Top 5 Things I Missed in London
- Ms. World
- 7 days ago
- 4 min read
London is so packed with things to see and places to go, it's really not possible to see it all in a single vacation. I packed a lot into my trip, but there are some places I didn't get to go. Some of these places were in the first draft of my itinerary and some I just couldn't squeeze in even though I tried. So, let's take a look at what I missed!
Kensington Palace
It pained me to miss out on Kensington Palace, which is where William and Kate currently live. This is the palace where Princess Diana primarily lived as a working royal and it's where Queen Victoria was born.
Kensington is beautiful from the outside and if you go in, you can see Victoria's former apartments, the Queen State apartments and a really beautiful cafe that serves high tea. Of course. Admission is around $30 per person.
I wanted to see it, but my itinerary already had three other palaces on it, so I cut Kensington.
Greenwich Observatory
The Greenwich Observatory is famous for keeping time for the world. You can stand here and actually straddle the Prime Meridian, which is interesting. There's also some cool history you can check out relating to Britain's naval past.
I wanted to go and would have gone, but all these attractions are kind of away from the main areas of the city and getting out there and back was just going to eat up too much time, so I cut out this whole part of London from my trip.
Kew Gardens
The Royal Botanic Kew Gardens are ranked among the most beautiful gardens in the world. This place is also fascinating because a ton of research and experiments are carried out here.
New plants are created and studied here and I love gardens, so this was on my itinerary for a while before I had to finally give up on visiting. Like the Greenwich Observatory, Kew Gardens is outside the main part of London and coming here would have been an entire day trip, so I had to miss out.
National Gallery
The National Gallery is considered by many to be a real can't-miss attraction. There is a ton of incredible art here rendered by some of the most famous artists in all of history and on top of that, it's totally free to come here.
Yes, I skipped out on a totally free, highly popular attractions full of art. If you've watched my other London videos, you know this is out of character. But I have a reason for skipping this main London attraction, and it's because I was salty, y'all. The National Gallery kind of made me mad.
London’s National Gallery is exceptional. You can find works from Van Gogh, Da Vinci, Vermeer, Georges Seurat, Rubens, Gainsboro, Rembrandt, I mean the list goes on and on. And during my research, I learned that this is also the permanent home for my favorite painting by my favorite artist.
The Arnolfini portrait by Van Eyck captivated me from the first moment I saw a picture of it. I've watched entire documentaries about just this painting. So I was thrilled, utterly over the moon, when I discovered this painting is free to see in London.
But during the entirety of my visit to London, this painting was not on display. They put it in a closet or something to keep me away from it.
This was one of the biggest disappointments of my life. Within the space of about two minutes, my heart soared up to the sky when I learned this painting is in London and then crashed to the lowest low when I learned that I still can't see it.
So, I did not go to the National Gallery at all. And I'm not sad about it. And I just can't even talk about it anymore.
Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens
Vauxhall was never taken off my itinerary because I planned to see it right until my last day in London. I just couldn't get there.
I got a little delayed coming back from Hampton Court and traffic in London was really bad that day. I had a Sunday roast reservation to keep, so I had to skip Vauxhall and ended up not having my reservation honored anyway. I actually got stranded in Shoreditch and it was a whole thing, so I never made it to Vauxhall and that is a disappointment.
The Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens were established shortly after Charles II became King when the monarchy was restored following England's brief flirtation with revolution in 1660. For quite a long time, only certain types of people were allowed to be here, those of some wealth and status within the British Empire.
I wanted to come here because Vauxhall is featured in so many stories and movies set in London in the 1700s and 1800s. People in stories are always riding carriages through the gardens and I'm a huge fan of history, so missing out on seeing Vauxhall was a loss.
There are a lot more than five places I didn't see in London, obviously, and a whole lot of places I did, but these are places I wish I'd seen and will see if I make it back to London one day.
If you want to find out more about places I actually did see in London and how you can also see them, check out my London playlist!
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