Travel Diary: London Tour

I was fairly surprised by the overwhelming reception of my slightly ridiculous London Tour post a few weeks ago, and now my parents have been and gone and we have EXHAUSTED London in terms of tourism, I thought I might share what we actually ended up getting around to seeing/doing via my Instagram feed while we wait for my (mostly museum based) films to come back from the lab.

GREENWICH, obviously. We were utterly blessed with stonking hot weather for the entire first week, so in true London form tried to do as much as possible while it lasted. Mudchute City Farm is such a magical place - I got kissed by a chipmunk and fell in love with some baby pheasants, have you ever seen a baby pheasant because seriously.

The new Nelson Gallery at the National Maritime Museum is superb, and it was wonderful to visit my old friend the Cutty, of course.

The evening before we set off to Buckingham Palace I said to my parents "please do NOT make me take you to see the Changing of the Guards" so of course we conveniently showed up just in time for that very event. Utter chaos ensued but eventually we had a rather nice walk around St James' park and sat in Traf Sq to eat some sandwiches before walking down to the Houses of Parliament - only to discover Westminster Abbey didn't open for another hour, so I had a little sleepy on Parliament Square until some taxi protest kicked off and disturbed my lovely sunny sleepy. An hour in the queue for Westminster Abbey later resulted in me and my brother being obnoxious teenagers the whole way around and laughing at Charles "Dick"ens. Ahem.

Slightly off schedule we tried to pop to the Imperial War Museum to discover it was shut for a few weeks (please don't make my mistakes, look things up before you traipse across London to visit things that are shut) so instead we walked down to the South Bank and (saw Dougie from McFly in Starbucks) got on a boat up river to the Tower of London. The boat ride was GREAT.

I really want to live in those little Yeomen houses please.

I'm a little upset with myself you guys. It turns out the HMS Belfast is an absolute delight and I've lived here for 10 years without spending more time on board. Is it weird to say that this WWII naval frigate SMELT NICE? Because she did. Like beeswax and clean laundry. It was a sensory delight. Also, lets talk about the colour scheme on this boat - pale mint greens, dark smoky blue-greys. Heaven. Utter heaven. For all the senses. Except if you are claustrophobic then its a bit unpleasant maybe. Mum sat this one out because it reminded her too much of Grandad, who was on board a ship not unlike the Belfast for most of his life. For me it was wonderful to get a sense of what that might have been like for him, and I thought about him a lot while I was shuffling up and down ladders wearing a very unsuitable skirt. Note: wear trousers next time.

Stopped in to see Harry Potter, spent all of my money on Ravenclaw paraphernalia. SHRUG.

Dad and Hamish really loved the Egyptian part of the British Museum, even I wasn't that bothered by the crowds and really enjoyed it. St Pauls was closing so we missed out on that, stink.

OBVIOUSLY THE NATURAL HISTORY MUSEUM WAS AMAZING but I was pretty tired and had a sleepy outside the Dinosaur part while the family enjoyed that. It was pretty rife with children BUT I remembered I recently discovered there is a secret back entrance so at least we didn't have to queue.

Have you ever noticed that ALL museums have the perfect colour schemes? I had never noticed until now, all of this pale minty green/perfect dusky blue-grey has taken over my brain. Also, there is an amazing ice cream place outside South Kensington tube station - you heard it here people, banoffee + ferrero rocher icecream for days. Pump it straight into my face.

Obvs after all of the ice cream you gotta do some exercise so we walked the long way to Harrods (Mother insisted) through Hyde Park and do you know what, Hyde Park is bloody lovely.

We still had a huge list of things we hadn't done by the last day of my parent's visit, but we were all pretty pooped from all of the WALKING involved in sightseeing so we just went to Spitalfields hoping for some kind of market experience. It wasn't great but we had a nice lunch and went to Marks and Spencers.

All in all we didn't do everything we had hoped, but the fam will be back for the odd day here and there inbetween their jaunts further afield so there is plenty of time. I did shoot 3 rolls of film with all of the Museuming, and I can't wait to get those processed. Stay tuned!

These were all shot on my iPhone5 and edited with VSCOcam. You can read my original tour outline over here - and please share any of your London adventures I might have missed off my list in the comments!