London: Day 2

by Vincent | May 13, 2015

After a great first day, we spent the second at an awesome breakfast diner, Buckingham palace, the big parks, the Natural History Museum, and ended with a walk along the Thames.

Old School Breakfast at Regency Cafe

We read about a cafe near our apartment that was said to serve diner-style English breakfasts with hashbrowns, eggs, toast, sausage, and beans. This sounded real good to us because we missed good ‘ol American breakfasts in France.

We headed down to the cafe in the morning and were greeted with this front.

If the outside wasn’t enough, the interior was a throwback to the 50s diner, filled with old portaits, newspaper clippings, and oldie decorations. A man loudly barked orders to the cooks and called out when your plate was ready (yes, you went up to get your plate). We assumed he was the owner by his command of the diner. His voice rang out “Eggs and toe-mah-toes wit’ toast for the young lady!” and a sweet old lady went to collect her breakfast. We loved this place. Our own breakfast contributed the feel, as it also looked like it was made in the black-and-white days.

It was as delicious as it looks in that photo, especially those hashbrowns and sausage. Go here if you’re ever in the neighborhood (or even if you’re not!).

Buckingham Palace / Changing of Guard

After filling our bellies with delicious sausage and eggs, we walked to Buckingham Palace where we wanted to see the changing of the guard.

That’s when we realized it was kind of a big deal.

So we didn’t really get to have a good view of the guards, but we managed to snap a few pictures over people’s heads.

Green Park

After having our fill of the crowds, we headed to the nearby Green Park — a large-ish park (massive by French standards) that sits next to Hyde Park. It wasn’t anything too special except that it preserved a lot of long grass with trails mowed through, so it kind of felt a little more wild than other parks.

Hyde Park

Green Park was big but it had nothing on Hyde Park. Hyde Park is ginormous and takes about 25 minutes to walk halfway across — we know because we ended up walking through the entire thing throughout the day. It was on our way to the Natural History Museum so on the map you think, “They’re pretty close!” and then you walk it and think, I’ve made a mistake. But it’s okay, you didn’t make a mistake because Hyde Park is beautiful and that day it was a sunny, clear day.

We saw a lot of examples why the gardens in Rennes and Nantes were so beautiful — English gardens are in full display here and I love them.

Natural History Museum

After hoofing it all the way from Buckingham Palace through Green & Hyde parks, we finally made it to the Natural History Museum. The museum itself was beautiful.

The exhibits inside were also really cool, especially the dinosaurs one.

The exhibit showcased some really neat dinosaur models and then to top it off, an animatronic T-Rex. It was like walking through Jurassic Park. Now that’s a museum.

We also saw the mammals and insects exhibit. The mammal one was pretty neat with lifesize models of animals including a sperm whale and the insect one included a model room/kitchen where you discovered how nasty your house really is, crawling with bugs. Ew.

V&A Museum

The Victoria and Albert Museum was close by and we had heard their cafe was nice. We stopped by, not really intending to see anything, but ended up browsing the China exhibit anyway — it was neat seeing all the porcelain and other objects, you don’t see a lot of Asian exhibits in France.

The cafe itself was great and the courtyard was a nice break for the day. We had some tea, a lemon cake, and a brownie which we shared.

One of the eating rooms was super beautiful, as you can tell. Definitely worth a stop by if you’re at the history museum.

Once More Unto the Hyde Park

We headed back towards Hyde Park since we wanted to make our way towards Earl’s Court which is south of the park. Since it was still early we wanted to see more of the park — we considered going out on the paddleboats but they were expensive for just an hour ($15/person) and we have access to free paddleboats in Minnesota on bigger lakes, thank you very much.

Kensington Gardens

As part of our walk through Hyde Park, we went to a section named the Kensington Gardens after the Kensington palace that sits on the grounds. There was a massive open area in front of the big pond where people were frolicking in and then to the side of the palace are the gardens themselves. They were relatively small but well-kept and nice to look at.

King’s Kebab at Earl’s Court

It was starting to be dinner time so we decided to walk to Earl’s Court from the Kensington Gardens. We walked through a new neighborhood with nice houses and then through Earl’s Court which housed a ton of kebab places. One place was recommended to me by a friend, King’s Kebab, so we headed there.

I had a gyro plate and Celeste had Chennai Aloo which was just channa dal and potatoes. Both plates were admittedly average but the sauce was fantastic — I wanted more of it. A kebab place is a kebab place and the meat was well-seasoned on my gyro but nothing to write home about — it was no Dishoom, I’ll tell you that much.

We Like Long Walks Along the River

After King’s, we didn’t want to head home yet so we headed southeast towards the river. We walked through the fancy Chelsea/Kensington neighborhood with it’s expensive houses and nice cars — the architecture was really cool.

The houses on the Thames were even nicer and we learned the area was called the Chelsea Embankment.

They (the city) did a great job setting up the riverside for runners and walkers — there was a paved path all along the riverfront fitted with benches every so often.

We walked maybe a mile along the river until we reached the Chelsea bridge. This is where our apartment was so headed home and turned in for the night!

As an aside, we’ve walked along the river in every city we’ve visited! I think we like rivers.