Spring has Sprung in London

Seemingly out of nowhere Spring seems to have finally arrived in London. The weather has been getting steadily warmer over the last few weekends, and we have slowly started to come out of our Winter hibernation.

Over Winter we tend to go straight home, in the pitch dark at 5.00 p.m., and get under the covers and watch TV and movies, and now we finally get to peel off our layers and get out and explore the city again now it's warmer.

A couple of weekends ago we headed a bit South to Kingston Upon Thames, a leafy green suburb of London that feels more like a little village than part of the city. We wandered along the Thames in the sunshine to Hampton Court Palace, a huge Palace and former residence of Henry VIII. 

The grounds are lovely and filled with daffodils. We didn't go inside the Palace as the weather was so beautiful, but instead got ourselves an ice cream and wandered through the gardens and sat in the sunshine.

Walking along the River Thames back towards Kingston

The next weekend we headed out to Greenwich for a picnic in the park with some friends and a cute puppy called Winston. We almost succeeded in stealing him but had to return him before leaving.

The Cutty Sark ship - one of the fastest British Tea Clippers ever made

We caught the Thames Clipper boat from Greenwich back to Embankment Pier and got the tube home from there. We've only ever been on the Thames for my Christmas party a couple of years ago, so this was a much warmer and smoother experience!

Last weekend we went for a walk along the East London canals and explored some markets, we stopped and had burgers for lunch before getting completely lost and ending up in somewhere completely different that we had intended!

East London is famous for its amazing Street Art. I love wandering the streets because it's always different, every time we go.

We also visited the Chiswick Farmers market on Sunday and had another burger and sat in the park until it got overcast and we had to go home. We eat a lot of burgers...

This week however has been the first time it's been sunny and warm during the week, so tonight after work we headed to Kensington Gardens and enjoyed some late afternoon sunshine. 

The last time we were in Kensington Gardens was in January, when it was covered in a very thick blanket of snow. What a difference a few months make!

I'm pretty sure I know which season I prefer!

Exploring a very rainy Ljubljana

On Easter Sunday we left Bled and caught the bus an hour South to Ljubljana. Ljubljana is the capital of Slovenia, and it is a very small and pretty city.

When we arrived it was just after lunch and pouring down with rain. The bus station is on the edge of Ljubljana, so we got a good view of the city on our walk to the hotel.

We passed this fountain full of fat dancing horses on the way, they were so cute!

The city is full of beautiful old buildings, and has a similar feel to Prague with the Old Town being the main tourist sight. Much of the town was rebuilt after an earthquake in 1895 in an Art Nouveau style.

Ljubljana River runs through the centre of the Old Town, and has lots of bridges connecting one side of the town with the other. There are so many bridges some of them are literally right next to each other.

Ljubljana's most famous bridge is the Dragon Bridge. The dragon is the symbol of Ljubljana and is on the side of the tower of Ljubljana Castle. The Dragon bridge is only tiny, but has several large Dragon statues on each side of the bridge.

Parallel bridges

The rain was starting to get pretty hard, so we headed over to our hotel so we could check in and get some better umbrellas. Our room was a huge suite with a chaise lounge the size of a single bed and a huge shower with old fashioned brass fittings.

We had a shower to warm up and headed back out with our hotel umbrellas to get some lunch.

We stopped at a nice looking restaurant with a fantastic looking menu. We both ordered pasta with cheese dumplings on the side. All the food was delicious, probably the best meal we had while we were in Slovenia.

Of course we followed with a slice of cake, also delicious, and made us wish we had gotten two slices.

After lunch we headed up to Ljubljana Castle, perched on the hill overlooking the City. The castle wasn't as impressive as Bled Castle, but it offered some great views of the City.

The Funicular railway that takes visitors up to the Castle. We regretted not using this on our way down the hill, which turned out to be incredibly slippery in the pouring rain.

It was hard to take photos with our huge umbrellas which kept getting in the way. After a while we gave up and just used them in the photo!

We spent the rest of our afternoon at the Dvorni wine bar drying off and trying a few different Slovenian wines. Sufficiently tipsy, we had a late dinner before heading off to bed.

Our last day in Ljubljana was spent at the Lolita cafe, a popular cafe full of amazing treats and decadent furnishings. It was so hard trying to decide what to order, they had so many different types of cake, but also macarons and biscuits.

We ended up with apple streusel cake and some kind of chocolate mousse cake. Both were delicious, but just couldn't compare to the chocolate cake from the day before.

So our time in Slovenia was mostly full of eating and drinking which is fine with us. It seems to be more of a fine weather destination, but we still had a great time exploring the different regions and the stunning scenery.