LONDON TRAVEL GUIDE ¦ Top Things to do, Best Restaurants & Hidden Gems..

We have been living in London for a few months now and we thought it might be useful to you guys if we sat down and went over a full London guide based on our experience living here. So in this guide we're going to go over our favorite things to do, the best markets, museums, cafes, restaurants, and even some hidden gems. Now before we get into this we do want to remind you guys this is a subjective list of course. We're not claiming that we know exactly what is the best in London. I mean the city is so big and so full of unique and incredible experiences and restaurants and everything. I'm sure a lot of you will have differing opinions. We welcome you to share those in the comments as well. I mean this is just based off of our own personal experience. So let's get into it starting with the best things to do in London. There are some very obvious activities that we've left out of this list just because they're like super obvious ones that every guide is going to tell you to do like Buckingham Palace, Hyde Park, Big Ben. Those are things you should definitely do while you're here of course. But we just wanted to go over some of the less obvious things to do in London starting with afternoon tea at Sketch London. Afternoon tea is like an English staple and no matter what if you do Sketch or not you should definitely partake in that at some point. But Sketch is one that we personally really enjoyed. It's so unique and it's just a really cool experience. Yeah it's one of the most hyped things like I'm sure a lot of you have even heard about it. It's definitely pricey so just be warned about that. I would say it's like a one-time thing special occasion. It's just a unique experience. You feel like very posh and the bathrooms are super cool. The bathroom is weird. It's like a spaceship almost. It sounds weird to be like go check out the bathroom out of place but it's just it's true. It's so cool and you've definitely seen people take pictures in that bathroom. The next thing we think you guys should check out is Greenwich. It's actually a neighborhood in London. Yeah. And it is just so gorgeous and fun. It's one of our favorite areas of London. We could just go there and spend the whole day. Yeah. They have a market with clothes, food, jewelry, all of that. It's very charming. And you also while you're there go check out Greenwich Park. It's got this incredible view at the top of it near the Royal Observatory and we love just going up there and taking in the view. Next thing on our list of things you should do in London is eat your way through Chinatown. Literally there is so many good little spots in this area. We gotta recommend a few spots. Bun House. Yes. So good. It's like buns filled with pork, beef. There's Custard One which I loved. So good. And then there's Good Friend which is like fried chicken pieces. This is one's favorite. He loves this. I've been thinking about it ever since we had it. It's so good. It's simple fried chicken. They dust it over with some seasoning. You choose your seasoning. The last one we want to recommend is Xing Fu Tang which is a boba spot and they specialize in brown sugar boba. It is so good. They make the brown sugar right in house in this little pot. It's some of the best boba we've had. And the next thing we want to recommend is drinks at the Sky Garden. It's a literal garden at the top of a skyscraper and inside is a bar and that's where we sat and we got drinks and it's just so gorgeous. Yeah they have a DJ. The drinks are really good and you get this killer view from up top there. We could see the shard from across right. So pretty. The next one that I'm bringing up is a seasonal thing so it's only going to apply if you're here when it's snowing or in the winter but it is the Natural History Museum Ice Rink. This is one of our fondest memories in London. Yes it's so so much fun. And it's so beautiful. It's a really nice date. So the next one we want to talk about is the Shard. This is the tallest building in Western Europe. You get to go up there. It comes with a free glass of champagne. It's the best view in London really because it's the tallest. It's unobstructed 360. It's where my mom got engaged actually so that should tell you how beautiful it really is. It's definitely a unique thing to London that you should check out. The next thing we want to recommend is St Paul's Cathedral which is the most beautiful Catholic church. It's so stunning and they actually still do service on the inside. It's a fully functioning church like actually you can go for free if you're attending mass. It's got like sculptures and stained glass. Beautiful intricate designs on the inside and part of your ticket is that you actually get to climb up all the way. There's a stone gallery where you can go out and view like the city but you can go even further up to the very top of it. It's not for people who don't want to have a physical challenge because it's it's a lot of steps. You know we love doing a lot of steps always but yeah at the top it's like this insane view. Once again we love views. This is a nice activity. We definitely recommend this. So the last one in this category that we wanted to recommend to you guys is a River Thames cruise that actually comes with afternoon tea service. This is a unique one that we booked on Get Your Guide. It's a super cool different way of getting to see the city. You get to see like all the different sites along the Thames River which you know it's the Shard, it's Big Ben and you're actually like going under the bridges so you go under Tower Bridge. The cherry on top is you're being served a whole afternoon tea service while on board. Now the last three activities that we mentioned the Shard, St Paul's and the River Thames cruise were all activities that you need to book in advance to be able to go to. The way that we have done that in London and all over the world on all of our travels is through today's sponsor which is Get Your Guide. If you've been a part of this channel for a while now you know how much we use Get Your Guide. We cannot go like one video without mentioning their name. I booked us tickets on Get Your Guide. Get Your Guide. Get Your Guide's the best. I got us some tickets on Get Your Guide. Get Your Guide is the best place to unlock the world's most unforgettable experiences for travelers. They offer over 60,000 curated experiences in more than 3,600 destinations worldwide from tickets to top sites to one-of-a-kind local tours with all of these experiences being provided by knowledgeable and local experts. The app allows you to book and download your tickets, no printing required. You can skip the line at all of these major attractions, just pull up your ticket right off the app, scan in and you're good. And the cherry on top is they offer 24-7 support and free cancellation up to 24 hours before. So all the bookable activities that we mentioned in this guide so far are going to be in the description below. We highly highly recommend each one of them and really any activity that's on Get Your Guide. It's the best. Yeah this was literally a dream sponsor for us so thank you so much to Get Your Guide for sponsoring today's video and now let's get back into the guide. So one of the most unique parts of London that we personally love so much is the markets here. There's so many options actually that we thought this guide deserved a full category dedicated just to going over the must-see markets starting with Columbia Road Flower Market. This one is so sweet and romantic. It's a full road just dedicated to vendors that are selling plants, flowers, they're making bouquets. It's just really sweet. You see couples walking around with like big bouquets of flowers that they made for each other and stuff. I made a bouquet for Rylan when we were there. It's a sweet activity. It really is. Great date idea. Also beware it is only open on Sundays. Yeah. So the next one we want to recommend is Camden Market which is so nice. This is probably, I mean they're all my favorites. I love them all but this one is really really cool. I actually found a lot of really cool pieces there. Some of her favorite to this day is from there. Each of these markets pretty much specialize in like one thing or another but I would say Camden really specializes in clothing and like thrifting items. Yeah but they also do have food. There's a whole like food section. Yeah. It's so fun and it's huge. You will be lost there for like a day. Yeah easily. The next one we want to talk about is Portobello Road Market. This one is probably the most popular one I would say because it's also just the biggest. It's one of the biggest markets I've ever seen. It's huge. It goes on for like blocks. Yeah. It's a lot a lot of vintage pieces. I feel like that's kind of like what they specialize in is vintage things like watches. We found some watches. Oh yeah I'm wearing this one right now. This is one of my favorite watches. I got it from there. Super cool and it was only 10 pounds. Yeah. So there's a lot of really good deals. We even got a film camera. Yeah exactly. I was gonna say you can get everything. It's not really just vintage but they also have some of the best food out of any of the markets. We got the best arepas I've ever had in my entire life. They were so so good. You fantasize about them seriously. Yeah. This is a must-see. You have to go. You have to have to go to this one. This last one is probably our all-time favorite. We say that with everyone. No but this one for sure is our all-time favorite because we love food. It's called Borough Market. This one is amazing. Yeah I mean you've never seen anything like it. It's got everything from your wildest dreams. Paella. Fish and chips. The best fish and chips you'll ever have in your life. It actually won an award. Yeah. They have stuff for you to grocery shop. So like get produce. Fresh produce. Yeah. We bought honey there. Truffles. Salt. Cheese. Everything you could want. It's a wonderland for foodies and we are obsessed with it. Okay so London has some of the best and most unique museums in the entire world and because of that it can be so hard to choose which ones to go check out and visit. And really you can't go wrong with any of them but based off of our own experiences just to help you maybe narrow down the choices. Here are our picks for the best museums in London. The first one we want to recommend is National Gallery. This museum was so beautiful. I personally love paintings. Yeah we both always gravitate towards the paintings instead of like archaeological. Artifacts. Artifacts. Anyways this one specializes in paintings. It's like full of from all time periods. It's like crazy. What a crazy collection they have. The next one we want to recommend is Tate Modern which as you can tell by the name it is a modern art museum. Yeah it's got a lot of cool film rooms that have different things playing. It's a cool one. It's one of the most popular in London and it's definitely one that we enjoy every time we go. Now the last one that we're bringing up is my favorite for sure. Probably mine too. Yeah it's the V&A Museum which is just so unique. I've never really seen anything like this. Particularly the rooms with the sculptures in it. I will put it on screen so you can see it. It's hard to explain but it's these larger than life sculptures that you can't even believe how much of it they have. Like it fills rooms you just walk around you're just like how do people construct this within like a lifetime. It's got to be at the top of your list. If you're going to go to any museum while you're in London I personally recommend V&A Museum. Okay so the next thing we want to go over is our top five favorite cafes in London. The first one we want to recommend is White Mulberries. This one was a favorite for us because of one thing probably and is the toasted banana bread. It's so good you guys. It's amazing. But they also have great coffee and each of the locations we've been to have been really charming, nice. It's just a very pleasant spot in general. Next up is one that we recently discovered thanks to you guys actually which is Attendant Roasters. This one was actually a men's urinal somebody told us. Men's bathroom that was converted into a cafe. So trust us as weird as that sounds it's completely sanitary I trust and the food is what stood out here to me. We had this breakfast sandwich that was so good that once I took my first bite I told Rylan she should try it. She tried it. We ordered two more immediately so we could take more to go. The next one we want to I don't know if I pronounced that right. Probably didn't but it's really really good and they specialize in cubed croissants. Yeah this is more of like a one-time I'd say thing. This is a little bit of a gimmick. The cubed croissants but they are actually very tasty and it's just really cool and cute. It's very cool. We fall for it. Yeah we have to admit we're suckers for it. Next up is arguably the most beautiful one on the list. It's Watch House specifically the Somerset House location. It's in this beautiful courtyard and you just can't even believe that they would allow a coffee shop to be in there. It really looks like history. They've got great breakfast but the coffee also was probably the best out of any coffee we had in London. They even had like a card that it would come with to tell you exactly like where it was sourced from and stuff. There was people in the front when we walked in like doing drip coffee by hand like they really take the coffee seriously. And the last one we're gonna recommend is one that is very close to our hearts because we've gone there almost every day since we've been here. We live right next to it. It's called Toast Rack. It's so so so good. Specifically the food. Yeah this one of all the ones on the list has the best food. Not only because the other ones that we mentioned that had good food they had like one item that was good. This one we've tried almost every item on the menu because we go every morning every time. Fantastic food like some of the best and the coffee's great and the cherry on top is the people within it are beyond friendly, beyond sweet. We just specifically wanted to shout them out and this is the top of our list. It's in Wandsworth. You gotta check out Toast Rack. And that leads us to our favorite category in this guide and in every guide we'll ever do which is the best restaurants. Starting with Amelia's which is a fresh pasta Italian restaurant. It is really really really good. They make it in-house. It's like the freshest pasta you'll have. Also you have to get the tiramisu because I couldn't believe how good it was. Yeah that's so true. Really really good tiramisu. The next one we want to talk about is Sofra which is a Turkish food spot. We got the tabbouleh. The hummus was incredible. Yes. Some of the best. Also the pita bread is so soft and perfect. And the meat. I had lamb and it was cooked to perfection and we went there multiple times. Consistent. Amazing. The next one we want to recommend is probably the most famous spot in London and it's called, I'm gonna butcher the name, Circulo Populare. I know I butchered that. I'm so sorry for the Italians. Circulo Populare. Yeah I'm not gonna do that because I don't want to mess it up. This place was really really delicious. The best Italian food in London. I mean that really is true. It's so so good. Yeah it was really amazing. Heads up, you have to book this out in advance. We had to book it like a couple weeks in advance to even get a table and it was like on a off hours like towards the closing time. It was like 10 p.m. But we did what we had to do to get in there. The lemon meringue pie is what we will say is the one thing you need to have while you're there. Yeah. As well as the truffle pasta. But this lemon meringue pie is like the size of our head. And take that spoon all the way through that huge layer of meringue. Yes. Down to the lemon. Take a bite. It's like the most perfect bite in the universe. Next one on this list is Dishoom, which is some of the best Indian food that we have ever had anywhere around the world. Super cool ambiance, playing cool music always. The service is great. They specialize in this house black doll. Yeah it's so ridiculously good. We actually order it to the I have almost every single night. All the time. It's embarrassing. Yeah it really is embarrassing. The last one is arguably our favorite restaurant in the world. It is so good. It's called Shaqfuyu. A few of the highlights that we want to point out are the hot stone beef rice. They bring it to the table in this hot stone. There's an egg yolk in it and everything and they mix it right there at the salmon. It is some of the best salmon. It probably is the best salmon I've ever had. But the top and number one reason you need to go here is for the kinako french toast, which comes with matcha soft serve ice cream. This is our favorite dessert in the whole entire world. If you leave London without trying this, shame on you. Yeah. And that brings us to the final category on this guide, which is a few of the hidden gems that we've come across during our time living here. Starting with the new change building terrace. This is a completely free activity to do. You go to the new change building and you go up the elevator to the rooftop terrace. There's a rooftop bar there and everything that you can sit at and get food and drinks at. But you can also just go right to the viewing area and get this insane view of Saint Paul's Cathedral. It's so gorgeous. If you get there right as the sun is setting, it's like bright, bright orange, beautiful sunset. And the next one that we want to talk about is God's Own Junkyard. This is one of the most unique experiences. It's this collector that has just got this huge collection of neon signs and artwork. It's like so intense and incredible. There's literally just no spot on the wall without a neon sign. And there's this like music blasting. It's like rock music. Yeah, like Elton John and stuff. It's like a whole world. It's really, really beautiful. So guys, that's going to be all for this London guide. We really hope that it was useful to you in any way. If it was, be sure to give us a like. And if there's anything we missed that you feel other people need to hear about, be sure to comment below. We would love to see that. Remember, everything that we mentioned that is bookable will be linked in the description. And thanks again to Get Your Guide for sponsoring this video. Besides that, we want to thank you for watching. And we want to thank London in general for just an incredible few months living here. Sadly, we will be leaving in the next few days, which is so sad. We don't even want to talk about it. But it's been an incredible time here and we will be back. And until then, if you want to keep up with our journey, subscribe to the channel because the next video you see, we will be in Amsterdam, which I'm so excited because it'll be my first time there. And with all that being said, thanks again. We love and appreciate you guys and we'll see you next week.