In London, on vacation!

I and the mr spent a week on vacation in London! It's been years since I've been abroad, so an out-of-the-country vacation is a huge deal for me. The whole idea really came from "Look, there a blues dance camp in London! Wanna go? Hey, let's take some extra days off work and make a vacation out of it!". Said and done, we left for Blues baby blues on Friday 16th, not really sure what to expect from Britain in mid-November. And yes, there was some rain (thankfully we missed the storms with a hairs width, I hope all my Brittish readers are well!), but there was also fun dancing, good food, impressive buildings, intense shopping and a sometimes gloyriously sunny late fall. Here's some pictures from it all, enjoy! =)

Dinner the first day, tired after getting up at 4.50 to catch the first morning flight from Umeå. See that slight curl at the end of my hair? I set the hair in pincurls the day prior, it was a pudel-80s-mess when I took it out at noon Friday, after lot's of brushing it looked pretty darn nice and I thought to myself "Yay! Now it will be all curly and cute until Sunday!". This did not take the humid London air into consideration... I swear, during 4 hours my hair drooped 10 cm!

The weekend is was all dancing, and we saved both shopping and touristy stuff until later. We did go through Hyde Park on the way to the dance classes, and I couldn't resist some photo's of the park in all it's sunny glory... Please excuse the weird coat+baggy jeans combo! Those jeans are the best for dance practice, but not quite in style with the rest of me here =)

Dinner at the hotel Sunday evening, giving you an idea of the quite nice little hotel restaurant where we had breakfast (included with the room, not a given thing in London, apparently).

Strolling down Portobello road in Notting Hill, on our way to What Katie Did, one of my longed for shopping destinations. I'll get back to my shopping in a later post, let's just say it included 1-2 hours at WKD, and a number of shops on Gold Hawk Road... =)

Lot's of cute stuff along this rather tourist heavy part of town. Loved these suitcases!

Interesting wall. See what all those items along the wall and the dividing shelfs are? That's right!

Vintage sewing machines!

I love walking around new cities at night, all the historical buildings are lit up so beautifully, making their modern surroundings fade away. Here's Big Ben and the House of Parliament.

The Tower Bridge

I also saw the Hollywood costume exhibition in V&A museum, it was amazing to see all those gorgeous and sometimes iconic costumes up close! No cameras was allowed inside, so no pictures I'm afraid =( I did buy the official "exhibition book" though (might be the point for the museum with the no pictures-policy... Ah, well, the book was pretty and I wanted it =) ). The whole museum was amazing, I could have spent days there! Strongly recommend a visit there for anyone going to London and being interested in art/craft of all sorts!

That was the tourist (and blues dance) part of the vacation! Early next week there will be a post on the shopping haul =) Stay tuned!

Love, Erika