Author: iscottharrison

We are at Ralph’s Ka-Ching! Coffee house! Emma was super keen on checking this place out, the coffee is better than I expected, but at $32 for 3 coffees it should be… (they even have a pretentious door man who tells you where to stand when waiting etc. I was expecting someone to shout “NO COFFEE for YOU! and kick me out). everyone here seems to be gramming themselves rather than enjoying the coffee, so when in Rome so to speak…

Sharon and Emma had two west end shows booked for Wednesday, I wasn’t keen on more musicals so I thought I’d take myself down to the science museum to see the history of console gaming and then down to Battersea to do the “lift 109” to the top of the chimney for the view over London.

We started with coffee at my local favourite, which was excellent. Headed off to the museum and got there a little early. It was bone chillingly cold, so found a local cafe and warmed up with a hot chocolate. The museum was packed, it’s like London has doubled in population since we were last here (as well as in prices). The gaming display was actually a bit crap, so I left that early and just explored the museum which had an excellent display on how household objects work and I spent some time in the flight section of the museum.

The view from Lift 109 at night down at Battersea was excellent, although you need to go through 30 minutes of a rather bad video display etc before you actually go in the lift. If you want a great view over London, the “Shard” is miles better, although more expensive.

I’ve wanted to visit Kew Gardens for some time, and this trip the opportunity arose by booking to see the Christmas Light show.

We booed at 5pm, which given its dark atmosphere 4pm was plenty dark enough to see the lights. The lights are great, a little more subdued compared to what we are used to with Sydney’s Vivid light show and the Christmas lights at the Hunter valley gardens.

Also tried Mulled Wine, which is best described as drinking a Christmas Mince Pie. At least it was warm, but otherwise it’s actually pretty horrible.

Maybe it’s an acquired taste you need to grow up with, but I’ll pass on it next time.

When you buy a ticket, you can choose the “Victoria Gate” or “Elizabeth Gate” entry. If you can, choose the Victoria gate. It’s closer to the tube station. That gate was sold out and we had to use the Elizabeth gate, and to get to that we had to take a bus.

With public transport completely shutdown on Christmas Day in London, we were limited in what we could do, it had to be within walking distance.

A bit of google searching about 3 months before we left home I found a Christmas lunch offering at a Pub in Hammersmith which was only about a 15 minute walk from where we were staying in Shepards Bush. We got to stroll down some very nice looking streets on the way to the pub, and luckily wit wasn’t raining.

Unlike home in Australia (or Canada or USA too) the houses here had virtually no Christmas lights or decorations set up. I found one house with a few white lights and that was it.

The pub turned out to be excellent, there was a stack of food across the three courses. We ended up staying close to 4 hours.

Boxing Day here in the UK so almost everything closed including my new favourite cafe. So had a look on google and the one next door to it was reported to be open, however upon closer inspection out on the walk there, it was indeed closed. Heart sank a little as I was keen on a coffee this morning and I’d already committed to rugging up with various layers to leave the apartment, all that effort could have been wasted.

So I thought I’d just keep walking a bit to see if there was anything open, and sure enough another 100m down the road there was a Turkish style cafe offering coffee. As well as coffee they also had lots of middle eastern desserts and sweets as well as Hookah pipes if that’s something that floats your boat.

Coffee was ok, but wouldn’t go back unless it was the only thing on offer. A little weak and watery.