In late September we travelled to London to see Florence and the Machine at Alexandra Palace. It seemed obvious that we had to stay there for a few days to explore Notting Hill. I had never been to Notting Hill so I booked a Hotel 10 minutes from Portobello Road. The engineer and I took a Taxi to The New Linden Hotel. We moved into our room and went straight to bed. In the next morning we slept past breakfast time and headed out to explore Notting Hill about Lunch time. Our first stop was the Hummingbird Bakery, with its lovely cupcakes and all sort of cakes you could think of. As we had our coffees we strolled down Portobello Road looking at every stall. The engineer was fascinated by the old telephones. He wants one for our new flat, like the ones you see in the old “Al Capone” movies. I was more into the silver cutlery. Oh my how beautiful it must be to have a set of silver cutlery for special occasions. And the most perfect thing was that there was no fork fitting to any other on the stalls. There were also a lot of stalls with handmade leather goods and homemade jelly, olives and products of local farmers.

We went on and found a little spot where we opened our little boxes of sweets. It was my first time eating a cupcake and I don’t understand all the hype about it, as it tastes buttery and gets more and more in your mouth. I must confess it’s not my kind of thing.

I think the most wonderful thing about Notting Hill or especially Portobello Road is, that you can go around a corner and there are no tourists and only big wonderful pastel town houses. We took every corner to explore the area around Portobello Road and it was absolutely amazing. I love the houses with the big windows where you can get a look at their living rooms and librarys. It feels like you are entering another world. Like in the movies “In 80 days around the world” or “Time Machine”. You could feel the spirits of the early 19^th century, but without the dirt and the smell.

On our way back we grabbed a Roll over Hotdog. Mine was with onions and a pork sausage and the engineer took his one without the onions. There were a lot of condiments you could choose from and we took a good portion of ketchup, mustard and mayonnaise.

Of course we had to take pictures in front of a typical English telephone. It was so dirty I couldn’t go inside.

By the time we came back to our Hotel it was time to get into our taxi and head to Alexandra Palace to see Florence and the Machine.

xox Mel

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