sat at the front of the top deck and it was cool to see the city on the way to our destination. From this day on, we used the buses much more often and loved it.
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| Our First Bus Ride--On the Top Deck |
We had dinner at this place called Nando's in Notting Hill. I had a chicken sandwich with mashed potatoes, which was really good. I forgot to take a picture because I was so hungry.
Another fantastic day in London--so many things to see and so many awesome experiences.
