Good morning!

Another day, another adventure today!

Ours started off with the need for a good, hearty breakfast. We’d been subsisting in the mornings on pastries and coffee, but man cannot live on bread alone.

You also need bacon, sausage, and eggs.

While waiting out the rain in the pub last night we had done research ( aka google searching) on finding a real English breakfast that would really set us up well for sightseeing and walking in a giant garden. If you’ve been to England before, you know that a good, full English breakfast is an institution, and something that has to be tried at least once. It usually comes with eggs, meat, veggies, toast, potatoes, and beans. And everything is fried.

We found a breakfast spot nearby our hotel called Beam that reviewers said had a great full English breakfast, so we headed out.

I dove right in with a cup of tea and a full English breakfast.

Yep. That’s a breakfast.

Feeling stuffed to the brim. And ready for action, we packed up our stuff and got to head to our main adventure for the day: heading to the Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew.

Kew Gardens are a publicly owned set of gardens that were originally part of a garden estate in the 1700’s, but is now a place where visitors can enjoy picnicking, milling about, and enjoying the incredible grounds. It’s also famous for the researching done on botany there, and the beautiful Victorian greenhouses.

We decided to go see Kew on our last day in London, as it is in a suburb called Richmond-on-Thames that is between London and our next destination: Bath.

We packed up our bags, got in a cab (ok it was actually an Uber) and headed to a dry cleaners near the Richmond train station where you can leave your bags for a fee.

This was my first time using the Bounce app, which is an app where businesses over to hold your luggage for the day. It was really handy as Kew gardens doesn’t have a left luggage area, and we didn’t want to have to go back into the city to pick up our bags from our hotel or a train station. There’s also a competing app called Stasher that looks like it does the same thing.

After dropping our bags, it was a 20min walk from Richmond station to Kew gardens (although there is also a handy bus that gets you there in 12min or so).

Since we walked, we entered near the edge of the garden rather than one of the main gates, which meant we entered into a very peaceful area.

The person checking tickets in her rain poncho noted that we were “very optimistic about the weather” in our dresses and sun hats, but do not worry, we also brought umbrellas.

Walking in Richmond to Kew gardens

And welcome to the beautiful Royal Botanical Gardens at Kew

So I’m just going to be honest, you’re about to see a gazillion pics of the gardens, so buckle in. Or if you don’t like gardens (because you’re the grinch with a tiny heart), scroll on by.

Kew is most famous for its giant greenhouses. The first one we walked through was the Temperate house, filled with flowers from warm zones all over the world.

I can’t adequately explain with words how beautiful this place is, but here’s some pictures:

You could also walk up these these beautiful, winding staircases to overlook the greenhouse from above.

Also a lovely view looking out the window from the top.

After enjoying the greenhouse, we wandered off towards a spot listed on the map as “the treetop walk”. When we got there, we enforced by someone working that we could take 178 steps to the viewing platform or “if you’re lazy you can just take the lift”.

Lift it is.

He must have also been feeling lazy as he got in as well.

The treetop walk was a viewing platform that goes on a circular path. It’s not a long path, but it’s lovely.

After the tree to walk, we took the stairs down (having been previously shamed for using the lift), and wandered to the rose garden.

It looked like most of the roses had been knocked off in the storm the previous day, but we saw a few pretty blooms.

I also found a cute little butterfly

After the rose garden it was lunchtime. We happened to be near the Victoria Gate which had a cafe with take away food.

Quick drink break.

Honestly, the food was fine, but if I had it to do over again I would have picked up food at the grocery store in Richmond and had a picnic in the gardens like all the school children did. The food was just ok and very expensive.

We had timed our lunch just as a rainstorm blew through, and by the time we were out the rain had let up. We walked by the beautiful flower borders to the famous Waterlily House.

The Waterlily House was easily my favorite part of the garden. It was a small, indoor pond with the biggest lily pads I’ve ever seen. They were mind blowing.

Seriously. So beautiful.

After that we were getting close to needing to catch our train to Bath, so we popped into the Palm House to do a walk around before heading out.

Deciding we’d done plenty of walking, we caught the bus back to our luggage. The bus ride was a bit of an experience, as it was full of tourists, commuters, and SO MANY school children whose chaperones kept yelling at them not to go upstairs. At least half of them ended up going upstairs.

After grabbing our bags we caught our train to Reading, then another train to Bath. Then we took an Uber to our Airbnb. Because why not use all the modes of transportation in one day?

Bath is gorgeous by the way.

After a quick pop in to a convenience store to buy a charging adapter for my phone (as the one I was using broke which caused about 10 min of total freak out for me), we hit a pub for dinner.

And this is where things get interesting.

The pub was very cute, and recommended by my friendly neighborhood travel guide, Rick Steve’s, as having great food. He was right.

The food was really good. I had mussels cooked in cider with truffle fries. The Eton Mess with fresh strawberries, chantilly cream, and meringue is maybe my favorite thing I’ve ever eaten.

While at the pub, a gentleman was sitting at the bar getting more and more drunk, and more and more loud. At point point another guy comes in, and at first they seem friendly, but it takes a turn.

The other guy has also clearly had a few drinks, and they start to argue over who knows what, and the whole thing culminates in one guy slapping the other guy and the two yelling at each other over who is English and who is Welsh. The British army gets brought up and now they’re arguing over history and imperialism and it gets strangely highbrow for a while before ending in guy two thanking us all for being “lovely people, except that little b**** in the corner”.

People, my first British pub brawl! What a night. In true British fashion no one mentions it again the rest of the evening.

And with that, it’s time for bed.

Goodnight.