Today, Lily and I split up. Lily had plans with Beckie and her other bridesmaids doing bachelorette things, so I had a day to myself to do whatever I wanted.
I decided that what I wanted to do was wander around with my cameras taking my sweet time photographing things. Lily left for the bachelorette party right before noon, and I left the AirBnB shortly after.
I should note here that I didn’t have data roaming turned on on my cell phone. I was relying strictly on my downloaded Google Maps, which had the subway stations, the major tourist attractions, and all of the points of interest that I had saved to a Saved Places list, so I could navigate around but I had no public transport schedules or walking routes.
I walked into the Stockwell subway station and promptly took the wrong subway north towards Buckingham Palace. I returned south to the Stockwell station, but I couldn’t find a subway map inside the station or inside the subway cars that could point me in the right direction. (Frustratingly, the subway map inside the subway cars only showed central London and basically cut off the southern section of the subway map that I needed to see.) I walked outside the Stockwell station to find a subway map, effectively having paid to make a round trip going nowhere, before walking back into the station and finally taking the correct subways towards the place I wanted to see first for the day: the Battersea Power Station.
The Battersea Power Station looks like a power station from the outside but has been retired from utility duty. It is now a very fancy shopping center, and I was curious as to how that looked in practice. Also, there were several watch boutiques and stores there, and wasting time looking at watches I don’t need was best spent without dragging Lily around.
When I got there, there was some sort of Asian food and crafts event going on. Out in the park north of the Battersea Power Plant and next to the river were some food stalls hawking various Asian cuisines. I paid £15 for a very small but very delicious Thai shredded beef.
I went inside the Battersea Power Station and took a few laps around inside. On the ground floor was where all of the high dollar luxury shops were, including the Watches of Switzerland store and the Breitling, TAG Heuer, and Tudor boutiques. On the second floor were more casual shopping fare, including a Swatch store and a LEGO store. The third floor had restaurants, including a particularly fascinating one called the Control Room where the restaurant occupied — you guessed it — what used to be the control room of the power plant, replete with a wall of old fashioned monitors and switch panels. There was also a movie theater at the top floor, and a section of the building dedicated to its history as a power generating plant.
As I headed back towards the subway station on my way out, I stopped by a food truck for a delicious Singapore curry bun.
Back in the subway, I retraced my earlier steps and arrived back at Buckingham Palace. From there, I slowly walked towards Big Ben and Westminster Abbey, crossed the river on Westminster Bridge, continued walking along the riverside past the London Eye, crossed back across the river on one of the Golden Jubilee bridges, past Trafalgar Square and the National Gallery, and finished my walking tour in Chinatown.
Dinner was with Josh, the groom, and his friends Sami and Yohei at a Chinese restaurant called the Four Seasons. Yohei could only join us for a little bit, so it quickly became a group of three for the rest of the night.
The meal was delicious, and we decided to keep the fun going by getting a few drinks at a bar in Soho. The place we went had “smoking a cigar in a posh study” vibes that I really liked, and unlike most bars was quite quiet and easy to chat in. We had two rounds of drinks and stayed up until the bar closed at 11:30pm.
By then, Lily had returned to the AirBnB. I asked Josh to text her letting her know that I was on my way back. The three of us walked towards the subway station at Oxford Circus, passing Piccadilly Circus along the way.
We went our separate ways and I took the subway back to the AirBnB, where Lily was waiting for me. It was half past midnight. It was quite a long day.