Come to London with me!

So, the reason I haven't blogged for the last couple of days is because I went to visit my best friend in London. She used to live in Brighton and so we'd spend ALL THE TIME together but she's moved to London for Uni so I don't see her very often. We're both trying to write screenplays and get started in our careers, her in acting, me in writing which makes even less time to see each other. We decided to carve out a couple of days since I finished work on Monday for the week and we had a little spree around London, found a super cute Starbucks in Regent Street to write for a bit and had a completely great time. I took a bunch of photos and thought I'd share them with you guys! 

I don't know if you guys have seen on the news about the amazing display at the Tower of London of 888,246 ceramic poppies flooding the grounds. We decided we should go and see it and as yesterday was Remembrance Day and the last day of the poppy display it was PACKED with people but it was completely phenomenal and beautiful and really breathtaking when you stood for a minute and thought that every single poppy signified just one fallen soldier. It was amazing.

This was really lovely to see, so many people had been to see the poppies and left little memorials of their owns with names of fallen soldiers from their families or people they had known. It made it all so much more personal. 

This was where it all started, poppies gushing from the one of the windows and spreading through the whole grounds. It is something I am so happy I went to see. 

After we had been to see the poppies we went to South Kensington in the hopes of finding somewhere to sit and write. We got the tube and wandered through the streets, eventually we came to the conclusion that all of the small, very busy cafes were not the place to go to write. We stopped any just to have a coffee and something to eat. We stopped at a place called the Le Pain Quotidien which was so lovely and really chic, everything was organic and fresh. 

I finally (after much deliberation) settled for a freshly squeezed raspberry lemonade and a praline danish which so gorgeous. 

South Kensington was gorgeous but proved the wrong place to try and write, a lot of it's cafe's are very small and full of people having loud conversations so they weren't right for sitting and having thoughts. We left Kensington and headed to Regents Street where we found a Starbucks that Jade had been to before. 

Although, we did make a quick stop in Hamleys on the way .. for Storytime with Jade and the Puppets. 

 London have some of the best Christmas window displays around, Hamleys is no exception and their windows were breathtaking. Unfortunately all my pictures of the window displays were out of focus, the puppet ones above will have to do!
After our toy shop adventure we settled into our Starbucks cave to write, I went for a Christmas special Almond and Honey hot chocolate and Jade settled on an Earl Grey and after being momentarily distracted by the most gorgeous American man sitting right by us, we got started.

 This particular Starbucks was such a nice place to write and it had two of these cosy little caves with corner sofas in, we soon got comfy and both of us had a pretty productive afternoon. I am still working on my TV series and Jade is just starting out with a feature film script so she was scene planning and getting that off the ground. It's really nice to write with someone else, most of the time I write alone but it can be good to bounce ideas off someone you trust and it's really fun too especially in somewhere as cool as we were!

After we had finished the writing we wanted to get done we went and tackled H&M and Topshop - Jade bought shoes and I got a case for my phone that looks like a unicorn .. it was a bit of an impulse buy but I couldn't resist and it is SO CUTE!

I mean ... LOOK! 

Jade took me to a really cute restaurant called Vapiano and it was SO COOL. You choose what you want off the menu, I went for a carbonara and they cook it for you right in front of you, you can choose the amount of chilli and garlic, oggle at really hot italian chef men and then you go and find somewhere to sit with mountains of cheese on your pasta. At least, that's what we did. The food was amazing and it was such a novelty place to eat, I would definitely go back and it was really fun. 

After all the pasta in the world we decided to walk back to Waterloo station, we went via Leicester Square where we saw a pretty cool beat boxer and a bunch of amazing street dancers that were from all over Europe. They were really cool. There is just something about London, it's so intoxicating and addictive whenever I'm there I never want to leave and I feel so inspired and creative. 

I had the best couple of days, it was so nice to see Jade and hang out and do all the things we like to talk about doing. She is trying to convince me to move to London so we can do these things more and I've got to be honest, when I'm there and immersed in all the culture and constant bustle .. It seems like a completely viable and exciting idea. 

Let me know in the comments what your favourite things to do with your best friend are and let me know if any of you have been to see the poppies and what you thought!