It has brought me so many memories. This time, it’s for the whole family. We’ve been to London in 2007, when my family used to live in Reading for a while. It’s been 12 years since we all gathered in London. I went last year, but alone to meet friends. This time, it’s a family trip.
A little back story. My family couldn’t attend my graduation in Montreal due to visa complications, so last minute we decided to go for family trip in Europe. From three different countries, we flew in to Gatwick on June 1.
It’s Ramadhan, but due to time differences we couldn’t fast during the first day of arrival. Usually UK immigration took me two hours during the queue but this time, since I was flying from North America and they have special lane for North Americans and EU passport holders, international passport holder like me had a smooth process. I was the first in line, got my baggage and everything for less than 30minutes. Felt like a VIP for a while.
The whole family met, my dad cried a bit because it’s been 2 years and 10 months we haven’t met - the 6 of us.
We took National Express bus to London Victoria Coach Station and took uber to our hotel, Rose Park Hotel in Paddington.
We had to split into two groups - 3 for each room.
The hotel was full so the first group had to stay at the basement level and the second group at the top floor level. We stayed there for two nights. It was gift time from me to my whole family. I bought everyone some gifts! And the best surprise was my dad’s gift for my mom - the latest iphone. She had no clue about that 😂
We didn’t fast because of the journey, so we had to grab our lunch nearby. We found a Malaysian restaurant, owned by Dato Jimmy Choo and the food there was 👌🏼!
While ordering for food, dad made a speech about my graduation thingy and the surprise is not over yet!
I’ve been eyeing on this (beaded) necklace for a long time, and yeayyyyy I got this as a gift. The other necklace was given to me when I was 17 as my birthday present!
Tiffany&Co has always been my favourite jewellery line ever and my dream is always to receive them on special days - birthday, graduation, wedding he he he
The rest of the day was just us spending time at Oxford Street, do a bit of shopping and went back to the hotel because everyone was still tired from travelling.
The next morning, we went out early, took uber to Peggy Porschen because everyone wanted to take pictures there. We bought macarons to eat later! We later then walked to Buckingham Palace, it took us around 15 min to walk there. We arrived a few minutes earlier before the change of guards. The amount of people standing in front of the palace was insane!
We later walk to Big Ben, London Eye, the Millennium Bridge, Tate Modern and lastly we walked to Tower Bridge. They’re all 15-25min walk from each other.
We later then took uber to Ivy Chelsea Garden, for another celebratory dinner. It’s a fine dining place. I ordered lobster and shrimp cocktails 😍!
That’s basically the end of our day in London. We took EuroStar train to Paris on the next day!
Overall thoughts on London - there are so many things to do and each time I go, it’s always been a new experience. Although I went to almost the same places each time, it felt different. I wanna come back to London for the food hunting next time!
Talk to you in my next post! Till then, do watch my London vlog!
