Hey everyone!

I’m back for another international adventure, this time heading to England to visit some English gardens, fancy manor homes, and sites associated with all things Jane Austen.

my normal traveling buddy is staying home to keep our fur babies alive, so I am hitting the road with a friend. She has elected not be exploited on my blog (boundaries keep friends as friends after all), so you are in for a real treat! A blog that is 100% all me. I know, just what we’ve all always wanted.

We landed in London and made our way to our hotel, making some friends along the way who were also headed to our hotel. We found a couple of ladies a bit older than we are, who somehow managed to emerge from their international flight from Denver perfectly rested, with perfect hair and makeup. Kudos to them.

Pics of Paddington Station. I tried to get some of the trains for the Huffaker kids who have had complaints lately about the blog that we have not been diligent about train pictures:

Unfortunately they didn’t believe us when we said the hotel was a different way, so they made it to check in as we were heading up the stairs to our room, proving that I am always right.

We freshened up and hit the streets of Kensington in London.

Kensington is an area of London I’ve never been in before, which is partly why we chose to stay here. It’s close to Notting Hill, has the beautiful Kensington palace and gardens (where Princes Diana lived), and the expansive Central Park of London: Hyde Park.

It’s also got very cute pubs, streets, and tow houses.

Although wandering the cute little streets was lovely, we had a destination in mind: Dishoom. Dishoom is a world famous Bombay style restaurant that has several locations around London. Jimmy and I still count it as one of our favorite meals when we came to London 8 years ago, and I’ve been so excited to go back.

They only take a few reservations a night, and the rest is all walk in. Jimmy and I waited well over an hour last time. This time we showed up and we’re told the wait was about an hour, but there was room for us to sit in the bar where we could order snacks and drinks. Perfect.

My drink was some kind of fruity magic with rum and coconut water. The crisps, were masala seasoning with fresh lime. Amazing.

The people next to us at the bar seemed a bit salty about the wait, and complained to the server that they didn’t drink alcohol. I guess they missed the whole page of non alcoholic beverages? Totally not my problem, except that I’m super nosy.

After a while we got our table and a full menu:

We wanted to try so many things, so of course we orders way too much food.

Obviously I would do it all again. Perfect way to start our culinary experience in London.

After dinner, we needed something to keep us from falling asleep at 7pm, so we walked to Kensington palace to walk around the park and Hyde park.

We found the ye olde TARDIS… I mean telephone box. This one is red, after all.

Hello… it’s me.

HELLO FROM THE OTHER SIDE

of the pond. Now Adele is stuck in my head. If you don’t know the song, look it up. It’s a goodie.

Kensington Palace was closed for the evening, but they had a memorial for Princess Diana out front as July 1st was her birthday.

The grounds around the palace were absolutely lovely

And wandering Hyde park was beautiful.

I especially enjoyed the Peter Pan Statue (and learned there is a book called Peter Pan in Hyde park).

Come on everybody, here we go!

And we loved the Italian Fountain garden which had a dance class practicing tonight.

After that, it was 9pm and feeling like an acceptable time to go to bed, so we did.

After all, we’ve got a bit of an adventure planned tomorrow…

Goodnight