WIAW: London Baby!

Yesterday's London post didn't happen as I was suffering from a touch of post-holiday blues (not helped by the fact that all my family are jetting off to the sun today - Mum & Colin to Sardinia, and my Dad and sisters to Spain...jealous!!) but I figured a WIAW post would be a good way to write about our first day in London...



Please note that I ate a lot more in London than I normally do - Liam was quite shocked/disgusted by how much I could fit in my belly - there were so many things I wanted to try! So this isn't how I normally eat at home, honest!! ;)

Our train left at 7.50am on Saturday, so all I had at home was an unpictured coffee. Once on the train however...

I had two pain au chocolats, a pot of fruit salad and water for breakfast...

and then spent the rest of the 3 hour journey reading my Kindle and painting my nails...

When we got to Waterloo we suffered a bit of culture shock - 30p to use the toilet??!! ;-O

After taking in our surroundings, we went underground to buy ourselves Oyster cards, and then got a tube from Waterloo to Covent Garden. I'd done a bit of advance research and knew exactly where we were heading - Christopher's Grill for brunch!

We started with a slice of bread each (walnut for me) while looking at the menus...

We were pleased to see that they had non-alcoholic cocktails...

I had a spring iced tea which was quite nice, but mainly tasted like orange juice...

and was nowhere near as amazing as Liam's apple & ginger No-jito!

I love looking at menus online before I go to restaurants, and I'd already narrowed my food choice down to either Huevos California or French toast. In the end I decided to go for Huevos California (a tortilla with salsa, avocado, fried eggs & cheese) as I thought if I started off eating sweet stuff I'd never stop!

This was really tasty, but pretty spicy. I needed something sweet to calm my mouth down (!) so when we saw a table near us have eggs for "main" and then share french toast after, we decided to do the same...

This was divine! French toast with roasted peaches, mascarpone and maple syrup...I mmmmed the whole way through eating my half!!

After brunch, we spent some time walking around Covent Garden, including a shop full of American sweets (we were quite restrained and just bought one thing each - a butterfinger for me, chocolate pretzels for Liam - both of which are currently in the kitchen calling to me!!)

 and then, once we'd made some room in our tummies, we went to a shop that we'd spotted when we first arrived in Covent Garden - The Icecreamists...

They did some amazing ice cream flavours, although Liam was a bit freaked out by the breastmilk ice cream - it took me a while to convince him that it would only be that one flavour that was made with breast milk!!

I had peanut butter and popcorn which were both fantastic although, surprisingly, if I had to pick one I think that popcorn was my favourite! Liam was really boring and had milk chocolate + white chocolate...no sense of adventure! ;) he did try my popcorn ice cream though and liked it!

After our ice cream, we got the tube to South Kensington to our hotel (as we weren't allowed to check in until 2pm). We stayed at the Eden Plaza. It was nice enough - good value for money and a great shower...

but the room itself was teeny tiny - barely enough space to walk past the bed!!

When we were walking from the tube station to the hotel, we'd got a little lost and on our long route to the hotel had stumbled upon a Hummingbird Bakery (with no queue!) - a very happy accident!! When we were back at the hotel room I enjoyed the carrot cupcake...

this was amazing, super soft sponge and gorgeous cream cheese frosting. Liam was still too full from brunch/ice cream to eat his red velvet cupcake (!!) so I can kind of understand why he was shocked that I also ate the macarons I'd bought from Laduree...told you I ate a lot this weekend!!

Lemon-lime, cherry blossom, 2x salted caramel

These were actually quite disappointing and tasted almost stale. As you will see when I write my other London posts, I had a different macaron each day, and the Laduree ones were actually the worst I had. So Hummingbird lived up to the hype, but Laduree, for me, did not.

After I'd finished snacking, we left the hotel and walked to Hyde Park.

Despite the weather reports it was gorgeously sunny, so we dozed on the grass for half an hour...

before walking around the park for another hour or so...

before heading to Harrods food hall!

I drooled over Lola's cupcakes and desserts...

but only ended up buying some Joe&Seph's popcorn (caramel, cinnamon & coconut - I haven't tried it yet but it sounds delicious!)

and a little bit of sushi as a pre-dinner snack (again, Liam didn't eat anything at this time...no wonder he thought I was a piggy!!)

The breaded things on the left were shitake mushrooms stuffed with cheese and sweetcorn, really good!

For dinner, we'd booked a table at Umami in South Kensington, only 4 minutes walk from the hotel.

The restaurant encourages sharing, and a lot of the dishes can either be ordered in a small or sharing size. To start, Liam and I shared the Gado Gado salad, which was fried tofu with warm vegetables (bean sprouts, pepper, green beans etc)...

and we also shared a Roti Canai which was lentil daal with delicious flatbread. I had three quarters of this as Liam also had a couple of skewers of chicken satay...no complaints from me!!

I also had a cocktail with lychee liqueur and vodka...

For my main course I opted for Pad Thai Jae which was rice noodles with fried tofu, broccoli, courgette and a sweet tamarind sauce...

This was good, although I did find that in both this and the Gado Gado salad, the tofu didn't have the best consistency - spongy rather than firm.

We didn't have dessert as Liam didn't like anything on the menu, plus he was full. I, however, stopped off at Tesco on the way back to the hotel for my 3rd and final solo-eating session of the day. A Millionaire Shortbread Krispy Kreme donut (wish we could buy these in Devon, I miss them!!) plus a salted caramel yoghurt...

After this I was well and truly full, so went to sleep to get myself ready to eat more again the next day! ;)

As you will see in the logo at the start of this post, What I Ate Wednesday is focusing on fitness as well as food this month. I didn't do any fitness other than lots of walking on Saturday, but I have been getting more into fitness classes recently. Last night I went to a spin class and I am really feeling it in my thighs today!! The instructor was injured so wasn't on a bike himself, which I think either made it harder or made me push myself more as I felt he was watching to check we were actually turning the resistance up, spinning fast etc. Maybe I pushed myself too much though as the instructor came over to my bike twice to turn the resistance down (cringe!) - both myself and my littlest sister go very very red when we exercise so I guess he was worried about my ability to breathe!! I do think I found the class a lot harder as a result of eating like the above all weekend though...happy to be slightly more back on track with my eating today.

Have you ever heard of breast milk icecream? Would you try it?? I'd heard of it before, but this was the first time I'd actually seen it being sold. With choices like peanut butter and popcorn instead, I definitely wasn't tempted (!!), but I suppose in some ways it's no weirder than eating cows breast milk??!! :-/