London Day 3 - Wholefoods!

Well, a few days later than planned, but I finally have time to sit down and write about our third, and final, day in London. Izzy is at a birthday party and Toby is having a nap...so let's do this! :)

We woke up on our last day and quickly finished packing up our stuff. We had to be out of the hotel by 11am, but actually checked out at 9am - we were hungry for breakfast! We'd originally planned to lug our suitcases around London for the day, but when I checked our train tickets I realised that the train left at 4.30pm instead of the 3.30pm that was in my mind, so we decided to use the "extra" hour to leave our suitcases at the hotel and then come back for them - so much easier!

After we'd checked out we headed to the place I was most excited about - Wholefoods!! Only a 10-15 minute walk from our hotel...possibly one of the main reasons we'd stayed there ;)

We headed upstairs first for breakfast...

French toast with caramelised bananas and dark chocolate for Liam...

and French toast with caramelised apples, strawberries and pecans for me...

Plus coffee of course...after not having had a single coffee the day before, I happily slurped this iced coffee down even though it was unsweetened!

After we'd finished eating our delicious breakfast it was time to head downstairs...where I spent the next hour or so wandering around with my mouth wide open and lots of "wow"s being gasped!!!

Liam's favourite area!

Nut butter making machines!

Had to get some of these - I miss marshmallows!

So what did I end up buying? I was quite surprised actually - I was expecting to spend about twice what I did...I was obviously more restrained than I'd realised!!

Crispy things...

Raw cacao & cinnamon kale chips, tangy apple crisps, sweet apple crisps, pear crisps, sour cream & onion popchips (and also some BBQ ones for Liam) and 3 cheese Diva popcorn. So far I've eaten one of the bags of apple crisps, which I loved...

and the kale chips, which I didn't like at all. I was really disappointed about that as I love homemade kale chips and I've also had a cheesy version of that brand which I adored, but something about the savouriness of the kale trying to be sweet did not sit well with me! Izzy didn't like them either, but Toby still gobbled them up, albeit not with as much enthusiasm as he shows for my homemade ones!

I also bought some sweet bars etc...

Vegetarian marshmallows - coconut and vanilla, Booja Booja raspberry truffles (I was so happy to see these, been wanting to try them for ages!), Spiru-tein cookies & cream sachet (they didn't seem to have any sachets or tubs of the PB Swirl flavour, boo!), Luna bars - white chocolate macadamia & nutz over chocolate, Pulsin raw chocolate brownie (I've had these before but love them), Conscious goji & coconut raw chocolate and OmBar coconut raw chocolate.

I seem to have a bit of a mental block about eating my Wholefoods goodies - as once they're gone they're gone - so I haven't even tried the marshmallows yet (but have checked the dates, ha, no way I'm letting those go bad!!). I have eaten some of the Booja Booja raspberry truffles though. I'd tried to order these into my local store a while back, but I could only do it if I bought 3 boxes at once, which seemed a bit extortionate, so I'd been looking forward to trying these for a while...

Rich, velvety, strong raspberry flavour...totally delicious! I am very impressed at my self-restraint with these - they have to be kept in the fridge and I've only been eating one at a time. I think there are still about 3 (out of 8) left in the box!

The final Wholefoods purchase that I've photographed (although I'm sure there must have been other things that I've forgotten about...sorry!) was a slice of raw pumpkin pie. Liam bought a piece of toffee crisp cake to eat on the train, and I bought this but ended up saving it til the following day as I ended up buying too many different options for my "train food" as you'll see in a minute! This was a perfect way to try to combat the post-"holiday" blues anyway...

This was amazing! It didn't taste like traditional pumpkin pie - it was nowhere near as sweet for one thing - but it was so rich and creamy, I loved it! And seeing as I still have a dozen tins of pumpkin in my larder from last Autumn, I really have no excuse not to recreate it soon...!

Overall, I've been really pleased with my Wholefoods haul. Although I did get home and realised that I hadn't bought - or even, to be honest, noticed - any PB&Co nut butter - how did that happen??! Luckily I still have a jar of DCD from a recent American foods order!!

Right, back to the last day in London. After we'd finished our shopping, we went back upstairs for a juice before leaving Wholefoods. Liam had an orange, carrot and ginger juice...

and I chose a green smoothie which had spinach, pear, kiwi, apple, cucumber and lime in it...

This had great flavour but was a bit bitty...my blender gets them smoother!

After our drinks, we caught the tube from Kensington to Oxford Street to do a bit of shopping. New clothes for Liam & then Selfridges food hall for me...!

I got my sushi fix for the train - I had sushi of some description every day that weekend!

And also macarons - this time a salted caramel one from Pierre Hermes (verdict: better than Laduree, but the Sunday market one was my favourite)...

We also got more fro yo - from Pinkberry...

I had salted caramel fro yo with cherries, crispy crepes and peanut butter crunch...divine!

We then made our way to Waterloo, and I did some last minute panic present shopping for Izzy (we'd already bought her some cute Red Riding Hood wooden book ends, but hadn't found any jewellery - her requested gift - so I ended up buying her some hair flowers from Accessorize instead) and spent some time in Starbucks whilst Liam went back to get the suitcases. I hadn't been to Starbucks all weekend, but desperately needed somewhere to sit down, and the fact that it also meant I had an iced chai latte and a cheese and mushroom croissant (can we call this late lunch at 3.30pm - fro yo alone is not enough!!) was an added bonus...

All too soon it was time to head home. The train was much more crowded on the way home so we had to share a table seat with someone else, but luckily he left the train before too long so I felt more comfortable about starting eating! I'd somehow ended up with 3 different dinners to eat on the train, all from Selfridges...

Sushi - avocado rolls and omelette...

Spanish - avocado salad and vegetable tortilla...

and a huge salad from Chop'd (also in Selfridges)...

This place was fab - you chose your base (green leaves and potato for me), 3 "basic" ingredients (I got egg, cooked beetroot and sweetcorn), one deli ingredient (falafel), and then you could also add a dressing and seeds, so I chose sunflower seeds and mango dressing. They then mixed it all up for you, although you could choose to have the dressing separately which I should have done really as I didn't eat this until near the end of the train journey. Still crunchy and tasty though! You could add more ingredients to your salad too if you wanted, for extra cost, but even the standard option had plenty of choice. I was ready for some vegetables by this point!

We got back home just in time to say goodnight to the children (Liam's Mum was in the process of putting them to bed when we walked in) which was nice, they were so excited to see us which made the end of the weekend away slightly more bearable!! ;-D

Phew, end of post! It was such a fantastic weekend, I hadn't been to London in over 10 years before this time, but we definitely don't want to leave it so long again until our next visit! I've also already started making a list of things I'm hoping Dad will buy me in Wholefoods for my Christmas present (!!), the raspberry Booja Booja truffles are top of the list, mmm!

Have you ever been to Wholefoods? What things would be top of your list to buy? I was most excited about finding the Booja Booja truffles and vegetarian marshmallows, but I also loved all the snack bars - so many to choose from!! I was tempted to get a Wholefoods "box" from the salad/hot bar, but as we were there at 10am and I knew we'd be going to Selfridges food hall at a more food-appropriate time, I resisted. Liam wanted to try the wine! It was quite cool - you could buy a glass of various sizes in store, to try before you chose to buy a bottle, or just as a drink I suppose. I just completely bypassed that area as I don't like wine, but Liam called me back to show me!

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!