London Coffee Crawl 2013

It's no secret that we're big fans of a great cup of coffee (I even built my kid a coffee shop...), so naturally we planned much of our London trip around finding great coffee. Preferably from independent coffee shops. Enter the London Coffee Guide (which was put to great use):

Since we had been to London before (and seen most of the touristy things) hitting up independent coffee shops was an amazing way to see and get to know the city. By far my favorite memories happened when we were walking and exploring and finding each place. 

So. Which coffee shops did we try and which were our favorite? 


Monmouth Coffee:  

Workshop Coffee (where we also had an amazing brunch):

Department of Coffee and Social Affairs:

Speakeasy:

Flat White:

TAP Coffee:

Caravan (and another yummy brunch):

Prufrock:

Fernandez and Wells: 

Kaffeine:

Herman's favorites were Fernandez and Wells (and he highly recommends the Pasteis de Nata to complete the experience) and TAP. 

My favorites were Department of Coffee and Social Affairs and Monmouth. Emilia recommends the hot chocolate. From all of them. 

Now we need to go back so we can try the other ninety shops recommended...

London...The Last Day.

Our last day in London was pretty perfect. We walked. We had coffee. We walked some more. Then had more coffee. We went to the Beatles store (where Emilia picked out "John glasses"). We walked. We laid down in the park and talked. We took photos.

We're back home now...and missing London.

London Day 8

Per the girl's request, we started the day by going on the "really big merry go round" (aka, the London Eye. Which she said was not as fun as she thought it was going to be because she thought it should go really really fast), then walked along the South Bank where there was a food festival going on, then stopped at the daily book market under the Waterloo Bridge. From there, we headed back to Clerkenwell to continue our coffee crawl, then onto Saint Paul's (which was another thing Emilia was excited to see) where we walked around and Emilia played for about an hour. From there we headed back to the Westminster area and our flat.

We're so glad we stayed these extra days!!!

London Day 7

Today, we had originally planned on leaving London and spending the weekend in Bath before heading home. But with Emilia and me both getting sick this past week, we decided staying in London was a better idea.

So we got up, switched flats, headed to Buckingham Palace to watch the changing of the guard, had a delicious lunch, walked around Covent Garden, stopped at our favorite coffee shop, and then headed back to our flat for an eat in dinner.

London Day 5

If you are a Harry Potter fan...and anywhere near London, you MUST go on the Studio Tour. It was so much fun to see the actual sets and props used in the films, as well as all the behind the scenes making of stuff. Totally worth it (but if you go, make sure you book online beforehand. They don't just let you walk up and buy a ticket).

"Ewwww. It's gu-stus-ting" she says (about Butterbeer).