London's Calling - shamelesslyshanay

The Forth of July in Notting Hill London

Where else would two British/American girls want to spend the 4th of July…??? Yep London. Being from Oxford I have always been bias in that Oxford is better! However, I still do like a trip into London every once in a while. Nisha went to college in London and knows it pretty well so she was my tour guide for the day. Many of you may be surprised that No we didn’t go to Big Ben, or the Houses of Parliament or Trafalgar square… I wanted to see Notting Hill London and Soho. So we did.

Nisha took me through the streets of Notting Hill London, through Portobello Road and Market. Apparently, Portobello Market is huge on the weekends with lots of vendors selling food, flowers, clothes and souvenirs but I thought it was big on Tuesday. I enjoyed seeing all the colorful houses and wondering what famous people might live down there.

We stopped at a Cupcake store called Magpies in Notting Hill London. Here we found cupcakes decorated for the 4th of July and Wimbledon. I didn’t like the flavors of the 4th of July ones so I got the Wembeldon one, it was red velvet with cheese cake filling, SCRUMPTIOUS! As we set out to walk some more I dropped my sunglasses, breaking them… right outside of a store selling sunglasses. What are the chances?!?! So I picked a pair for 5 pounds and we continued walking. We ran across a bubble tea place and decided to try it, we were both thirsty and wanted to sit down. I ordered my usual Taro, but it wasn’t the best.

Oxford Street

We made our way to Oxford street where we stopped at the only store I wanted to really go to, Primark. We spent about an hour in there, looking through clothes and trying things on. I got a new throw blanket, my favorite one is from there, it’s so soft, a shirt, dress, and a few other things. We also stopped in a few other stores, most were having good sales, but I didn’t find anything else I wanted to buy.
Nisha had been wanting to try a restaurant in London called Ma’ Pluckers so that is where we went for dinner. It was fitting for the day because it was an American style, fried chicken place. I had a chicken sandwich and Nisha had chicken and waffles.

On our way back we looked in Zara but didn’t find anything there either. We walked back to our car, it taking longer than we remembered. We stopped to take in Grenfell Tower as we walked back. It was sad and emotional to see the burned out tower and I am only glad I wasn’t close enough to see the memorials people have placed around the tower. I feel for all the families and friends who lost someone and still are in the unknown. After a day of walking ten miles we finally were back in the car and ready to head home.

As a sign of how worn out we are we kept trying to put the wrong ticket in the machine to exit the parking garage. We had a good laugh about this when we realized we were trying to use the ticket from IKEA. Click here to read more about my travels in England.