I got back from London today. It has been a while since I have been there, in fact, almost a year, so it really was about the time to go down. We stayed in the Tower Hill area in a 5* hotel. Yes. You read right. Our room was a perfect size combination of old and new. If you exclude all the lovely complimentary toiletries, chocolates, biscuits and other necessities, my favourite part was our own coffee/tea making facility. It was almost like a little secret bar cabinet, but only for making coffee and tea. Brilliant, I loved it.
On Friday we arrived to the hotel really late so we had to be really quick in checking-in and we literally ran to the hotel's sushi restaurant. We had a glass of good white wine each, far too many plates of sushi and fresh fruits for desserts.
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| Sushi Bar Koto |
On Saturday, we started our day with a morning swim and relaxation in a steam room in the hotel's spa. We had a late breakfast around 10.30 or 11am in a local Italian cafe shop nearby the hotel. I was so surprised how good carrot orange juice actually was so I need to make sure I'll buy some of that next time I'm in town.
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| The hotel pool and spa area |
After breakfast we felt nourished enough to hit the shops. As I have been shopping like there would not be tomorrow for the past two weeks, I decided to pass the "in London you shop until you drop" option and concentrate on browsing and being a personal shopping assistant instead. I highly recommend that to everyone. It is really refreshing when you know that you don't need anything so you can simply see what the shops have to offer and what is actually out there without having to queue to the fitting rooms or fight your way from rack to rack. Believe me, I have been there witnessing all kinds of "I saw that dress first bitch" situations.
Hence, my shopping basked included only
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| Basic shirt H&M |
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| Cat eye shades Aldo |
Finally after six hours of shopping, we went back to the hotel to drop off your bags and stretch our sore feet. I was so happy to have a cup of coffee, a few biscuits and two issues of Marie Claire waiting for me in our room. I think the hotel staff had been very clever by choosing a line-up of magazines to each of the rooms depending on the sex and age of the guests.
In the evening we decided to let the hotel staff to recommend us a restaurant from somewhere nearby. Our concierge showed us a list of different cuisines and restaurants and the second I saw an Argentinian restaurant on the recommendation list, I knew that this would be our place. Sometimes is is just so easy when you know the person you are travelling with so well that you automatically know that he wants the same things as you do. Whilst the concierge was booking us a table from the restaurant the other concierge was suggesting us to take a taxi ride so we could get there quicker. However, we both were on a favour of an evening walk, and since the restaurant was literally on the other side of the Thames, we turned the friendly taxi offer down. Then, 20 minutes later, we had found the place and stepped into the restaurant, which probably also fell under the luxurious 5* rank just by judging its looks. It turned out to be V-E-R-Y nice.
This morning we woke up quite early which meant that we were able to go back to sleep after being awake for an hour or so, which felt lovely. We slowly packed our bags, checked out, left our luggage in the luggage room, went for a light breakfast and then went for a walk around the Tower area before meeting Henry's younger sister Emmy for lunch in the Royal Festival Hall's Skylon restaurant. Unfortunately, I had a train to catch so we could only have a rather quick chat over lunch, but we agreed to dedicate more time for talking next time around.
Once I got to the train I realised how tired I really was. So I slept all the way back home.
