♡ London Day 1 | Arrival, Gardens, and Platform 9 3⁄4 ♡

Hello my lovelies!

I have finally returned from my vacation hiatus, and am now back and ready to blog about my small adventures!

I was in London for about 3.5 days, and I thought it would be fun to write about what I did through a series of blog posts~ It will help me both relive the experience, and will hopefully give you something interesting to read! ♡

There will be four posts to this series, since I did a lot of things and figured it would make sense to do a post for each day ^^"

And so we begin with day 1... arrival!

My flight was late Saturday evening, and I arrived Sunday afternoon to London! It was a fairly long flight but I luckily fell asleep for six hours of it, so it was much more bearable that way ^^" After getting through customs at the airport, we got onto the train and headed to the place we were staying! 

By the time we arrived and dropped our things off, it was already around 3 pm, and we were quite hungry and tired. I changed into something more presentable than my travel clothes, and we headed out in search of food and something fun to do!

The place we were staying was right across the street from Costa, so we popped into there for something to eat! Costa is a fairly large coffee/cafe chain, I saw them everywhere while in London~

They had a lot of yummy looking things, and my mum and I ended up choosing two sandwiches to split.

The top one was some sort of whole grain bread with goat cheese and red pepper chutney (it was really tasty), and the bottom one was a mushroom and cheese toastie (also really tasty!)

I also got a coconut flat white to go along with it-- flat whites are probably my favourite coffee beverage, and it was really yummy with the coconut milk!

With our stomachs full and bodies caffeinated, it was time to go do something interesting! However, we were all quite tired so we didn't want to do anything really big. I found a small garden about a twenty minute walk away, and saw that they had a smaller Japanese garden within it, so we chose that as our next destination!

On the way there I passed by so many pretty houses-- the streets in London all just look so magical, with the old buildings, the tall trees, and all the flowers! So many people had beautiful flowers blooming outside their houses, it was so whimsical looking and pretty ;v;

Loved these two pastel houses!

The park we went to was really beautiful! It wasn't very large (in comparison to some of the other parks I saw in London), but it was still so lovely ;v; In Florida there aren't very many tall trees (or really any diversity of plants...) so it was very welcoming seeing all the flowers and other plants.

~Photo Spam Time~

From the Japanese garden bit:

bonsai on a tree trunk! I thought this looked so magical ♡

They also had a really pretty rose garden-- it was quite small, but it had a beautiful variety of sweet-smelling blossoms! I got a chance to take a photo of my outfit while here~

A Tired But Happy Rose

Jumperskirt: Liz Lisa

Cardigan: Nile Perch

Cutsew: Ank Rouge

Shoes: Melissa

Earrings: Rose Pink Delights

Tights: AliExpress

After wandering around the garden for a little bit longer, we headed to our next destination: King's Cross!

My younger sister is a huge Harry Potter fan, so seeing Platform 9 3/4 was a must for her. I actually used to be really into HP when I was younger too, now not so much though... ^^" 

On the way to the station, we passed by many pretty buildings! All the architecture in London was so pretty, I was always looking around my surroundings because it was all so captivating ;v;

This was a library! (Behind it was some hotel, if I remember correctly..?)

The King's Cross station was very big, full of shops, places to eat, and of course, very many people. (The ceiling was also very pretty here *^* )

Platform 9 3/4 was actually a very small bit of the station, it was just a wall with a suitcase half-embedded in it, with a long line of people waiting to take photos ^^" We didn't wait in line for the photos, thankfully... There was also a little shop, selling lots of HP merch!

While my sister was looking around for something to buy, I also had a look around~ It was a very cute shop (though quite crowded), and they had a lot of really pretty looking character wands!

By the time we finished with King's Cross, it was already evening, and we were quite tired, so we slowly started making our way back to the area we were staying in. For dinner, we looked around a bit, and ultimately settled on Nando's! They're a chain of "peri-peri chicken" restaurants, and of course, their main focus was chicken. I wasn't really feeling like having meat, so I got some sort of spicy rice bowl with roasted veg on top ^^

It was quite tasty! We also got roasted sweet potato that came with some sort of dipping sauce, but it also had a small bowl of roasted pepitas/other seeds/nuts that you dipped it in after the dipping sauce, and that was really really good *^* I also tried a bit of the chicken, it was quite yummy! But I was content with my rice bowl hehe~

And that was pretty much the end of the first day! We didn't do very much, because we were quite tired from the traveling, but I'm glad I got to see the pretty gardens~ We went to bed early, in preparation for the whole day of adventures awaiting us the next day! 

I hope you enjoyed reading about my first day in London! 

Day 2 will feature my Natural History and V&A Design museum trips, more gardens, and more yummy food!

Bye-bye!