England: Day Two (London and Bournemouth)

Our second day in England started bright and early. We had a train to catch around noon, so we spent the morning with a trip back to Portobello Road in Notting Hill for their weekly market. But before we could even enjoy the market I was on a mission to find a very specific blue door. 

Notting Hill and a blue door…if you’re a fan of Julia Roberts, Hugh Grant, and chick flicks, then you probably know where I’m going with this. Luckily, my husband is amazing and let me take pictures of tons of random front doors before I found the right one:  

And then, just down the street (or maybe another street? This is what I get for waiting so long to write this) we found this little gem: 

SCORE!!! I was jumping around like a teenage girl who just saw Hugh Grant stroll out of a bookstore. (No, I didn’t see him, but I definitely kept my eyes peeled the whole time.) We went into the bookstore and I picked up a travel(ish) book, Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, in honor of “The Travel Bookshop” from the movie.

I told my husband to stand by the cash register and I started reciting Julia Roberts’ line from the movie (you know the one), “I’m just a girl, standing in front of a boy, asking him to love her,” but he got completely embarrassed, rolled his eyes, and made a beeline for the back of the store where he pretended he didn’t know me. Silly boys. I bought my book and a Notthing Hill bag and we continued on to the market. 

This is the time when I kick myself for not taking more pictures of the market, but we were on a time crunch and I wanted to buy things and window shop more than take pictures. There were so many clothes stands (I bought a cute dress that I now can’t wear for several more months—wah wah), antiques, fab London souvenirs, other knick-knacks for sale, and tons of food—fresh food, fast food, fishy food, sweet food; you name it, they had it.

(That woman was NOT happy I was taking pictures of her donuts even though I asked her first and said I’d buy one before I started taking pictures. She was so rude that I left without getting a donut. Now I want a donut. Real bad.)

  
If you ever make it to London I highly recommend a morning at the Portobello Road market, just remember to take lots of money, snap tons of photos, and carve out plenty of time to enjoy strolling the very long street. 

I can’t remember if I mentioned this in the last post,
but the reason we were in England was for my friend’s wedding! I’ll talk
more about it in the next post, but when she invited us to her
wedding I had visions of looking as chic as Kate Middleton. In other words, I needed a kick-ass hat to wear to this British affair. The only problem is that awesome hats are quite expensive…go figure. I was running out of options since I couldn’t fathom paying that much for a hat and was pretty sure I was destined to show up to the wedding with a naked head. Oh, the shame! 

Luckily, just as we were leaving the market, I found exactly what I was looking for:

Seriously, how cool are all of those hats? The hat I ended up buying is somewhere in that picture, but you’ll have to wait until my next post to see which one I ended up getting! 

This man—the hat maker—was so sweet and soft spoken. I want to say that he didn’t speak much English, because I think I remember trying to negotiate the price with him and it was a tad bit more difficult than it should’ve been seeing as how we were speaking English. Luckily, he dropped the price down by £5 (around $10), so it was still a lot, but not as much as it would’ve been. Score!

After the market we went back to The Portobello Room, grabbed our bags, and continued on our journey. 

I totally sang the Abba song out loud along the way…when in London!

We took the tube to Waterloo where we caught a train to Lymington, a charming little town in south England where the wedding was being held (but more on that in the next post, too). 

When we got to Lymington my long-time friend Katie, her husband John, and adorable baby Finley, picked us up from our hotel and drove us over to Bournemouth! I met Katie and John during the year I studied abroad at Bournemouth back in 2004/2005 and we’ve remained close ever since (I went to their wedding in Wales a few years ago). I was thrilled when she said they’d take us around Bournemouth for a quick drive—I haven’t been back since 2005 and my husband had never seen the area, so it was a real treat. 

We started at the Bournemouth pier, grabbed a cup of tea and a scone, naturally, and drove around the university area before heading back to Lymington. It was really, really cool to go back to a place where I made so many close friends and memories, and it was even cooler being there with Katie. (I’m just a mess of a person for not taking any pictures of us together. Grrrr.) 

Oh! It was also Finley’s first time at the beach, so we took a few pictures of him getting his feet in the sand! 

I can’t believe I didn’t take pictures of what we did after Bournemouth (are you noticing a trend here? Le sigh). I’m just kicking myself now. We drove about an hour north of Lymington to my friend Chrissy and her husband Darren’s adorable house. They invited us all over for dinner! Not only was the food fantastic (I still need that chicken recipe, Chrissy!), but the company was wonderful. Along with Chrissy and Darren, and Katie and John (and little Finely), were my friends Lucy and her husband Rob. It was so great catching up with everyone over a nice dinner, and it made me wish we had more couple friends around to have dinner with more often.

Here are two more pictures from the beach. I can’t decide which I like more, so I’ll post both of them 🙂 

All in all it was a busy, fantastic day with great
friends, good food, and wonderful scenery. I know this was a long post,
but a lot happened that day! The next England post will be all about the
wedding!