After spending Christmas with my Mum, I decided to take some time out and visit my Dad in London for a couple of weeks to kickstart the year.
I was quite excited because the visit gave me the opportunity to tick off a couple of items from my bucket list, but also spending time with my dad is a rarity.
So, I packed my suitcase and a large rucksack full of stuff for the few weeks I'd be staying and trotted off to the train station to catch my train to London. The train down was quite uneventful, I spent most of the time listening to music or reading.
On arrival at London, there was still some time to kill before my Dad finished work and could meet me, so I mooched around central London for a bit. The first thing that struck me was how many homeless people there are around Kings Cross and the surrounding area, but this is combined with a signficant amount of rubbish. Perhaps not a good start to the trip, but I had seen these things on previous trips - it just appears to be getting worse.
Still, I eventually met with my dad and the visit got underway.
For the first few days, I stayed localish to my dads. This resulted in finding a lovely family run cake shop - photos below:
What was most surprising about this wonderful little cake shop is that it was open until 10-11pm at night, with fresh cakes still being made until the last hour. That compared to the North where such places close much earlier was a welcome change.
I also explored a local Shisha lounge, but I didn't find it as good as the northern lounges. In fact, the experience was a bit disappointing despite all the effort that had gone into the decoration - see below. In the northern lounges I'd visited, there was usually free black tea with fresh mint available. This was seen as general hospitality by the lounge operator but in the south, not only was this non-existent, but the quality of tea seemed was pretty inconsistent. At one point, I was just given hot water with a single(!) mint leaf. Yikes.
Eventually, I decided it was time to tick off one of my to-do list items and trek into central London to visit the British Library to collect my Readers Card. On the morning I decided to do this, I kickstarted the trip with a hearty breakfast at a local turkish cafe.
The breakfast wasn't badly priced at £10, but I wasn't so sure about the chips for breakfast. The latte was pretty average, however the real wonder was the freshly squeezed orange juice. A little pricey at a touch over £4 but it was squeezed by a machine that I could watch and served to me lovely and cold. Spot on.
Heading into Central London, I noticed a Union Flag flying against the backdrop of blue sky and sun. I love to see it.
That having been said, the view of St. Pancras Hotel was just as good. Notice the super car parked outside. It's been sat there for a few years apparently.
Then it was time! I'd finally reached the British Library.
After a quick security check, I was in and managed to find the Readers Card area. Unfortunately, the British Library were recovering from a Cyber Attack so I was issued with a temporary card (or rather a bit of paper) until the library was able to issue plastic ones again. The irony.
I was quite impressed by the other facilities at the Library. For example, the cafes were serving up some superb coffee and light food. Likewise, the free to view exhibits were absolutely fabulous. Some images are below:
That concluded my trip to the British Library, so it was time for a quick selfie before I was off.
Usually, when I'm in central london, I also visit Judd Books. A cool little book shop quite close to Kings Cross. On this visit though, they didn't have anything I thought was worth buying which was a shame.
Throughout the rest of the visit, I spent my time with my dad which I'm not going to share because I think that's a bit personal, and touring around London. To say I was glad to get back to Yorkshire after all the hustle and bustle of London was an understatement.