Friday, May 21, 2010

London: Marylebone High St. and Regents Park






































After we had our morning of doing Trafalgar Square and Buckingham Palace , we met up with our friend Ariel at her office. We headed to Regents Park to pick up her daughter Daphne from school, but meandered our way through Marylebone High Street, Paddington Gardens, and Moxon Street. 
Paddington Gardens, in not such pretty light...

Paddington Gardens is a very small little park, that has a little playground, two gazebos (good if you get caught in the rain), and lots of benches and lovely gardens. For me, the best part of the park was that it butts up against Moxon Street, which has two very exciting food stores: The Ginger Pig and La Fromagerie. The Ginger Pig is a beautiful butcher shop, and while most people aren't really into visiting butchers, this is a big part of our life, as we raise pigs with our neighbor in our upstate New York house. (See Matt's blog, The William Brown Project for further explanation.) Within moments, Matt was in the back of the shop, photographing their whole operation, and being invited to come back to butcher a pig the following week. I was more interested in the way they display the eggs. 
Next door is La Fromagerie, a beautiful cheese/grocery/wine shop, that also serves food. Another example of what I would want to do in another life, or maybe in five years.  From there we really hightailed it to Daphne's school, but Matt stayed behind and told me that the kitchen shop Divertimenti was great (he makes savory pies, and they had good accessories for that), plus there was a Waitrose (my favorite grocery chain--beautiful products, packaging), and a children's destination shoe store called Papillon (which I will write about that another day).  It's just a nice area to walk around, that has good spots to eat, both simple and not (Le Relais de Venise has a fantastic steak frites), a park and playground, and smart independent stores.












































Eating a delicious yogurt from Normandy, bought at La Fromagerie. You could pick up a nice lunch here and eat it at Paddington Gardens.
School pickup was so fun--I loved watching all the different types of parents doing pickup, and getting the lay of the land from my friend. It's an all-girls school, and they not only wear uniforms, they wear these adorable little straw hats, very Madeleine style. We walked over to Regents Park and the girls were in heaven.
Afterwards on our way to the underground, we ran into another family from Daphne's school, who live in the neighborhood, and have access to a private park right next to Regent's Park. I've always wanted to go into a private park, probably since I read The Secret Garden at least 10 times as a kid, and yet I've never been in one. She walked us through, and we were the only people in the park. Dreamy.


3 comments:

  1. lovely photographs! I really like the one of Clara under the tree with fallen blossoms scattered on the lawn. so sweet.

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  2. http://girlcrush.la/June 19, 2011 at 9:48 PM

    the best sausage roll i've ever had in my entire life!! i now live in LA, but my inlaws, who live in london, bring frozen ginger pig sausage rolls with them when they visit us in LA. even frozen, and after a long plane ride, the rolls are still mouth watering. heavenly. -ww

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