megabus; To London.

At the start of May the ever so lovely team at megabus popped JJ on a bus and sent her down to London for the weekend! JJ and I had never met, apart from a few quick tweets so I had an odd feeling whilst on the train to meet her at Victoria Bus Station; I was rather excited yet rather nervous at the same time.

Once I had found JJ in the midst of Victoria station, dragged her on the underground to Waterloo to get rid of her bag we began our adventure…

We started at Locale Italian Restaurant just behind the Premier Inn in Waterloo, and gosh, did we feast! Neither of us had had breakfast so we used that as a good excuse! I had the pepperoni pizza, and JJ had the superfoods salad which looked awesome! We shared some potatoes, spinach, and zucchini just to make sure we had filled ourselves silly for the busy day ahead!

I had a loose plan for what I’d like to do throughout that day if the weather stayed sunny, so we headed over to Highgate Cemetary as a starting point, but along the way we got a little distracted by Leake Street…

Leake Street is also known as the “Banksy Tunnel” or “Graffiti Tunnel”, is a road in Lambeth, London. It is about 300 metres long, runs off York Road and under the platforms and tracks of Waterloo station. The walls are decorated with graffiti – initially created during the “Cans Festival” organised by Banksy on 3-5 May 2008. It’s totally legal for you to go there with your spray cans and graffiti away!

We then got back on track to Highgate Cemetary…

It took us quite a while to find the entrance as we walked the long way, which is typical me! But when we go in, it was amazing. So many famous names to be found such as Karl Marx, Douglas Adams, Patrick Caulfield and Jeremy Beadle so we made those our priority t ensure we got to see them. I think we covered around 80% of the cemetery and had to be asked to leave as they were closing! It was shocking how quickly those 2 hours flew past!

New stop was Parliament Hill to see the view over London; it was breathtaking and so worth the walk up the steep hill to get there! We were watching this man with his parachute-like kite for ages, it was rather mesmerising! As it was such a sunny day we could see for miles and I loved pointing out obscure buildings and facts that I knew, made me feel like a right Londoner!! From here we hopped onto a bus over to Camden and grabbed a pint in The World’s End as we were a little too early for our dinner reservation at Mildred’s.

As JJ is vegan I used that as an excuse to go back to Mildred’s as it was so good! I was boring and had the halloumi, hummus and aubergine burger with sweet potato fries. JJ tried the sweet potato curry as it came highly recommended from a vegan friend. We also had to have desert as they are so bloody good!

I think these super cute polaroids sum up our day, we had great fun and I have no idea where those first 12 hours went as they sped by!

I dropped JJ back off to her hotel and got the train back to Essex to get some sleep for the last installment of our London adventure.

We only had a few hours together on Sunday morning before JJ had to get the megabus back home so we had brunch at tibits in Heddon Street. It’s a vegan and veggie buffet filled to the brim with incredible foods. I mean, who knew that vegan currywurst would be so good?! At tibits you fill your plate and then you pay by weight and I think this is a great idea as people will always eat varying amounts of food at buffets!

After filling ourselves back to the brim, I left JJ at Victoria Coach Station really looking forward to my return trip to her hometown of Bristol.

Check here for a video of our trips and here for JJ’s post on her time in London!