UK/Spain 2024 Part 12: London

I only had two full days in London, and this is that second day!

I needed a decent breakfast for my morning plans and I was craving tofu scramble. A quick google sent me to to The Breakfast Club Cafe in Seven Dials, just a few minutes walk away from my hotel. They have a few plant based (they use that rather than vegan) options available, including pancakes! I got the vegan version of the Eggs All Day, which is scrambled turmeric tahini tofu, sourdough, and choice of two sides. I got vegan bacon and hash browns. I wanted to get their iced pink chai latte, but they were out of that, so I got a lovely pink maple lemonade instead.





Then I headed off to the Natural History Museum! I love this museum so much, and I was determined that I was going to go here in my limited time in London. I love the dino section and the rocks/gems section the best. Please enjoy some photos! Including a rare selfie of me at the entrance, in front of my favourite dino. And yes, I still wear a mask as much as possible in indoor public places! COVID hasn't gone anywhere.











I was ready for lunch after my museum adventures, so I went here.



Yes, that blackboard says "and so I watch as you walk into some bar called The Black Dog...". Yes, that is the eponymous The Black Dog, as mentioned in the song "The Black Dog" that appeared on the anthology edition of The Tortured Poets Department by one Miss Taylor Swift.

The album had been released less than a week before, and Swifties were making the pilgrimage to The Black Dog. A place that Taylor has never actually been (as far as anyone knows), but has immortalised in a super depressing song. Yay! If there's one thing about me, it's that I LOVE to commit to a bit. So obviously I simply had to go. Thankfully they had a vegan burger on the menu, yay! So I walked into some bar called The Black Dog, ate a vegan burger, Lego Ed and Stede perused the drinks menu (I stuck with water), and then on the way out I was interviewed (?) by Time Out London (?) who were there interviewing swifties. It was very fun inside playing spot the Swiftie among the locals, and kind of obvious, hee hee.





My afternoon involved a trip to Gay's The Word, a queer bookshop, where I bought a few more books. And had a lovely chat the the person behind the counter about their asexual bookclub!! If only I wasn't literally half the world away.



It started raining when I left the bookshop, but I squeezed in a very quick trip to The British Library before they closed. Mainly again for OFMD fic related reasons. See above, commited to a bit. Also hyper-fixation. I make my own fun!



I had another quite wander through the Covent Garden Markets on the way back to the hotel.



Dinner was a combination of ordered in and also a dessert I had picked up earlier. I really wanted to try Purezza Pizza, but I really didn't want to have to go out again after a very big day. Thank you to online ordering and having it delivered to my hotel! Their menu is seasonal, and has changed since I have been there. I don't remember the name of the pizza I got but it had a white base, ham, corn, cheese, and basil. I also got mac and cheese. This was all so good! They have so many delicious starters on their meny I would love to try fresh from the store and with friends so we could share.



Earlier in the day I had stopped back via Cream Dream. I honestly don't remember how I fit this in, but I think maybe it was after Covent Garden markets on the way back to the hotel because I remember they were serving dinner but they didn't have a dinner menu and I was already committed to pizza. But I did get a Rhubarb Tart to take back for dessert as well as a grapefruit and rosemary iced tea.



And then I absolutely collapsed into bed because that was a big day and I was leaving for Barcelona in the morning.

Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



Went to a games night at a friend's place a couple of weeks ago and their kitty was feeling the festive spirit!

UK/Spain 2024 Part 11: London

Hello! Back again after a couple of weeks doing other things. Has anyone here watched Arcane?? I am half way through season two and it is intense! So, back to London!

After we had our sweet treats, we went on a wander. A wander that took us past Cafe de Nata, which has vegan Portuguese Custard Tarts! I got a plain one and a strawberry one to eat while we walked and they were great. I'd never had one before, because I've never found a vegan one before.



We went for a wander through Chinatown and down into central London. Saw this guy hanging around. Hi Shakespeare!



Our walk took us down past some London landmarks. Trafalga Square, Westminster Abbey, Big Ben, the Thames...









The walk went much longer and further than I had anticipated, and I hit a huge fibro wall of pain and exhaustion and had to say goodbye to my friend and high tail it back to the hotel to lie down for a few hours in silence. Thankfully I managed to rally enough for the evening, because I had some plans. But first, I needed to get some food. I didn't really eat lunch, so I went for a quick walk to Soho for a drink and to pick up dinner for myself and my mum on the way back.

I love bubble tea, and I'd been wanting to go to Nuttea because they have nut crea,! There are some Nuttea stores in Australia, but none in Brisbane. I got a taro milk tea with pearls, of course, my classic order, with the nut foam. And, well... the taro milk tea was good but the nut cream was a bit too rich for me. But I lived and learned and experienced!



I had put in an order to Neat Soho so I could pick up dinner on the way back from Nuttea. I had the Chick'n Sandwich (lettuce, chick'n patty, mayo, pickles on a bun) while my mum ordered the Veggie Crunch Burger (a chickpea and spinach patty, zucchini shoestring fritti, vine ripe tomato, red onion, cilantro-chipotle sauce and green goddess aioli). We shared some fries and tater tots, and I also got a matcha lemonade.







It was a perfectly fine meal. I find it hard to get super excited about burgers these days, but these were nice and filled us up. The matcha lemonade was nice and refreshing! And it gave me the energy that I needed for my night activity, which was going to see Six at the Vaudeville in London!



I love SIX! I saw it three times when it was in Brisbane, and when I realised my hotel was a seven minute walk away from the London theatre where it was playing I had to go! It is coming back to Brisbane at the beginning of next year, and I already have tickets to go and see it three times again while it's here.

Back next time with day two of London!

Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



This has nothing to do with my trip. This was a photo I took last night of Eloise being the babiest baby who ever babied and snuggling up to me while I was reading.

UK/Spain 2024 Part 10: London

After a final breakfast at the cottage, Jojo drove me to two hours to Edinburgh so I could catch my plan back to London. I was sadness itself. I didn't want to leave Scotland or Jojo! I am more certain than ever that Scotland is the place that I am meant to be! This time when I got to the airport I found the lounge, and had a lil vegan lounge snack of a tiny little vegan pie with some brown sauce, a roll, and some salad.



I also snacked on some lovely banana and chocolate bread that Jojo made and packed for me.



Bye bye Scotland. :(



Once I landed in London, I found my way to the hotel where I was meeting up with my mum again. She'd spent the last week travelling around England doing a family history tour. Our hotel was very near Covent Garden markets, so once I'd got to my room and dropped off my bags I had a bit of a walk around, checked out the markets, wandered the streets, until I was hungry for dinner.

I was tired and hungry, so when I walked passed Pho and saw they had heaps of vegan things on the menu, I was sold. I started with some Summer Rolls with This Isn't Chicken added into them. The vegan chicken was kind of dry and weird textured though.



I also had a lovely Dragonfruit Lemonade.



For my main I got the Three Mushrooms Vegan Pho with tofu added. This was LOVELY! It was also huge. I couldn't finish all the noodles, but you bet I ate every bit of tofu, mushrooms, and vegetables out of it.



Pho is a chain that has a bunch of locations around London, and definitely a place I'd recommend for an easy vegan meal.

The next morning I awoke and... well, I had cold strawberry poptarts and some fruit for breakfast. Look, I needed something to eat before I went out and that's what I had! I was meeting up with an internet friend who had come to London from Cambridge for the day. Our first stop was a Swedish bakery called Bageriet, which was a very short walk from my hotel. Bageriet has nothing vegan there but my friend wasn't vegan and also we were visiting for extremely niche nerdy reasons. Heh.

Our next stop was just a few minutes walk away, and this place was HUGE on my to do list. It didn't not disappoint. Cream Dream is an all vegan (and mostly gf) bakery, run by Ukranian refugees. Their aesthetic was incredible!





They had a cabinet full of gorgeous looking vegan tarts and desserts! As well as some croissants and other things on the counter. They also had a bowl of cat stickers on the counter, and you could take one for free! Pink, vegan, cats, literally my dream place.





I had the Strawberry Tart, which was LOVELY! This is the kind of place that NAILS gluted free desserts. Because I couldn't tell they were gluten free, they just tasted perfect.



My friend had the Honeycomb Tart, which they said was really nice as well.



I also had a pink iced chai, though it ended up being more like dragon fruit syrup and soy milk, I couldn't taste any chai spices in it.



You will see Cream Dream pop up a couple of times in my London trip, because it is exceptional and definitely a must visit place! They also serve Ukranian cuisine for dinner, though I didn't see a menu anywhere, but I just had desserts there. I will be back there with bells on the next time I am in London, that's for sure!

I'll continue my first day in London with my next post! I'm having fun blogging again!

Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



No kitties for me in my hotel room in London, alas. But here's a photo of Peps's cute tootsies!

UK/Spain 2024 Part 9: Last day in Scotland

Sigh.

I don't know why all good things must come to an end, but sadly the Scotland portion of my trip was rapidly coming to its conclusion. For my last full day in Scotland, we just hung out at Jojo's house, ate food, visited the sheepies, watched every Taylor Swift music video in chronological order. You know, regular things like that.

When I first got there Jojo wrote this super cute list for food planning of things we were going to eat while we were at her place. The highlighted ones were the ones we still needed to eat on the last day. The only thing we didn't manage to make was fairy bread, which is fine because as an Australian we invented fairy bread and I can eat it whenever I want.


The chocolate croissants were some randomly vegan friendly frozen ones from a supermarket. I can't remember what their brand was because I didn't take a photo of it. They were not really croissants, more like chocolate filled buns, maybe? But they were yummy once we baked them.



Finally, after hearing about them so many times, I tried Bourbon Creams! And learned that they pronouce the word 'bourbon' differently in the UK compared to here. These chocolate filled chocolate biscuits have nothing to do with the alcohol bourbon, and are very nice.



I had to have a tiny nibble of the Babybel plant based cheese, because I loved Babybel cheese when I would younger in my pregan days. Only a tiny nibble though, because it is made of like 90% coconut oil and I could tell.



Hawaiian Pizza! I wish I could remember if this was frozen or partly home made but I cannot. Fibro brain fog is real and my memory is kind of trash these days. And of course I didn't write anything down this trip. But I feel like it was partly premade and we added some extra toppings to make it better.



We had some leftover cheeses that we finished up, along with some of the Philadelphia Vegan Cream Cheese. I liked it! Bring it to Australia please Philadelphia!



Then it was my final visit to see the sheepies, and walk around Jojo's lovely property.







Back at the house, we made some fun afternoon tea! I enjoyed both of these.





And I finally tried a sip of IrnBru, Scotland's famous soft drink. I don't drink fizzy drinks (except for kombucha), but I simply had to have a taste. What does it taste like? Kind of orange? But not quite?



After our rather varied day of snacks, Jojo made us a lovely dinner of undo noodles, tofu, peanut sauce, and pickled cucumbers.



And that was my last full day in Scotland. Sadly. Next post will be about flight and time in London. Which is fine, but not Scotland. Turns out I love Scotland. More than I love Seattle. Anyway, now my life goal is to move to Scotland.

Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



Peps! Had a lovely time getting to know this girl.