Lauren and I shopped around London for about five hours today and that's all that either of us purchased -- one very large glass bottle of sparkling mineral water and one waffle each. We hopped on the train at 10:19 this morning, took the tube to Oxford Circus and spent the entire day walking through the shops of London.
We stopped in French Connection (it's just been this past week that I figured out that FCUK stands for French Connection U.K. Took me a while, huh?), and Banana Republic, walked through Selfridges and then walked into a store called Liberty. They have everything there: Bedding, clothes, fragrances, fabrics, yarn, dishes, shoes, Christmas decorations... you name it. The store is in a really cool looking building too (first two photos: 1) flowers outside of Liberty -- have you ever seen a dark purple calla lily? 2) the many floors of Liberty).
I decided it might be really fun to go find Hamleys -- the gigantic toy store. Bad idea. Considering that it's half-term and all the kids are out of school, we just should've known better... there were so many people in there we couldn't even move!! We took the escalators up a few floors but finally just decided we had to leave. It was super hot in there and we were getting overwhelmed. It seemed like all of the employees where just playing with the toys : )****
We also found the brand new Anthropologie store on Regent St. It was fantastic and it made me feel at home. Like I was on 5th and Pine or in U Village or something : ) except that since the store is brand new it means they don't have a clearance section, and I absolutely cannot afford to buy anything in that store unless it comes from the clearance section.
On our way down Oxford St. headed to Hyde Park, we were enticed by the smell of waffles and had to stop. It was lunch time anyway. Milk chocolate for Lauren and dark chocolate for me! It was a little messy -- I don't even really know how the fork was supposed to help. I was a bit intimidated by it and maybe a little embarrassed to eat it so I carried it around for about ten or fifteen minutes before attempting to conquer it. I prevailed.
Lauren had absolutely no intention of doing as much walking as we ended up doing but she was a trooper and I really appreciated it as it saved me money... on our way to Hyde Park we found this magnificently huge horse. Of course, I needed my picture with it. The horse is part of a war memorial. There are war memorials everywhere here but this particular one was built to honor the animals that were lost in the wars. Poor animals. That tends to be my least favorite part of war movies. Steven can attest to that as I tend to ask "are the horses going to get hurt?" whenever we watch something that seems to have that sort of potential.
Hyde Park was absolutely lovely today. The sun came out and made the leaves all look bright and pretty. It was so nice being in the park after walking through the crazy busy city. There were paddle boats and rowboats out on the lake and people out walking and it was just so pleasant.
We were just going to walk through the park until we got near to Harrods but... neither of us knew where exactly Harrods was so we ended up walking a little further than we meant to. We didn't realize how far into the park we had gone until we came across the Princess Diana memorial fountain. There were lots of little kids playing in the water and it was fun watching them. It was a bit cold for me otherwise I might have joined in.
Lauren also lets me take loads of pictures! This wasn't the only time that she decided to find a place to sit for a minute while I took pictures of everything I could see.****
When we left the fountain area, I pulled out my super cool tourist map -- the one from the Big Bus tour that has very few street names and lots of pictures of all of the touristy places -- and then decided that I needed to use the real map that Kimberly let us borrow for the day. We finally found Harrods. It's amazing. I really enjoyed it and am looking forward to spending a bit more time in there. I probably can't buy anything there either but it's so much fun! We looked at the Valentino dresses. Wow. You wouldn't believe the price tags. Well, maybe you would. They have lots of Wizard of Oz decorations all over the store including a collection of very modern looking ruby slippers created by some high end designers. The food halls at Harrods were fantastic. They had similar ones at Selfridges. The food halls are full of, um, food! It's kind of hard to describe actually but they just have all sorts of amazingly fancy food and then different stations where they serve various types of foods and a fancy little bar area where kids were sitting with these amazing looking gelato sundae type things. Lauren and I each bought some sparkley water (that's what Caitie Anderson used to call it when she was little and I babysat for her) and continued on our way. That was my big Harrods purchase -- a $1 bottle of water. It is a pretty bottle though AND now I have a bag that says Harrods. I suppose I'll have to save that for my scrapbook!
By the end of the day we were very tired and hungry and ready to be back at the house. The train back seemed slow and we had to walk back to the house in the dark but I certainly enjoyed myself and thought it was well worth it. I was so thankful to have Lauren's company. We pretty much talked all day and while she might not think I'm the coolest 22 year-old she's ever met, she doesn't exactly seem embarrassed by me either.
You may consider this my Christmas card to you.****
Love,
Steph
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