Oh, London. I came, I saw, I ate, I cried. No, really, I cried. Here’s a summary of my trip in 4 photos:
Read on for the full recap!
The critters
First off, the critters! I brought 4 little critters with me to drop on this trip, all four were confirmed to be taken and two had successful check-ins! Sherlock found a new home in London, and lil’ Ted Lasso will be coaching in western New York! Always exciting to add more locations to my critter map! Little Totoro and Freddie Mercury are still unaccounted for, if you or someone you know found them, let me know! It’s never too late to check in, I love seeing where my little guys end up!
Also a quick reminder that if you had your heart set on either Totoro or Sherlock, I have patterns for those two! Totoro pattern is FREE and can be found over here, and the Sherlock pattern is in my book Literary Yarns!
The food
People who say London has bad food are wrong. It may have been true about 15 years ago, or maybe they’re thinking of traditional British food, which gets more of a bad rap than it deserves. London has such a richly diverse food landscape that I’d argue it’s difficult to find a bad meal unless you’re only looking for fish and chips and mushy peas. I had a great Jamaican beef patty, vibrant Indian food, savory and nutty west African food, delightfully bouncy TV-famous Chinese hand-pulled noodles, incredible modernized Filipino food, comforting Taiwanese staples, and stellar north African cuisine. You could eat around the world without ever leaving London. The traditional British stuff was good too. I had an amazing sausage roll from the Borough Market, a great fry up from Andrew’s Restaurant, solid fish and chips from Mayfair Chippy, and a fantastic Cornish pasty from a train station kiosk. Mushy peas on the other hand are still bland green slop to me, and the sandwiches with our fancy pants afternoon tea at The Wolseley somehow managed to be too dry and too wet at the same time. They can’t all be winners, but British cuisine isn’t nearly as bad as people make it out to be.
But out of all that, there was one particular British dish I was on a hunt for. It’s so stupidly simple, and it lived up to everything I wanted it to be: the chip butty.
It sounds like something a 6 year-old would come up with. Buttered bread, with chips (that’s French fries to us Yanks) tucked inside, seasoned with some salt and vinegar. It’s basically a French fry sandwich, which seems simple enough, right? But proper chips are key, and that’s where something so simple is surprisingly difficult to replicate here in the US. Sure, I could slap together some slices of buttered bread and fries at a breakfast diner, but the fries wouldn’t be as thick as British chips fresh out of the fryer, and we don’t customarily keep bottles of vinegar at the table to sprinkle into it. Simple components, but it’s hard to find a place with all of them in one place. This carb-laden delight will be on my mind for a while.
London’s bar scene is incredible too, with so many world-class cocktail bars with great drinks, ranging from reasonably priced industry darlings like Satan’s Whiskers (our new favorite bar in London) to the most expensive martini I’ve ever had in my life at Connaught Bar. We were also treated to the most outstandingly thoughtful service between sister bars Seed Library and Lyaness, where we had chatted with our bartender Greg at Seed Library that our favorite foolproof order at bars in America was a Jack and Coke. He knew we had plans to visit Lyaness later in our trip, and when we showed up, the bartender there plopped two Jack and Cokes down in front of us as a greeting, because Greg had told them we’d be dropping by. Truly going above and beyond. We covered a good amount of ground and still didn’t even scratch the surface of everything London has to offer.
The sights
My husband and I have both been to London before, so we’ve already covered most of the main tourist spots, but there’s still so many notable landmarks that there’s always something to see. We dropped into Westminster Abbey to admire the architecture and marvel at all the notable historic figures buried there, swung by the Tate Modern to admire the art (a revisit for me, first time visit for my husband), visited the Natural History Museum (another GORGEOUS building), and I dragged my husband to Harrods because he’d never been before, and I felt like he needed to see the ridiculous opulence with his own eyes. A £60,000 baby Bugatti for your kid? That’s some high rolling Power Wheels there.
Also a special shoutout to the derpy animal sculptures at Westminster Abbey, because London, are these things okay?? I regret not taking more photos of bizarrely sculpted animals at Westminster Abbey, they were hilarious.
One of the more off the beaten path things we did was visit God’s Own Junkyard, a neon fever dream of sorts. It’s about an hour out from central London, so it’s a bit of a journey to get there, but there’s some cool walkable areas nearby to make the visit worth the trek! It’s where I got my chip butty, heh. Probably not something I’d include on an itinerary if you’re short on time, but it’s worth considering if you’re in London for a longer stay.
The primary linchpin of our plans for this trip was seeing the stage adaptation of My Neighbor Totoro at the West End. Y’all, I was a blubbering mess by the end of the show, it was THAT good. My husband and I both went in with a heavy dose of skepticism. We both grew up on the movie and know it inside and out, so we were going in with some stiff expectations. We saw glowing reviews for the show, but still had our reservations. We found out it’d be in English, which isn’t an issue, but there’s always certain tones and nuances that get lost in translation, similar to how dubbed movies will always feel different than subtitled. Then there was the question of having two grown women play two little girls, particularly for the role of Mei. The older sister Satsuki is more mature, so having an adult play her felt slightly more plausible, but Mei is VERY much a four year-old girl, so having an adult acting like a four year-old sounded like a recipe for some really weird moments. We also watched the recording of the stage play adaptation of Spirited Away on HBO Max and we were unimpressed — and at times straight up weirded out (WHY were the kashira played by a dude in underwear?!) — so we were REALLY hoping it wouldn’t be reflective of how My Neighbor Totoro would be on stage.
Nothing could have prepared us for how magical it was. The music, the stage sets, the puppetry, everything about it was recreated so perfectly that all the nostalgia hit me like a ton of bricks. I may have cried. A lot. I thought I’d collected myself during intermission, but NOPE, by act II I was a blubbering mess all over again. Absolutely worth seeing if you have any love for the movie at all. It’s currently set to run in London through November, if it ever comes to America I’ll be booking a ticket right away. 10/10 worth having an embarrassingly large pile of tissues in the end.
We also took a quick jaunt out to Richmond to see some of the Ted Lasso filming spots and wander through Kew Gardens! We probably could’ve spent some more time out there, but we had more plans back in central London, so we kept it short. We met a kind gentleman from Arizona at the Prince’s Head (aka the Crown and Anchor in Ted Lasso) who was willing to share his table with us when the place was packed to the gills, where we shared some insightful conversations over matters happening back home in the states, traded travel and food notes, and had an all around great time over some pints. My only regret is that we didn’t exchange contact information in the end, so if you’re out there, I hope you’re doing well and that you’re enjoying the rest of your stay in the UK!
Thank you, London, for always being an amazing time. It’s like New York City (or rather I should say New York City is like London!), but with a much longer history and prettier architecture. It’s always busy and it’s always changing, so there’s an endless amount of things to see and do, and it’s always different the next time you go back. I’m sure I’ll be back someday, keep those chip butties warm for me in the meantime.
