My sister came to stay last weekend and we had fun exploring London together!

Saturday
My parents dropped my sister off so they could get a chance to visit our new house- they brought some lovely housewarming flowers!

 

The weather was rather rubbish for the rest of the afternoon so we played games and chatted whilst snacking on veggies and dip.

Sunday
On Sunday morning we headed into London to the Natural History Museum to check out the 2012 Wildlife Photographer of the Year exhibition.

We also made a quick detour past the dinosaurs! I love the amazing building of the Natural History Museum- check out that ceiling…

 

The photograph exhibition was brilliant- some awesome shots, and some really thought-provoking and emotive ones too.

The Winning Photograph- Paul Nicklen

If you think you have the skills, the 2013 competition for next year is open until the 25th Feb!

After the museum we headed to have lunch- it was snowing/raining/sleeting, yuck! So we dived pretty quickly into Le Pain Quotidien to warm ourselves up. I had a scrumptious prawn and mango salad, with lots of crusty bread and butter- yum!

 

We spent the evening cosied up with coffees and homemade brownies 🙂

Monday
I had the day off work on Monday so we decided to explore a suburb of London, Richmond. Mark and I have been to Richmond Park before, and really liked the area so decided to check out the town for breakfast.

Richmond is apparently one of the happiest places in the UK, and with a third of the Borough of Richmond being open green spaces (five times more than any other borough in London!) I imagine this would be a lovely place to visit in the summer.

It was still pretty appealing on a slushy Monday in February and we had a nice lazy brunch at Moomba on the high street.

The restaurant was large, and had a strangely Indian feel to the decor with stripy velvet chairs and gold wallpaper. It was pretty empty for a Monday morning, which meant the service was quick and the food was great!

I opted for the Eggs Royale with smoked salmon, mmm…I do love my poached eggs! 🙂

Pippa and Mark had the full cooked breakfast which looked pretty good too!

And we all had Earl Grey tea in the most amazing teapots! How British?!

After brunch we wandered around the shops in Richmond (braving the freezing weather and trying not to take people out with my umbrella).

We ended up at Taylor St Baristas for a coffee before heading back home. Mark has been wanting to try a coffee here (or at any of their other cafes) for some time, so we felt we had to give it a go! I think his aim is to eventually taste-test every single coffee in London!

 

The verdict for Taylor St was pretty damn good! My only criticism is I dislike lattes in glasses- especially ones with no handle, I burn my fingers! But the coffee was lovely. We’ll definitely be back 🙂

Monday evening we went to see Les Miserables at Everyman cinema– the film was amazing, and the cinema equally impressive, but I’ll do a separate Movie Madness post on that soon!

Beki x