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.

UQ/Spain 2024 Part 8: Glasgow

Continuing on my Glasgow adventures!

As I mentioned in the previous post, it was raining and pretty chilly, so of course we had to get ice cream! I actually love eating ice cream when it is cold. We stopped into La Gelatessa, which always has some vegan options. I got a scoop of the salted dark chocolate in a cone.



Then we went to Cupp for rose matcha bubble tea.



We'd eaten a lot of sweet stuff, so eventually we needed something savoury. We had a late lunch at The Glad Cafe, a very cool all vegan cafe. Jojo got chips with cheese and I got savoury french toast, which had cheesy mushrooms, crumbled black pudding, and roasted tomatoes. They were both very good, though I couldn't finish all of it because of *gestures to see above all the other things I had eaten that day*.





After that we wandered around, had a look in a few shops, bought a couple of things. Then headed back to Jojo's place. Again, Scotland is very pretty!





Once we got home, we didn't eat much for dinner. But we did manage to eat our cookies that we picked up from HoneyTrap and Burnfield Bakery!



I also had some of the kombucha that I bought in Glasgow.



I bought this chocolate from a super cute little shop in Glasgow, it had a bunch of other stuff I would have liked to buy if I didn't live half a world away. I haven't had the chocolate yet, but I have high hopes for this flavour combination.



Tragically my next post will be about my final day in Scotland. I wish it never ended!

Cute Kitty Photo of the Post

A blurry Peps.

UK/Spain 2024 Part 7: Glasgow

On Sunday we went to Glasgow. It's a two hour drive from Jojo's place (so was Aberdeen, so is Edinburgh, it is very in the middle of things) and we packed in a lot, so I'm going to spread it over two posts.

On the way to Glasgow there was a lot of pretty scenery!





Our first stop was the vegan bakery HoneyTrap. We pre-ordered some stuff the night before: a Blueberry Frangipane, Almond Croissants, and Cinnamon Rolls. Their cinnamon rolls are Swedish-style and have big chunks of sea salt on them. I would love to be able to go back here one day and order even more things! I also picked up a bonus cookie, which you will see later.





We went just down the road with our baked goods to Frankie Coffee, a place which very kindly lets you eat your HoneyTrap treats at there place! HoneyTrap itself has no seats. We both got a matcha latte, and enjoyed it with our blueberry tart and almond croissants. We saved the cinnamon rolls to take home. Frankie's is also an all vegan cafe, and they have their own bakery case! We didn't get any food because we were full of pastries from HoneyTrap. So generous of them to allow people to bring HoneyTrap food in there to eat!



We then took a lovely walk through Queen's Park on the way to our next destination. Queen's Park was so beautiful as you will see in these photos! I should probably also mention that it was quite a rainy day in Glasgow when we were there!




After leaving the park we happened across Burnfield Bakery, that had some vegan options in their window, and I picked up a cookie (which you'll see later). Then we got to our destination! Category Is Books, and incredible independent queer bookshop! This place was so great, I would love to go back there again. Imagine if this was your local bookshop??? Ahhhh! I bought two books from there. I may be aromantic, but I love a queer romance book!

Leaving off this post with a photo of a street in Glasgow, looking very pretty as most of Scotland does. Next post will finish up our Glasgow day!



Cute Kitty Photo of the Post




Peps keeping the sun out of her eyes!

UK/Spain 2024 Part 6: TTPD day and Aberdeen

Another blog post!

The 19th of April was a sacred day in the Swiftie calendar. The day that The Tortured Poets Department album by Taylor Swift dropped. Not only that, but Our Lady Of Swift surprised us all with an additional 15 songs two hours with an additional anthology released. Jojo and I are both big fans, and we were SO excited that we were going to be able to listen to the album for the first time together. We didn't listen to it at the exact time it dropped, that was 5am and we were asleep and then Jojo had to go and do the morning sheepies things. But afterwards we made breakfast (similar to last time), got ourselves comfy in the lounge room, and hit play.

This is the actual view from Jojo's lounge room! So pretty.



We snacked throughout the day. There were some chips involved. The pickled onions one were a bit too onionish for my sadly these days onion-sensitive stomach, but the cheddar and red onion ones were incredible! The right amount of onion for me.



We just made some sandwiches for lunch. A combination of some of the cheeses I've already posted about, plus tomato, plus greens, plus these nice slices that I found at one of the shops.



Because we are 1. the cutest and 2. gay, Jojo made us some strawberry matcha iced lattes from scratch to celebrate Taylor day! While we wore our flannels. This was sooooo delicious, and kicked off a strawberry matcha obsession that is still going strong.



We spent a lot of time listening to the music, picking apart the lyrics, losing our minds at various parts. It was such a wholesome Swiftie day! I should also mention that every time Jojo and I were driving together, we were singing along to Taylor as well. So much fun!

I went with Jojo to hang out with the sheepies for a bit in the afternoon! Enjoy this rare selfie of me. Getting a selfie with a sheep is as hard as getting a selfie with a cat!







Obsessed forever with the cottage.



Jojo made us tatty scones, tofu scramble, and sausages for dinner. We watched some more Our Flag Means Death. It was so fun introducing Jojo to this show and my beloved gay pirates!



The next day we drove to Aberdeen to go to Jojo's friend's birthday. I'd had the chance to chat to this friend online, and it was really fun to meet them! And some other friends as well. I've realised the only photo I took that day was of the food I had for lunch! We went to a place called Foodstory, which is all vegetarian with several vegan options. By the time we got there they'd finished serving the brunch menu and most of the Susan and Jojo friendly vegan options were gone (neither of us can eat chilli), so we both got some of the soup (can I remember what it was, no I cannot... looking at the photo I want to say potato and dill) with bread, and it really was lovely. I also got a turmeric latte, and a Swedish cinnamon bun!



We got home pretty late that night, and just had a dinner of snacks and leftovers.

Cute Kitty Photo of the Post



Peps surveying her kingdom through the window.