The thing I love about travelling is that you get to meet so many people that you wouldn’t necessarily cross paths with in your day-to-day life. The one thing I learned was actually how small the world is. It’s a great thing to be able to meet new people but then know that if you want to, it is possible to see them again. Whilst travelling in Peru last summer I met people from all walks of life. I stayed in touch with a friend named Denica who lives in Canada and that’s where this story starts.

Denica and her friend Chanla were planning on travelling around Europe and asked my advice on places to visit in England. Of course I offered up my sofa straight away and told them London should be top of the list! So last week the time had come. I had booked a day off work to become a London tour guide for the weekend and I couldn’t wait! It’s crazy how much you can actually fit into such a short period of time. Denica sent me a list of places they were keen to visit and I completed it with must-see attractions to come up with the perfect tour of London (and we ended up walking for miles!).

Some highlights included stopping at Kings Cross to visit the Harry Potter shop and have a photo on platform 9 3/4, I absolutely love HP so this was an easy stop! We spent hours in Camden looking around the markets and eating lots of yummy food. Denica is obsessed with Alice in Wonderful so was over the moon when she got to chat to the Mad Hatter and have her picture taken – it was an impressive set up!

I made sure we visited the main attractions; Green Park for Buckingham Palace, Westminster, Big Ben. To my surprise they’d never heard of Big Ben but they had managed to dig out Lady Dinah’s Cat Emporium, how that works I’m not sure! But it was great to show them some of London’s great history.

Shopping. You can’t come to London without doing a bit of shopping and that we did plenty of. We headed to Carnaby Street and browsed the shops. Chanla bought a really nice leather jacket from Cheap Monday after searching for one all weekend! We made our way to Piccadilly for a visit to Fortnum and Mason’s for some tea. I’d never been in before but it’s the most incredible shop. We spent ages searching high and low for different flavoured tea’s and coffees, looking at hampers, cheese & wine, beer and funnily enough we even found dried bugs. No joke – they had a table set up encouraging shoppers to taste the latest creation by Jimini’s; flavoured dried crickets. I wasn’t brave enough to try one myself but Denica went for it! Somewhere in France this is a delicacy and I am sure some people may take to the idea but it just isn’t for me!

The last big thing that we did was explore Shoreditch. As Denica absolutely loves art she jumped at the opportunity to roam the streets taking pictures of all of the street art. We went to the food markets and grabbed some lunch – we all opted for popcorn chicken which was delicious but our eyes were too big for our bellies! We strolled down Brick Lane looking in the various shops, peaked our heads into the Cereal Killer Cafe (I have to go back there one day it’s my idea of heaven!) and took in the atmosphere – it was buzzing. In a bid to explore more street art we took a small path off of Brick Lane where we found the strangest yet very interesting Nomadic Community Garden. Denica was completely in her element here so we went along with it, taking photos and exploring what the garden had to offer.

It is funny yet completely inspiring the things that you can come across in a city! London is so big I’m sure I still have a lot of ground to cover, but it was great to explore with my two travellers. Next stop Canada where they can take over as the tour guide!