Not long ago, Jakob vehemently professed his mom is 25 years old, a claim I gladly adopted and rolled with. Although his initial opinion about my age quickly changed, I still clung to it tightly and thus at the end of June, I entered my 26th year of life with an afternoon tea celebration at Kensington Palace.
Since we’ve been trying to scale down the number of items in our lives, we usually opt for experiences over material things when it comes to gifting. Last year, I got a magnificent half-a-day-long brunch; this time, I chose a long weekend in London. Again.
London holds a special place in my heart since I used to spend my summers there as a teenager. I always like going back as it brings back memories of my past life, although in the meantime the city and myself have changed; I used to thrive on Oxford and Regent Street, browsing through Top Shop and Selfridge’s while our main stop these days is Hamleys. Clubbing around Leicester Square was my main evening activity, which was now replaced by the excitement of an early dinner, followed by Wicked! I’m not complaining, though. I adore musicals and in all honesty, I could spend the whole day surrounded by toys.
After nearly missing our flight multiple times in one single afternoon, which is a story in itself, we finally touched down at Stanstead and tried to squeeze as many things as possible into the following four days. It was definitely not a relaxing holiday but we thoroughly enjoyed it nonetheless.
We started our first day at Hamleys and spent most of our day on the SEVEN floors filled with gadgets, toy cars, artificial snow, video games, books, even flying pigs!! We returned one more time in the following days and with more time on our hands, devoted a whole hour to the Lego section, where both children had a lovely chat with the Queen. On our way out, however, we got ambushed into a game involving Harry Potter’s jelly beans. It wasn’t possible to establish what flavour Jakob got but loved it and ate it happily. Mia got lime, declared it disgusting and spat it out. Then, Marko’s turn came. It was immediately clear from his grimace he got something of questionable provenience; he braved on for a while but ultimately his vomit-infused candy ended up in the bin. After a pas-a-deux performed by Mia and an animator, to the delight of the passers-by, we left with sparkly tattoos, painted nails and a gift for each child.
An early dinner and Wicked 😉 was what we had planned for the evening. HIX treated us marvelously and as far as the show is concerned it went as expected – Mia and I loved it, Jakob got scared out of his wits and Marko hated it. To make it up to the two boys, we treated them to a boat trip to Greenwich the very next day and stumbled upon an open-air performance art festival with the result that we barely had any time left to visit the Maritime Museum after passing on the Observatorium due to the unreasonably high entrance fees.
Then finally, the main event rolled in. My day started with a breakfast of smoked salmon and rosé champagne – which we had an unlimited supply of at the hotel and Marko kinda got addicted to – and continued with a visit to Liberty on our way to Kensington Palace, where afternoon tea was awaiting us. Situated in the middle of the royal park, the Orangery offered the perfect setting for an utterly English experience of tea, scones with clotted cream, and sandwiches, all accompanied by cake. Although the royals did NOT make an appearance, it still felt pretty snazzy and majestic. The day ended with another glass of the same champagne while snuggling with my firstborn and watching my boys battling each other at chess.
Not always, but sometimes getting older does have its perks. Mine turned out to be a marvelous prologue to the glorious summer in front of us!
Cheers!
L