Kensington, Notting Hill and Harrods...

Saturday found us out the door early. We headed for the little coffee shop right down the street from the hotel only to find it closed. Closed? Looking at the hours of operations they were closed Saturdays and Sundays. Interesting. A lot of stuff you would think would always be open was closed on the weekends.

So we found another shop around the corner.

And then we headed to the "underground", Pimlico stop to be specific. Did I neglect to mention that Lauren had been to London this past fall on a short trip? She was very familiar with the subways and the Oyster card system so she was also in charge of this. Getting us from point A to point B. Not that it was hard. Unlike NYC, where you have no clue where you will end up once you get on the subway, the London Underground is extremely easy to navigate.

I will also note that is was very clean and signage was easy to understand and follow.

First stop, Kensington Palace. Home of Princess Diana. Another little known fact about me, I am a big fan of Princess Diana. Brought my 7" BW TV to work when she got married in 1981 to watch the ceremony and cried when when died in 1997.

So I was looking forward to this.

All of the places I researched explicitly stated, "Get your tickets ahead of time, avoid the lines!". Well there was no line here. At all. We bought our tickets and proceeded in. There were no audio headsets for this tour. We toured the 3 separate areas they had to offer. There were cards in each area to let you know what you were looking at. A little antiquated to me. Again, it didn't take long, maybe an hour to tour.  I thought the whole palace would be a bit more glamorous. Truthfully, it was just ok. A bit of a disappointment.

Onward.

I had copied some walking tours out of my London tourbook and that is what was next in today's plan. A two-hour walking tour of the Notting Hill area. Yes, like the Hugh Grant movie. And yes, one of our objectives was to see the bookstore from the movie.

What I didn't realize was that Portabello Road was on the walk. And even with all my research I didn't know Portabello Road was a "thing". Especially on Saturdays.  So it was crowded.

It was a giant market, garage sale, rummage sale all wrapped into one and it went on for blocks. There were quite the variety of things for sale from fruits, flowers and olives, to gas masks, fabric, and records.

We made it to the Notting Hill Book store. Then had lunch at a small cafe and continued on our way. The walking tour was done in a loop, so we ended up where we started.

Which was Kensington Gardens and Hyde Park. We were now off to see the Italian Gardens, Peter Pan Statue and the Princess Diana Memorial Fountain. As we strolled through we took note of the beautiful flowers, many squirrels, ducks and swans. There were also paddleboats you could rent.

Our last stop for the day was Harrods Department store. It seemed like you could get anything in there. Shoes, clothes, food, perfume, they were all part of the offerings. We regrouped with a glass of wine at the wine bar and then went to do a little shopping. My goal was to get some tea, Lauren had brought me some from her last trip and it was delicious. We both ended up with a few things. It was time to head back to the hotel.

In all my planning, I was trying to cram so much in that I didn't leave too much time for dinner. Once we got back to the hotel our feet would not allow us to walk out again so we ate in the hotel restaurant that night.

What will tomorrow bring? Stayed tuned to find out.