We had been to London once before as part of a whirlwind trip to the British Isles, but felt a little shortchanged with our time there. So it was time to go back and see it properly!

We left Barcelona on a Saturday evening in January for the hour and a half flight to London. It took almost as long to get a train into the city, an underground train and then walk to our hotel. 

We woke the next day to bright sunshine and thought we better take advantage of it and visit  Kew Gardens. The gardens at Kew make up part of the Royal Botanical Gardens that houses the “largest and most diverse botanical and mycological collections in the world” according to Wikipedia.  Even though it was January there was a lot to see and it felt good to go inside the steamy greenhouses and warm up. Kew is a charming little town and we had our best meal of this trip at the Kew Greenhouse Cafe after visiting the gardens.

The next day we bought some discount tickets to a West End show. There is an astounding number of theatres in London! We had so much fun that night seeing the show, “Motown Musical”, that we went to buy more discount theatre tickets the next day! Then we found a hop on hop off bus tour which in a city the size of London was a great way to get an overview of the place. London has a number of unusually shaped skyscrapers and we learned that they have nicknames for them – the gherkin, the shard, the walkie talkie, can of ham and the cheesegrater to name a few.

We spent a good part of the next day at the Museum of London where we learned about the early history of the city. Wikipedia says the Museum of London has the largest urban history collection in the world. We were kicked out when they closed and still did not see all of it. Later, we went to an extraordinary one woman show, “Songs for Nobodies“.

On our last day in London we decided to go to one of the many markets. We chose the Old Spitalfields Market in the east end of the city. We also chose to take a bus there which took a long time but it was a way to see more of the city. It was also a way to meet interesting characters. We met a gentleman who used to work as a DJ on one of the pirate ship radio stations. He also worked as a record producer among other things.

The market would have been more enjoyable in summer as it was open air. We explored the neighborhood a bit and found Brick Lane, the curry capital of the UK. Of course, we had to stop for some.

After lunch we collected our bags and took a train to Gatwick where we had a hotel room reserved. It was a very compact room but perfect for an early morning flight.