Little Miss Disney: Weekend in London

Don't be too shocked, but I've decided to take a break from blogging about Florida and present you with a blog post on the weekend I spent in London recently. I went to visit my best friends from university - Liz, Fee, Kirsty and Jenna. We hadn't all been together since our Fake Christmas back in January so it was definitely an eagerly anticipated weekend. It was also the first time I'd seen everyone since getting engaged so we had lots to talk about!

I got the bus from Cardiff to London Victoria on Friday evening after work and arrived in London at 8:50pm. I managed to read for two hours on the bus... I'm totally engrossed in Cross and Burn by Val McDermid. After Liz met me at the coach station, we went to Subway while we waited for Kirsty to arrive. Any excuse! We both had the Spicy Italian, which has to be my favourite Subway option of all time. It's also the most calorific, but calories don't count when you're on holiday. Calories definitely don't count when the five of us get together... we love food.

On Saturday morning, we headed to the V&A Museum in Kensington to meet Fee and Jenna. I'm slightly ashamed to admit that I had a hot chocolate and a scone with clotted cream and jam before 10:30am in the museum cafe. The scones were just too tempting (and massive). After our rather large morning snack, we wandered around the museum for a few hours while catching up on each other's news. The V&A is chock full of pretty things... I especially liked the jewellery section as I'm a fan of anything that sparkles. And it's free!

We went to London Bridge in the afternoon as Kirsty had some vouchers for the London Dungeons so we thought we'd see what the queues were like. After half an hour or so of rain just after lunchtime, the rest of the afternoon was surprisingly sunny. We had a lovely walk along the river with some beautiful views of the Houses of Parliament, Big Ben and the London Eye. There was also lots of wedding talk, obviously... I think I've now chosen my wedding colour after gathering opinions over the weekend. All will be revealed in a future post.

The queue for the London Dungeons was too long so we decided to stop for a coffee break instead. We went to the Eat coffee shop, and I had the most amazing 'Chocolate Chiller' drink. I know I'm easily pleased, but it really was that good. We also sang 'happy birthday' to Fee as it was her birthday in a few days and gave her all her birthday presents. All Fee's birthday presents from me were purchased from New York and Florida... well travelled gifts!

After doing some more catching up in Eat (and setting a date for this year's Fake Christmas!), we headed across the bridge to Covent Garden. This resulted in more beautiful views...

I don't think I've ever been to Covent Garden before... I've been to London quite a few times and have been to the London Bridge area before, but I don't think I'd ever walked across to Covent Garden. It's a lovely area with a mixture of shops, restaurants and bars, and I think it must look absolutely beautiful when the Christmas decorations are up. It even had a Disney store! There were loads of people milling around, and it was generally a lovely atmosphere.

After wandering around the shops, we met Liz's boyfriend and went to search for some food. We ended up in Nando's as everywhere else had a massive wait... Nando's never disappoints so it's always a good option when you're in a big group. I had my usual lemon and herb chicken wrap, chips and grilled halloumi. After eating ourselves silly, we went to the Punch and Judy for a few drinks then got the last train back to Liz's house. A lovely day was had by all!

Sunday was always going to consist of lots of eating before going back home to the diet... I had a bacon roll in London Victoria's Wetherspoons in the morning, then we shared some nachos, then I had a Sunday roast at the Shakespeare pub. I probably didn't need to buy a big bag of Skittles for the bus home, but I still did. A bus journey isn't complete without some kind of sugary snack.

Even though I was looking forward to seeing Neil, I was quite sad when I left the pub to catch my bus back to Cardiff. The five of us aren't all together very often, so it's always a great weekend when we do all manage to meet up at the same time. We all live quite far away from each other (Cardiff, Minehead, Milton Keynes and London) so unfortunately we can't all meet up as often as we'd like. I love reminiscing about when we all used to live together, some of the strange acquaintances we had back then, the unforgettable nights out, some of the equally eventful nights in, and our questionable ex boyfriends. You can't beat a good catch up with brilliant friends.