Day trip to London

It was our 2 year dating anniversary yesterday and we took a trip to London for the day to celebrate and to see Wicked at the west end.

I’ve been to London countless times in the past 9 years, mostly for comic con, sight seeing or for a concert. Most of the time I travelled with family or my partner but a few of them I travelled alone.

The first time I travelled alone was to go to The WB Harry Potter set tour with my friend Sarah, I made a mistake when purchasing my tube ticket on that trip and hadn’t bought it for the right zones. London is split up into 6 tube zones, my ticket was for zones 1 and 2 of London but, after meeting up with Sarah, found out I needed to get to zone 6! So that was an unnecessary extra expense to my trip.

I also remember getting lost in Piccaldilly Circus trying to find Waterstones where I was attending a signing and Google Maps wasn’t working. I had looked up how to get there before leaving but had left the map and directions at home. I ended up calling my mum and she directed me using online directions.

I make sure to plan ahead now!

We started off our morning early with a coach trip at 7.05am. I really recommend the National Express coaches for trips around Great Britain (I’m not sure if they cover all of the UK or outside of it – something I’ll have to look into). It takes the worry out of driving and finding somewhere to park when you get there and for London having to worry about congestion charges. If you book early enough you can get good deals on return trips, our tickets cost £20 total.

We arrived at Victoria Coach station and walked the short distance to the tube station. Picked up our tube tickets – we were only heading to one destination so purchased two return tickets to Camden Town – and headed off for some breakfast.

I’d been to Camden Lock Market once before with my friend Sarah but soon realised I hadn’t even seen half of it last time – we never saw the food vendors! We walked up the street towards the lock and were amazed by the buildings, most of them had sculptures hanging from them to draw you in and to give you an idea of what they offered. I took a few photos and one of some street art I liked.

Once we got to the lock and the main market we were surprised at how many food vendors there were offering various foods from around the world, Mexican, Italian, Chinese, Thai, the list goes on. We bought breakfast (coffee and a doughnut) from Cross Town Doughnuts and sat down to eat at a bench nearby. The doughnuts were delicious and I’d highly recommend them, but the coffee wasn’t. Pass on the coffee.

There was something for everyone in Camden Market, from hats and tshirts to books, jewellery and trinkets. Apart from the birthday cards and food we didn’t buy anything in Camden Market but there were loads of things I liked including some pretty tea dresses with animals, butterflies and floral prints on them. If there had of been one with penguins printed on it, I would have bought it! I saw a nice one with giraffes on it.

We had a slice of pepperoni pizza each from one of the Italian vendors, I tried some USA style mac n’ cheese from another vendor while Ryan had some tandoori chicken in a wrap. I loved the mac n’ cheese!

We took a short walk around the lock and I took some more photos.

As it happens we could have spent a little longer at Camden Market as we arrived at Victoria tube station at 13.30, so we decided to walk to Buckingham Palace to take some photos and catch some Pokemon  (we both play Pokemon Go)!

Wicked was fantastic, we both really enjoyed it. My favourite songs were Defying Gravity and No Good Deed and I spent the rest of the evening and a lot of today repeating the songs in my head! We’re already planning our next trip to London to see School of Rock.

After the show we had an hour wait before our coach home so had some tea at the coach station. The time past very quickly and before we knew it we were on the coach and our way home. We had an amazing day. 🙂