Regardless of the ups and downs in the weather – one day boiling hot, the next freezing, we are making it a point to make the best of what is available to see and do in the city.
Both the kids are yet to start school/college, so their weekdays are quite boring and monotonous. So, I make the weekends as action packed as possible to make up for the duller weekdays.
Kensington Gardens
We are yet to get bored of the amazing green spaces the city has to offer. Plus, they are free! It’s so easy to just take a train, have a long walk and a picnic, and then come back home pleasantly tired.
The boy, especially, is very energetic, and a good day for him is a day out with nature, feeding the birds that come to eat out of his hands, enjoying the sheer pleasure of grass and soil under his feet. He always loved hiking even in India, but we never got out much – weekends were always busy, days were too hot, there was always some reason.
Here, the weather is much more conducive to exercise. Sure, it rains (but the weather app is quite accurate), and it never rains that hard that we can’t go out at all – at least so far, that’s been the case.
So, Kensington Gardens. We went out rather counter-intuitively on a cold, windy day (hadn’t learnt to trust the weather app yet). But the cold pushed us to walk a lot more than we would normally, and we ended up exploring the entirety of the park.
We walked in via Lancaster Gate, enjoyed the views of the Italian Gardens, and then headed out further to the Serpentine Lido lake and decided it would be the perfect picnic spot – only whatever I had brought along wasn’t enough. Thankfully, the Lido Cafe Bar was at hand with healthy and delicious options.
Stomach full, we wandered on further along the gardens. We had the ambitious idea of visiting Kensington Gardens, Hyde Park, and the Victoria and Albert museum. But the place is so vast, we were able to able to do just a round of the gardens, briefly cross over to Hyde Park before returning home.
Kensington Palace was where Princess Diana lived, and so there are quite a few memorials.
There is a lovely covered walkway along the way to the statue.
Last but not the least, we popped into the Serpentine Gallery to see the art on display there.
By this time, we were all getting tired. The plan was to skip everything else and just walk out of the park to the nearest tube station (Queensway), with a quick photo stop outside Kensington Palace. Sadly, the place was boarded up for renovations, so we just took pictures of the Albert Memorial statue and the Royal Albert Hall before heading back.
Leicester Square
Oh dear! This post is getting super long and bogged down with photos! Still, I”ll include this brief bit about Leicester Square. This is pretty much the city centre. Bordering Chinatown on one side, and St. James Park just a short walk away, Leicester Square is a bit of a tourist trap. It’s packed with cheap souvenir shops. The only reason we went there was because of the famous Lego and M&M stores – which the boy wanted to see.
We love our chocolate and candy, but the M&M shop was just too much for us. It smelt too much of chocolate, and with all the crowds, we made a fairly hasty retreat to the fresh air outside.
But not before taking one corny photo for memory sake.
We then queued up to enter the Lego shop, which is great, but at the end of the day, I realize we are just not shop people. Again, we took a couple of quick pics with the Big Ben Lego model, admired some of the Harry Potter Lego constructions, and headed out to sit at Leicester Square and people-watch a bit.
We also took pics of the boy with his favorite British icons – Paddington Bear and Mr. Bean.
One thing we have learnt about sightseeing in London – sturdy walking shoes and stamina are a must. Since we live quite far from the city, we end up planning day trips, and with the stupid, insane train and bus prices, we end up walking everywhere, which is nice as we get to see a lot of places that are easy to miss if you are traveling by bus or tube.
Plus, walking is a great leg workout. I can just feel my legs getting tauter and muscled by the day 💪.
