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A Tale of Three Cities: London

First step of her nine days trip across Europe

As part of our competition prize we travelled to London, Paris and Amsterdam for a total of nine days and I can't wait to share what we got up to with you. Our first stop was the Mercure London Bridge hotel where we got to spend three days exploring our capital city, London!

Fritha Strickland photo

By Fritha Strickland - Lifestyle blog tigerlillyquinn

Fritha is a Bristol-based blogger and shop owner. She also loves to travel!

london skyline

The Mercure London Bridge is decked out really stylishly with Scandinavian style furniture with a nod to the Sixties. My kind of interiors for sure! All the staff were so welcoming, especially with Wilf. Every morning Wilf would ask for one of the tiny chocolate eggs at reception before we set out for the day and we even found the Easter bunny had worked out where we were staying for Easter morning (thank you to the staff who thought of that!).
On our first afternoon we decided to be very touristy and visit Buckingham Palace - something I've never done before! Wilf was really curious about the guards and we watched them do their march. We spent the rest of the day in St. James's Park; it was a really lovely spring day so we got to spend a good few hours strolling around in the sun.
On our second day in the city the weather was a little greyer but still pretty dry so we took a trip to the Horniman Museum and gardens. Tom had discovered the place a while back and it was somewhere I probably would never have come across otherwise. It was perfect for Wilf's age and we wondered around the museum and aquarium for most of the day before heading back to the hotel for a bit. I'd certainly recommend coming here if you are visiting London for a few days and fancy going a little further out for a morning.
We ended up taking an evening stroll along the river and across Millennium Bridge to St Paul's Cathedral. We're not usually out in the evenings these days but as we were on holiday time Wilf was happy to stay up later and we grabbed supper at the Albion, a great pub just down the road from the cathedral near Blackfriars Bridge. 
On Saturday we met up with our friends Emma and Chris and their kiddos for coffee at the Tate Modern. All three kids got on so well and it was really sweet to see them play so happily. Wilf has been asking after them a lot since.
In the afternoon we decided to mooch over to Shoreditch for lunch, although this took slightly longer than expected due to closed lines. I'm thankful that Wilf is such a good traveller and a pretty laid back kid in general, which helps when you end up eating meals at unusual hours.
We went and got a Photo Booth picture in Rough Trade as we are hipsters like that and then headed home for an early evening before we set off early the next day for the next step of our adventure, Paris!

Mercure London Bridge Lobby
The Mercure London Bridge Lobby

Discover Fritha's next step: Paris !

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