July 18, 2016

Summer Vacation 2016 London Day 5

Hey guys,

On our last day in London we woke up pretty early and headed straight for Notting Hill. We figured we had to check the area out because of the movie of course but also because it looked like such a cute area and I honestly can’t believe how adorable it really was. If I were to ever move to London, I would definitely have to live in Notting Hill. Almost every single house was painted a fun color (mine would of course be pink or maybe even Tiffany blue). We also read in one of our travel books that they had a cool market to go to on the weekends.
Stephanie Kamp Blog: Summer Vacation 2016 London Day 5
When we got to Notting Hill, we were kind of lost at first but eventually we just kept walking (and we followed some people) and we found the market and the official Notting Hill bookstore from the movie. It’s actually a gift shop and it looks a little different now because they have a sign above the Notting Hill sign saying “The Travel Book Shop” and one below that says “Notting Hill Gift Shop.”

While we were in Notting Hill we did some touristy shopping and we purchased some cute souvenirs such as London themed socks. The reason we did this was because when we went to Ireland, one of the days when we were traveling around my feet and my sister’s feet were absolutely freezing and we stopped in a shop and all three of us girls (my mom, my sister, and myself) purchased Irish themed socks. So we figured we might as well carry on the tradition of buying socks while visiting another country!
Stephanie Kamp Blog: Summer Vacation 2016 London Day 5
I would definitely recommend checking out the Notting Hill area if you are ever in London. I definitely wish we would have had more time to explore but I grateful just to have been able to walk around and do the little shopping that we were able to.
Stephanie Kamp Blog: Summer Vacation 2016 London Day 5
After we finished visiting Notting Hill, it was a day full of museums and galleries! The reason we headed straight for Notting Hill in the morning was because our last day was on a Sunday and just like here in America, most things didn’t open that early on Sundays in London. The museums didn’t open until around 10 in the morning and some of them were even later. We went to four different museums and galleries. We checked out The Victoria & Albert (V&A Museum), The Natural History Museum, The British Museum, and The National Gallery (in that exact order).

We hit up The V&A Museum (this was the love story that was being told at Kensington Palace that I talked about on Day 4) first because I believe it was the first one to open that morning and then we checked out The Natural History Museum because it was right next door. We checked out The V&A Museum mostly because it said it had a fashion section and I am extremely into fashion (if you couldn’t tell by my fashion blog! haha) and I really wanted to see what they had on display. This museum was free to enter but some of the temporary exhibits charged a fee to get in. I have included some of my favorites pieces from the fashion collection.
Stephanie Kamp Blog: Summer Vacation 2016 London Day 5
Stephanie Kamp Blog: Summer Vacation 2016 London Day 5
Stephanie Kamp Blog: Summer Vacation 2016 London Day 5
Stephanie Kamp Blog: Summer Vacation 2016 London Day 5
Stephanie Kamp Blog: Summer Vacation 2016 London Day 5
Stephanie Kamp Blog: Summer Vacation 2016 London Day 5
Stephanie Kamp Blog: Summer Vacation 2016 London Day 5
We didn’t stay very long at The Natural History Museum because we’ve already seen most of the stuff either at museums in New York, Washington D.C., or other museums located throughout the US. We saw a couple dinosaurs and then we made our way through the museum to the Earthquake simulator because we haven’t see one of those at any other museum before and we also don’t experience earthquakes in Florida so I thought it would be interesting to check out. To be honest, it was kind of lame but I think it might have been died down a little for kids. When the simulator went off, the floor and the walls shook but it wasn’t very intense.
Stephanie Kamp Blog: Summer Vacation 2016 London Day 5
Stephanie Kamp Blog: Summer Vacation 2016 London Day 5
Stephanie Kamp Blog: Summer Vacation 2016 London Day 5
Stephanie Kamp Blog: Summer Vacation 2016 London Day 5
Stephanie Kamp Blog: Summer Vacation 2016 London Day 5
Stephanie Kamp Blog: Summer Vacation 2016 London Day 5
The third museum we checked out was The British Museum. This museum houses the Rosetta Stone and pieces from the Parthenon. Aside from the V&A Museum, this was probably my second favorite museum because it had interesting artifacts and unique displays.
Stephanie Kamp Blog: Summer Vacation 2016 London Day 5
Stephanie Kamp Blog: Summer Vacation 2016 London Day 5
Stephanie Kamp Blog: Summer Vacation 2016 London Day 5
Stephanie Kamp Blog: Summer Vacation 2016 London Day 5
Stephanie Kamp Blog: Summer Vacation 2016 London Day 5
Stephanie Kamp Blog: Summer Vacation 2016 London Day 5
We checked out TheNational Gallery last and I honestly can’t remember what we looked at while we there but I do remember that when we were walking up to the museum there was huge Islamic gathering right out in the front of the museum. We were all pretty scared and we weren’t entirely sure if we should just head back to our hotel and avoid the area or if we should just continue on and go to the museum. Obviously we selected to just carry on and visit the museum.
Stephanie Kamp Blog: Summer Vacation 2016 London Day 5
Stephanie Kamp Blog: Summer Vacation 2016 London Day 5
Stephanie Kamp Blog: Summer Vacation 2016 London Day 5
Stephanie Kamp Blog: Summer Vacation 2016 London Day 5
In the evening, we decided to call it an early night and head back to our hotel because we had to get up pretty early to catch our train to PARIS!!! We headed back and packed up our suitcases. We ended up getting take-away from one of the Italian restaurants that was across the street from out hotel. It was pretty good food but unfortunately I can’t remember the name of the restaurant.
Stephanie Kamp Blog: Summer Vacation 2016 London Day 5
So one thing that we always whenever we go to New York is take a picture of all of our shopping bags at the end of the trip. The reason we do this is because we love NYC and we absolutely love going there to shop! It's literally the best shopping experience because they have every single store you could possibly want to shop in and they even have multiple locations of the same store all over the city. So we noticed that we had a lot of shopping bags like we always do whenever we go to New York plus I knew I would be doing some shopping while in London because there were a couple stores that I discovered thanks to watching YouTube beauty gurus and so we decided to take a picture of all of out shopping bags (this is not something we did in Paris but only because we didn't really do any shopping)!
Stephanie Kamp Blog: Summer Vacation 2016 London Day 5
However, this picture does include the bags we received whenever we bought souvenirs while sightseeing. Some of the stores that we shopped at include Primark, Boots, Pandora, The Disney Store, and Next (this store was not planned and we had never heard of it before but we saw a couple of them around London and it looked super cute! We ended up finding quite a few things each!)

Thanks for stopping by!
Feel free to leave a comment or share this with your friends!
XO, Steph
SaveSaveSaveSaveSaveSaveSaveSave

0 Comments:

Post a Comment

Thank you so much for leaving a comment! I love talking with you guys and getting to know you better! If you leave a question I will most definitely try to answer it! XO, Steph