England Adventures: South Bank, Snogs and Elton John

Hello, everyone! Welcome to Day 3, a day full of music, fun and frozen yogurt. Prepare yourselves for a lot of pictures!

First up, brunch. To be honest, I'm not sure what time we actually left the hotel room, so I don't know whether to call this breakfast or lunch. Why not both? Story time!

My sister and I are very much into YouTube. The majority of our subscription lists are made up of British vloggers who like to take us along with them as they go new places, make new friends, and go through their everyday lives. In a lot of videos, we hear about this glorious Asian restaurant called Wagamama that everyone raves about. For months leading up to our holiday, I've planned for us to go to Wagamama and have a meal or two. On our third day in London, we decided to stop there for lunch. We walk into the restaurant, got ourselves settled in and opened up our menus. For the first five minutes or so, everything seemed totally fine. Then I realized the menu was in Italian. I didn't recall Wagamama being an Italian restaurant! I close my menu to get a look at the cover and realize it doesn't say 'Wagamama' anywhere on it. I ask my sister, "Are we in the right restaurant?" She replies with a 'yes' and quickly looks for assurance that she answered correctly. There was no assurance; we had walked into the wrong restaurant. So there we were, sitting in Strada, the Italian restaurant right next to Wagamama. We contemplated whether or not to leave, but the starters we ordered before our realization were just so good! We decided to stay and visit Wagamama later that night for dinner, making extra sure we went to the right door this time. At least the food was delicious!

And there we saw who I briefly thought to be Elton John.

I'm not sure what building this is, but it photographed very nicely!

Visiting Ol' Benny.

Street Performer #1

Street Performer #1 met a lady friend!

Street Performer(s) #2

BUBBLES

This guy!

Street Performer #3

That guy's friend!

After strolling down Southbank Centre, we hopped on a tour bus and travelled around London, learning a bit more information about what we've seen over the past few days.

Apparently, this was the very bridge in which Harry Potter fended his life from some strange goblin things. The clip in the film took less than a minute of screen time, but the bridge had to be closed off for a whole 8 weeks to shoot the scene. How crazy is that?!

This is the 'door' in which all royal couples emerge from once they get married. Or so we're told! It's magical either way.

Another shop on my list of Places to Go was Zara. I never actually made it there, but at least I got a picture of it!

On our tour around London, we passed the iconic Trafalgar Square.

For some, strange reason that nobody is quite sure of, there is a big blue statue of a rooster in the middle of the square. My camera wouldn't focus, but I'm pretty sure you get the gist of it!

After the bus tour, my dad and I decided to take a stroll 'round Covent Garden.

We stopped by a coffee shop/smoothie place called Joe & The Juice and ordered ourselves some smoothies. My dad went for the Go Away, Doc'; while I opted for Immunity, a mix of grapefruit, passionfruit and apple. Not only did I love the vibe of the place, but I'm a sucker for clever names, and their menu was full of them!

When our feet got tired and our stomachs grew hungry, we decided it was time to head back and get some dinner. Can you spot the young man who photobombed me whilst taking this panorama? Haha!

We finally made it to Wagamama! For appetizers, we split some chili garlic edamame and wok-fried greens. For the entree, I ordered a vegetarian Saien Soba and it was delicious! We were all thoroughly impressed with our Wagamama experience and desperately wish they decide to expand the chain to America.

Earlier on in the day, I spotted a bright pink double-decker bus with the word 'SNOG' plastered on top of it. That could only mean one thing: FROZEN YOGURT! For those of you who aren't familiar with it, Snog is a vibrant-coloured frozen yogurt shop with funny phrases on their cups and napkins! I've heard about Snog through a couple of my YouTuber friends and was once again elated when I saw there was one in walking distance of me!

Credit

After dinner, we decided to hit up the Snog Bus and get some fro-yo! All customers were able to explore the second story of the bus where they had some seats, a very cool light display and a floor that was made to look like grass! Here I am, spying on my mom and sister who were still on the ground floor ordering their yogurts!

These were the best pictures I could get of my fro-yo as my dad and I were now running to catch up with my mom and sister! I ordered a classic sized blueberry acai yogurt with strawberries, raspberries and blackberries. Instead of raspberries, I got blueberries but that's okay because it tasted good either way!

This was one of my favourite moments of the trip! My mom and sister had headed back to the room to relax, leaving the night owls left to explore the town. We ended the night with a wonderful stroll through London, wandering up and down the streets and exploring the Southbank Centre Festival of Love that had been going on for the past couple of days. I remember feeling extremely content and happy with the way things worked out that evening. It was the perfect ending to our last full day in London!

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I hope you've enjoyed your time on this little internet page! I highly recommend visiting Southbank if you're ever in London. Stick around for the next blog post on a day in Brighton! I promise it'll be super awesome.

Have a wonderful day!

Jordan x