Coming at you with Part 2 of my London Travel Diary! If you missed Part 1, you can read it here. Since our time in London was limited (we were visiting on a stopover to/from Finland), we decided to skip most of the more touristy activities. Instead, we spent most of our time exploring and seeing what we stumbled upon.
On our second day in London, we started the day by walking through the Knightsbridge and Belgravia neighborhoods. These areas are beautiful and we found so many lovely streets – I was ready to move into the one above! We had originally planned to make a stop at Elizabeth St in Belgravia to check out the shops and cafes (Peggy Porschen and Dominique Ansel were two on my list). However, our walk was taking much longer than expected due to all of our photo stops, so we had to save that for a future trip.
Instead, we continued on our way passing by more cute streets (above!) – seriously, London is so beautiful! We then made it to Buckingham Palace where we stopped to take a few photos and take in the crazy crowds. This was one of the only main touristy things we did and that was only because it was on our way to our next destination… Sketch for Afternoon Tea!
Sketch has been on my list to visit for years! I’ve seen the photos all over social media and have had several friends who have visited and raved about the experience. So, I knew it was something I wanted to experience for myself. It is certainly not your traditional afternoon tea, but it was so much fun and I would definitely recommend! As with all afternoon teas, make sure you go hungry because they give you a lot of food! In fact, we were so stuffed we had to take our last cakes home with us!
Before visiting, I had heard that you go for the experience and not necessarily for the food. I did enjoy the food (and loved the tea selection!), but I would agree that it’s the whole ambiance that makes the Sketch experience what it is. Have you been? I’d love to hear what you thought!
Pro Tip:
Make reservations well in advance as it books up quickly. And if you want to take photos without people in them, make a reservation for right when it opens at 11:30am!
Now, it’s not a visit to Sketch without at least one photo of the bathroom!
After eating our weight in cakes and drowning ourselves in tea, we wobbled out of Sketch and slowly continued on our way. As Sketch was our only set activity of the day, we spent the rest of the afternoon just wandering about. We walked around the Mayfair and Marylebone neighborhoods before making our way over to the river to view the London Eye. I think the view from Golden Jubilee Bridge is particularly nice!
It was getting pretty late by this point, so we started to make our way back towards Kensington, passing a few parks (like the one below) along the way. The weather was not cooperating on this day – it was very gloomy out with incredible wind gusts. It was probably the windiest day I’ve ever experienced, which is saying something coming from San Francisco, a notoriously gusty city! It then started to sprinkle so we ducked into the nearest tube station and took the underground back to our hotel.
Although we were still quite full from the tea, we wanted to try our luck with Dishoom again (I’d heard incredible things). We arrived at the restaurant around 5:30pm and they still had an hour and a half wait! We grabbed a glass of wine at the bar and chatted while we waited for a table to open up. Well, I can safely say that the wait is worth it as the food was delicious! The restaurant definitely lives up to the hype! My advice: arrive as early as possible and be prepared to wait!
