One Year in England! Let's go to London.

 We were both feeling a little down having to return back to work from an amazing holiday to Prague.
That's why we booked a trip the following weekend to London! We were celebrating our one year living in England. It truly has been amazing and we are so grateful for all the people we have met here.

We went on Expedia and did the surprise booking. We picked our location and how many stars we wanted. You get a discounted rate but you have no idea what you are going to get. We got The Grange Fitzrovia. At first we were a little worried with some of the reviews it had but it seemed to have more good reviews than not. So we stuck by our booking.

Friday after work we took the 6:12pm train from Snow Hill to Marylebone Station. Our hotel "Grange Fitzrovia Hotel" was about a 15 minute walk from the station. We were pleased with our hotel upon arrival. Actually, we felt a little under dressed... We checked in and the receptionist was very polite. So far, so good. We went up to our room, by a glass elevator which was quite scary. I'm sure it is 100% safe but it looks crazy.

Room was quite nice.

The bed was a little uncomfortable and they could do with getting new mattresses. Other than that the room was quite lovely. We generally enjoy quiet rooms with free wifi, tea and free toiletries. This hotel had all of these things.

 After we dropped off our stuff we went to a Sainsburys next door and bought some food. It was about 10pm by the time we got settled, so we wanted an early night.

  We bought couscous salad, lettuce, houmous, falafels and wraps for dinner. It was quite easy to make wraps in the hotel room. We also got juice and oranges for breakfast.

 By making easy food at the hotel we were able to save some money, as it is quite expensive to eat out in London!!

 The next morning we got up early and made our way to Oxford street. We were about a 5 minutes walk away. It was great to be so central.

We tried our hands at vlogging this trip which we may or may not post at a later date. It felt awkward taking videos and talking in a crowded city but we started to get used to it.

We took a walk to Leicester Square to check out the half price theatre ticket booths to see if there was anything available. We thought about seeing The Book of Mormon, The End of Longing, Les Miserables but all of the tickets were either sold out or way too expensive. We spotted a poster for a play called Hand to God that had a sock puppet on it and described the play as Seasame Street meets the Exorcist. The tickets were not as expensive as the others, go figure, so we decided to take a chance.  We did a little bit of haggling to get the price down.

Next we walked to Covent Garden to Neal's Yard to check out the Wild Food Cafe. We almost tried the Wild Food Cafe on a previous trip to London but ended up going to another place. The Wild Food Cafe didn't have that many vegan options at the time and the menu was expensive. This time they had lots of vegan options but the menu was unfortunately still expensive.

Neal's Yard

They had a bit of a wait at Wild Food Cafe so we walked around while we waited for our table. They took our phone number to text us when our table was ready and it ended up only taking 10 minutes.

Wild Food Cafe calls itself a vegetarian cafe for whatever reason but all the menu items we saw were vegan so we weren't sure why they don't advertise themselves as vegan. Last year they had only a few vegan options so maybe they are transitioning to vegan.

We each got a bowl of broccoli soup made with coconut milk. The soup was excellent.

We split the curry. It sounded great on the menu but unfortunately it was a let down. We had told the server we were splitting the curry. When they brought our food out we thought that this plate was half of the curry we ordered and that the other half was still coming. Turns out this was the whole order! HAHA. Does that look like £15.50 worth of food? We should have stuck with just the soup and maybe the hoummus platter. London is ridiculous. It was all really delicious though so no complaints there.

Aside from the curry, our visit to Wild Food Cafe was great. We took a walk to Camden Market to meet our friend and enjoy some dessert from Cookies and Scream.

UCL

Camden Town is super busy. It wasn't very busy last time we went but it was later at night and colder last time.

At Cookies and Scream we got Vegan Donuts and Shakes.

Peanut Butter Chocolate Donut

Salted Caramel Vegan Milk Shake

Yeah, Cookies and Scream is definitely worth a visit for all you sweet tooths out there. We talked a bit with our friend and took a walk around the Market.

Then we parted ways. Us wanderlust vegans walked around a bit more. We were going to take the tube everywhere but then we ended up looking on google maps and seeing that the places we wanted to travel to next were only about a 20 minute walk away and we don't mind walking as you get to explore.

We walked around quite a bit but made our way towards the vegan sushi place called Itendaki Zen for our 6:00 dinner reservation. We went past the British Library at some point.

Itendaki Zen

We got to the restaurant early because we knew that we had to order, eat, and travel from King's Cross area to the Vaudeville Theatre for our show at 7:30.

The food was prepared really quickly and it was glorious!

We made it just in time for the play after getting very lost. The GPS on one of our phones was not working properly and was leading us in the wrong direction. The play Hand to God was hilarious. It took place in the southern USA and was about a Sunday school class trying to learn a puppet show but one of the kids puppets was possessed by the devil. You could classify the play as a comedy horror. It was pretty surprising that this bizarre play exists but I guess there has been many a play out there more bizarre than this one. It was almost sold out.

The next day we woke up late and made our way to a vegan ice cream shop called Yorica which had delicious ice cream made with rice milk. We are usually sceptical about rice milk based desserts but these were fantastic. We had cookies and cream and wow butter which was a nut free peanut butter option. Neither of us are allergic to nuts but it tasted great.

We saw a baked potato/jacket potato place that advertised the have joined the Vega-lution so even though they were closed we took a picture of that.

Ice cream isn't exactly a balanced brunch so we hit up Pret for some sandwiches and coffee which we ate in the park.

After brunch we went to the British Museum which has a lot of amazing artifacts from all over the world.

Inside the British Museum.

The not so vegan friendly Inuit Gutskin Parka made from seal intestines. 

Samurai Armour

We took a lot of photos in the British Museum. Too much to post all of them on the blog so we just posted a few.

Next we went to the British Library. They had a couple different exhibitions. One was on Alice in Wonderland. It had lots of Alice in Wonderland memorabilia and early copies of the book. We weren't allowed to take pictures.

They also had an exhibit with showing off famous old books and historical documents such as the Magna Carta and the work of classical composers like Mozart. After the exhibit we took part in a short psychological experiment that university students at UCL were conducting which paid £4 each. We used the money to buy some food and then took the London Midland train back to Birmingham. Good times London. Farewell for now.

Thank you for reading.

More on London:

"Tower of London and the Crown Jewels"

"Vegan Youtuber Meet-up and Camden Town, London"

"Who Needs the Hop on Hop Off"

"Epic Forty-Eight Hours in London"