I’m currently on my delayed honeymoon to Seattle and Vancouver. While I’m away, I’m running several guest posts. I hope you enjoy the following one by Andy Simpson. I think we could all enjoy taking the time to step back and see our city through the eyes of a visitor.
While I haven’t always lived in London, I’d say I must pretty much be an honorary Londoner by now. I must admit that I haven’t actually seen as much of the city as I vowed to upon moving here–yet. When a bunch of friends and I recently organized a reunion, we decided that a London ‘staycation’ would be a great idea, and we duly looked online for serviced apartments and came across some good ones on citybaseapartments.com.
They were coming on Friday night, so I decided to take them to the much talked-about Gordon’s Wine Bar in Charing Cross. Situated just outside the entrance to Charing Cross tube station, Gordon’s was to prove a roaring success–and we each had hangovers to prove it! My research told me that it’s the oldest wine bar in London, so, by logic, probably in Europe or even the world, and its interior certainly reflected its age, in a good way.
I booked us a ‘cage’ down stairs (highly recommended on the Gordon’s website), and when we got down there we felt as though we’d stepped into some kind of dim, candlelit Victorian speakeasy. Old, yellowed newspapers adorn the walls here and couples canoodle in the privacy of the bar’s darkened corners, and the size of the wine list was enough to make your head spin (and we hadn’t even sampled any yet). We soon decided on our first glass of vino and embarked on a worldwide wine tasting tour, working our way from the new world and finally back to Europe (I think), after which a short and rather wobbly walk from Charing Cross took us home to our swanky Covent Garden apartment.
Not one for forcing people into doing things (and knowing that we might be a little worse for wear), I gave them a few different options for the Saturday itinerary. The first involved lunch followed by galleries and museums including the Tate Modern, V&A and the Natural History Museum. The second was brunch followed by Portobello Road’s Saturday market–and yep, it was a unanimous decision to go with the latter…but not before treating ourselves to brunch and a little sweep around the boutiques in our Covent Garden homestead, of course!
We promptly headed to a place called Bill’s –a staunch favorite of mine when I first moved down here, I was delighted to be able to take the girls somewhere I knew would be great. For me, brunch consisted of the vegetarian take on the traditional English fry-up, which comprised of of two poached eggs (my favorite), fried mushrooms, guacamole, sweet chilli sauce, and toast, and a good, hot cup of black coffee (some of the best in London in my humble opinion). It was just what my belly was rumbling for.
Onwards and upwards, we made our way to West London’s swish Notting Hill area. We walked the short walk to Holborn where we caught the Tube to Notting Hill Gate (that’s the Tube that heads towards the Ealing Broadway direction), and we were there within 15 minutes. Portobello Road here in Notting Hill is a shopper’s paradise. And I’m not talking about high street shopping, I’m talking about haggling, rooting among rails of quirky joss-stick-scented hemp garments and whole walls of bejewelled antique one-off items of jewellery. Describing it as I am, in fact, I’m not really doing the old girl much justice. It’s so much more than that. But take my word for it, it’s the perfect haven for four hung-over vintage-addicted twenty-something’s on a Saturday afternoon.
Get more ideas for fun things to do in London!
This guest post was by Andy Simpson. The photos are my own.
