summer – just meesh

August 31, 2016August 31, 2016

a day in LDN

My mom and I finished our trip with a day in London. Since our flights home were out of London we decided to put a day in between flights (we flew from Barcelona back to London, with a day before our flight home). Yes, a little unorthodox, but I’m so glad we did.

The day started with a walk along the south bank (my fav thing to do in LDN) to borough market for some yummy treats. We sampled the most amazing scotch eggs, sweet potatoes fries, smoothies, brownies and cookies the size of our faces (yes, again).

From there we headed, via the tube, to Regent’s park. There are so many parks in the city and I had yet to visit Regent’s. I think what sets Regent’s park apart is the beautiful rose garden.

Never in my life have a seen roses so big and so perfect. And in so many colors! It was amazing to walk around and see all the different types, each as beautiful as the next.

After stopping to smell the roses, literally, we headed towards Notting Hill area. I’ve yet to see it and I’m obsessed with the movie. But, we never made it because we decided to make a stop at Kensington palace instead.

Boy did we have a field day…we decided to view the exhibits because the palace has a lot of outfits wore by the queen, her sister and princess Diana on display. But also got to visit the quarters of the various monarchs that resided there…that’s where the fun started…

To be honest the whole time my mom and I were like 2 snickering school girls making immature jokes throughout. We couldn’t stop laughing and now we swear the monarchs spirits are haunting us.

Anyways, after we had our fun we headed towards Knightsbridge to do some shopping. We finished our day with dinner at Harrods overlooking the Egyptian escalator. It was pretty cool.

A bittersweet moment to know that the next day we’d be heading home and leaving a place I’ve come to love so much. But I know it won’t be long before I’m in London again!

^our yummy scotch eggs & sweet potatoe fries

cheers.

~meesh

^one of the things that had my mom and I laughing about at Kensington palace 🙂

August 18, 2016August 18, 2016

barcelona three

Day 3 started out with a morning bus tour of the city. The difference between this tour and the hop on hop off was that we got a live tour guide and we got to do some fun activities…

What we also didn’t know about the tour was that it included a ride on the Teleferic of Montjuic (so we got to go again) and a visit to the Spanish Village, which I’ll get to in a bit.
The tour started on the busy Barcelona streets, weaving in and out of different neighborhoods. Our first stop was at the Olympic Village where my mom and I had our first chance to go down to the beach and dip our toes in the water. We also got to see a lot of older folks enjoying the beach.

From there we headed up to Montjuic where we got a history lesson about the Montjuic castle that we had visited our first day and then got a chance to ride the Teleferic again and enjoy the views.

Then we headed to one of our favorite spots in Barcelona, the Spanish Village. The Spanish Village is basically all of Spain just condensed down into a “mini village.” The buildings inside feature architecture from each of the regions in Spain and house shops that feature the food and wine of Spain along with handmade items like fans and blown glass.

It was like this little hidden gem that we didn’t even know existed before the tour and my mom and I picked up some really cool handmade items like fans (which are super popular there). I think if we had time we would have spent the whole day there just going in and out of the little shops.

Our tour then finished with a walking portion through the gothic quarter of the city. We’d been there before but it was nice to get some context and learn about the area’s history. Plus I’m a big fan of walking tours because I think the best way to see a city is on foot.

Once our tour finished we headed back to the Sagrada Familia….which I will go into detail in the next post.

^^tbt to when my shoes where this white

cheers.

~meesh

June 16, 2016June 28, 2016

madrid day two pt 1

The next morning we headed out to conquer the other side of town, which included visiting the palace, the palace gardens, the cathedral and the basilica. On our walk over in the morning we had no idea that our hotel was right by the palace so we made good time and enjoyed walking through the palace gardens. Seriously the flowers there were incredible.

We couldn’t actually go inside the palace, I’m not sure if you can on a normal day but there was some ceremony going on that day. Because of that you couldn’t even go into the palace square as it was all blocked off. We were still able to walk around and see the outside, which was just as spectacular.

After that we checked out the cathedral and basilica, which were both very nice. Before our afternoon tour we wanted to find the place we had heard of yesterday on the hop-on hop-off were you could get a 360 degree view of the whole city…my mom couldn’t remember where they told us it was and I happened to be napping during that part of the bus ride so we wandered around looking for some time…

Little did we know that it was the cathedral that gave you access to the views. But it was a separate entrance so that’s why we hadn’t seen it before when we were there earlier. Anyways, we made it to the top and the views didn’t disappoint. I will say thought that there were these giant statues up there and it was creepy being so close to them because they were triple our size (see photo below).

After that we picked up lunch at the San Miguel Mercado, again and sat in the square listening to some lovely music being played by a sweet old man. He was amazing and had a dog so we gave him a couple of euros because we enjoyed it…