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Last Sunday, I took the train down to London to spend one day with my friend Margarida, who crafted the perfect one-day itinerary for us to enjoy a mix of boho-chic and evergreen, classic locations. On top of that, we have recently got the National Art Pass, and we wanted to make the most out of it.
I’ve mistakenly purchased the three months taster instead of the yearly pass, so I didn’t receive the excellent book with all the museums available, just FYI).
First things first, you don’t want to be a tourist on an empty stomach, so we walked from King’s Cross to Farm Girl Soho. The place is great for the Millennial, aesthetically pleasing interior fanatics stereotype (yes, I’m talking about myself).
They don’t take reservations, so we had to wait for about 25 minutes, but it wasn’t too bad. I had some Turkish eggs with gluten-free bread, and Meg had an Acai bowl (which, to be honest, looked a lot bigger on the menu). We spent £33 (London prices ey!), but we were full and ready.
We found a few exciting exhibitions and modern art galleries discounted with the National Art Pass website. However, unfortunately, several other people had already thought about that, and they were all sold out. No biggie, though, as we found, we could finally check out nothing less than the good ol’ royal Kensington Palace.
Farm Girl Soho to Kensington Palace is a lovely 50 minutes walk, mostly strolling through Hyde Park. Disclaimer: How sweet the walk strongly depends on the weather circumstances.
On the way there, we stopped at The Photographers’ Gallery purely because we wanted to use our pass more than once.
There were four different exhibitions on, and it only cost £2.5 with the pass (I promise you I’m not getting any percentages on the passes sale, it’s just a fantastic idea!). It was an interesting choice, although it was relatively busy and we were probably lacked the context to appreciate the pictures more than just “wow, that’s a cool picture”.
Back to the Royals – we got to Kensington Palace at 3PM, and every single person we met from the ticket office to the door bouncer warned us that we would only have one hour to see everything and that we were okay to go at our risk. It only took us 40 minutes to see everything in all frankness, and we also had time for a peppermint tea (sadly, not with Her Majesty).
The Palace is impressive. The ceilings and staircases are just stunning. As you can imagine, the whole place screams Royalty from every corner, and it’s awe-inspiring looking at the details in every single picture painted.
You can walk through what used to be the Princesses’ bedroom, the Queen’s office, dining rooms, ballrooms and all sorts. Not being a Royal fanatic myself, one of my favourite items was their very own versions of the Tabloids. There was some reasonably harsh and hilarious satire going around at the time.
There’s a sign in each room suggesting you talk to the person standing there and ask them to tell you a story about it. Fascinating! All in all, it’s an excellent place for the architecture, and the added value is definitely the people that work there. The Adult price is £16 for a ticket, but, once again, it’s free with the National Art Pass.
We ended our touristy day walking to the newly refurbished Big Ben and walking on South Bank down to La Giraffe, where we had a meal before jumping on the train back to Leeds.
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