London Day 2 - Duck Tour & Fro Yo

Our second day in London - last Sunday (can't believe it was more than a week ago already!!) - was probably our most organised day. We started off with breakfast in the hotel as I couldn't find anywhere else open early enough on a Sunday. Very glad we had another option for the Monday though as it wasn't great - both the machine coffee and the filter coffee were undrinkable, the yoghurts were full of yucky ingredients, so we ended up just filling up on toast, pastries and lots of orange juice! Oh and a hard boiled egg for me, which had a really solid, over-cooked, yolk but then still runny white - I didn't even know that was possible!!! This was our only "bad" meal of the weekend though, so can't complain!

After breakfast, we'd originally planned to go to Madame Tussaud's in the morning (as we had a 2-for-1 voucher) but then Liam decided he'd really like to go to the Victoria & Albert Museum, which was right opposite our hotel, so we opted for that instead. We'd planned to go to either the History or Science museum afterwards but we ended up spending 2.5 hours in the V&A so ran out of time!

No photos from inside the museum obviously, but it was really enjoyable. We hadn't realised that the main exhibitions required payment, but as there was still so much to see for free, and we were on a time limit, we decided just to look around the free areas. We were chatting to a lovely volunteer about which areas he recommended, and when we mentioned that Liam was a graphic designer he used his lifetime membership to get us into the Heatherwick exhibition as his (free) guests! So lovely of him. He was really enthusiastic about all of the museum as well - he'd been a volunteer there for 10 years and you could really tell that he loved passing on his knowledge and love for the museum. The Heatherwick exhibition was really interesting - all about different architecture that the Heatherwick studio had done - folding bridges, amazing hotels etc etc - we spent 1.5 hours in that room alone! We then quickly looked at a few other areas - renaissance, jewellery and the general architecture room - before leaving the museum to carry on with our days plans...

Next on the agenda was meeting up with my friend Sarah (Izzy's Godmother) who lives in London. We got the tube to Embankment and met her there, before crossing the bridge to Southbank.

Despite not eating fish, I love (vegetarian) sushi, and had my eye on a restaurant called Feng Sushi for lunch. Luckily Sarah and Liam were both happy to go along with my suggestion, so after wandering around Southbank for a bit we headed into the restaurant just as it started to rain, phew! Sarah and I decided to share a few bits of sushi, as well as ordering one or two things for ourselves. Liam got (cooked) fishcakes, and still complained that they tasted too fishy, haha, I think this was more one of "my" choice restaurants, but I made it up to him with our dinner choice as you'll see in a minute! Anyway, back to the food. Sarah and I shared a sushi roll with deep fried shitake mushrooms...

and also some mock duck pancakes that were made with thinly sliced deep fried tofu...

These tasted so realistic that Sarah worried that I couldn't eat them as she thought they were made with real duck! To be honest, they didn't even really need the tofu - it was the combo of pancakes + cucumber + sauce that made them taste as they did!

For my final dish, I also had some tofu fried in panko breadcrumbs...

Unlike the tofu on Saturday night, the texture of this was wonderful. It's hard to explain, the tofu was almost "slippy" rather than firm, which sounds disgusting haha, but actually worked perfectly in this dish!

We decided not to get desserts, instead heading to the little food market I'd noticed just down some steps from the restaurant. The first thing I spotted was churros!

I was especially excited about this as we'd failed to find any authentic churros when we went on honeymoon to Barcelona last year, so Liam & I got a tub to share.

This was delicious, just what I'd been hoping for last year. My sweet tooth wasn't satisfied yet though - there were too many other tempting things I wanted to try! I also bought just one macaron (I'd learnt my lesson after buying 4 disappointing ones from Laduree!) from a little stall at the market...

 After much pondering, I opted for the Bombay Chai flavour and I'm so glad I did, subtly sweet, subtly spicy, totally delicious! And so much fresher than the Laduree ones - this was my favourite macaron of the weekend (although I did try another one on the 3rd day as you'll see when I write that post!)

For the final sweet treat from the market, Sarah and I shared a snickers brownie - something Liam would never have agreed to eat!! ;)

This was a more cakey than chewy brownie, but with a lovely caramel peanut topping, mmm! My favourite of these treats was the macaron but they were all really good!

After this we made our way past the London Eye...

...to the Slug & Lettuce! I tried to avoid going to chains as much as possible while we were in London, but it had started to rain and the Slug & Lettuce was exactly opposite where we needed to be an hour later, so we had a couple of drinks while we waited...

Pimms!

Strawberry Mojito

When it got to 3.30pm, it was time to go back outside to get on this bright yellow bus/boat...

We'd booked on to a Duck Tour to do a bit of touristy sightseeing.

The vehicles are originals from the D-Day landings, and the tour guide gave us some info about them/the war, as well as about the sights around London. The tour started with about 30 minutes on land, going past Buckingham Palace, Big Ben, Trafalgar Square etc...

before going on to the Thames for a half hour boat trip...

After we came off the river we drove back to the start point ready for the next tour to go. It was an interesting way to see different parts of London, albeit slightly spoilt by the fact that the three of us were the only ones on our tour who weren't on a school trip from Russia!! There were two teachers and lots of, at a guess, 12-13 year olds who spent the whole tour shouting "hiiii! Hellllloooo!" out the window! Sarah, as a teacher, was quite horrified that the teachers weren't doing anything to control their behaviour - one teacher just sat quietly at the front and the other one seemed to actually be encouraging the noise!! I felt sorry for the tour guide as the three of us were the only ones listening to him, and at one point he had to give his microphone to one of the teachers and insist that they told the children at the back to stop touching the emergence boat steering wheel or he'd be going straight back before we'd even been on the Thames!! Anyway, it was still good, we just all had a bit of a headache by the time we got off!

Sugar cures everything though! Liam still didn't want his Hummingbird Bakery cupcake from the day before (what is wrong with him?!!!) so Sarah and I shared it to make sure it didn't go to waste! ;) Well ok, I had about three-quarters of it! Red velvet...again, delicious!

I've been craving cupcakes since we got home...well, cream cheese icing in particular...I'm trying to resist making any as my waistline won't thank me! I have no self-control around baked goods!!

After this, we walked over to Covent Garden as that is where Liam and I had dinner reservations. We wandered around for a bit, and then went to a cocktail bar that Sarah likes...with the slight warning that she'd never been there when sober before!! Apart from the sticky floors, it was a really good find. There was an offer on for 2 cocktails for £10 (but they had to be the same one) so I thought we'd get 4 cocktails between the 3 of us, but then Liam suggested that he have 2 mojitos and Sarah and I choose two to share between us. Go on then! I was especially excited when I saw one called "Peanut Smuggler" which included Baileys, milk chocolate liqueur, Absolut vodka, peanut butter and vanilla ice cream, so we obviously had to order that one!! The other one we had was a strawberry champagne julep which was a, lighter, nice contrast. The bar was below ground level so had terrible lighting, but here they are...

The peanut butter one was amazing! Not very chocolatey, but like an alcoholic peanut butter milkshake! :) The barmaid wasn't too impressed when we ordered it as it was a hassle to make, and she said she hoped we'd already had our dinner...whoops! Luckily my appetite was never ending while we were in London (and normally) so this didn't interfere with all the food I planned to eat later! :)

After this, Sarah had to go home to finish off writing reports (boo!) and Liam and I wandered around Covent Garden a bit more...

All the postboxes were decorated, I think to be auctioned off for charity at some point?

We had dinner at a restaurant called Navajo Joe. Liam loves Mexican food so I'm claiming this choice was for him, although of course I love any food really! And I have to admit that the mini starters were a big part of the reason I booked this - sweet potato fries and tempura asparagus anyone?

These were both fantastic, I really wished we'd ordered double portions as I was very reluctant to share these with Liam!!!

I also had another cocktail - this one called "Angel Delight" which was a mix of Stoli Razberi, Dubonnet, white chocolate liqueur and fresh raspberries...

Nice, but nowhere near as good as the peanut butter one!

For my main I had an enchilada with asparagus, portobello mushrooms and goats cheese. I had high hopes for this being (slightly) different to the usual - one veg (usually mushroom or beans!) used for all vegetarian options - that you tend to get, as it sounded like slightly more thought had been put into it, but unfortunately, whilst nice, it still mainly tasted of the cheese it was smothered in...

We'd booked this restaurant through Top Table, and it came with 50% off food if you ordered two courses. Unfortunately we hadn't realised that you had to order two mini starters to count as one course (this was when I really really wished we'd doubled up on the sweet potato fries & tempura asparagus!) so we had to order a dessert to share - vanilla cheesecake with white chocolate ganache, which came with berry compote (on the side, as Liam wouldn't eat it else!)

This was tasty, and worth ordering as a £5 dessert = a £17 saving, but it was unnecessary as after dinner I had plans for this...

My first fro yo of the weekend! We'd noticed earlier in the day that Snog was right around the corner from the restaurant, so we couldn't resist going! I had mango yoghurt topped with strawberries and brownie bites...

Mmmm! Worth the wait, although I am sad that we never made it to a self-serve fro yo place, this was still good! Liam didn't have any frozen yoghurt as, unlike me, he doesn't have a bottomless stomach! So he took photos of the pretty lights instead!!

A great end to another fab day, although I did go to bed slightly sad that our last day in London was already upon us...the weekend went by so so quickly!!

Have you ever had frozen yoghurt before? Favourite place to get it? I'd read on Nicky's blog that she loves Samba Swirl, which sells self-serve fro yo and has fantastic flavours, but unfortunately all their locations were too far away so we didn't manage to fit in a trip this time. We did have more fro yo on our last day though...I'll probably post about that day (which also includes a trip to Wholefoods!) on Wednesday, another day where lots of photos were taken so I still need to do some editing!