London town

Sam and I made the most of our last few days in London by filling it up with touristy things, cultural things, and of course, shoppingy things.

Neither of us had been to Buckingham Palace before, so we decided to pop by and see if the monarch had any scones with jam and cream to share. We were quite shocked to arrive to a massive crowd of people (some running to get to the front gates), police on horseback and cameras going off all over the place. We thought the queenie had had a heart attack or something. However, upon enquiry, we were told that it was the changing of the guards. How's that for timing? To be honest there wasn't a lot to see and the band was pretty terrible (Star Wars theme tune?) so we left.

La Clique was an obvious highlight (if you don't know what I'm talking about, or who Mario Queen of the Circus is, go here http://www.lacliquelondon.com/). Mario was hilarious, especially when he crowdsurfed around the theatre audience. The other acts were amazing too - rock and roll trapeze to 'Welcome to the Jungle', a magic disappearing hanky/striptease act (can you guess where it disappeared to?), and my favourite - the hula girl who could continue hula-ing when hanging from a rope with glitter falling down all around her. Cool.

Whilst out shopping I also discovered some pretty inspiring shops, all within close proximity to each other (Regent St/Carnaby St area).

Anthropologie is my new favourite store. Its shopfit and displays are amazing. The shop is three floors high and one whole wall is a vertical garden. It also sells clothes, homewares, books and other assorted goodies that crafty types like me drool over.


The vertical garden inside the Anthropologie shop on Regent Street.

Do is another interesting one when it comes to design. Really inventive designs, better than Ikea any day! Check out their Sun Jar - neat.

And a bit of a wildcard - Desigual, which sells eccentric looking clothes that have a sort of clash in colours, textures and fabrics. While everything was a bit too loud for me to wear, I really like that this store is very unique, obviously doesn't follow fashion trends and encourages people to be a bit zany in the way they dress.