Portobello Road

For our long Easter weekend we went to London to look after my brother's cats while he went away.

Meet 'Baileys'

When we first arrived we weren't in the mood for trekking too far into town so took the tube a few stops to Notting Hill and wandered around Portobello Road as it was closing down for the day.  We had a coffee in a pretty yard, bought some bits for dinner from a Spanish shop and generally just soaked up the goings on as the hub died down.

One room living

So after my worried post on Friday we had an amazing weekend apparently you can be really lucky with the weather! 

I had to devote an entire blog post to the place we stayed - it was a proper gem.  It's a studio outside a big house in deepest darkest Devon/Dorset border (seriously one minute your in Dorset, the next you're in Devon I have no idea where we were sleeping!).

The lady who owns it has style as you can see.

  

Mothering Sunday wanderings

As a big thank you for helping us for our wedding and in perfect time with Mothers day last weekend I organised a couple of surprises for my Mum.  We have both wanted to go and see Jersey Boys in London for ages now and so I finally got us some tickets.  On a whim we booked a cheap hotel to be the hub of our adventures and it was pretty good with nice views of some surrounding mews.  

If I had to live in a city, this would be my dream location!

We started off the weekend with some window shopping around the swanky department stores.  We had never been to Liberty before so I became a bit of a tourist and took lots of pictures.  We chose the flower shop entrance to the store, I love flower shops at this time of the year and especially so this weekend with Mothers day right around the corner.

 

After Liberty we visited the Mary Portas department in House of Fraser and yep we both bought a pair of the Kinky Knickers (no photo sorry...) though the way that people were going mad for them in Liberty we wonder whether we should leave them in the box...

Our last store was selfridges where I darted straight for the stationary section and cooed over all the amazing paper products then the food hall.

That night we went to see the show and it was just amazing, I had never realised how many songs I knew!

We spent the next day really exploring London a bit more.  We figured out the cycle hire system and cycled around Little Venice where we had a nice coffee at a boat cafe and found a lovely garden centre to have a wander around.  The cycling didn't stop there, we enjoyed it so much we then went cycling right around Hyde Park.

My last treat was to take Mum for a Mothers day special afternoon tea at Bake-a-Boo.  It was so nice there, it's like entering a living room and the smell of baking was amazing!