3 years in london + life lately🍵 just some tea #36

my top london recs for a friend.

Dec 12, 2023

hiii💛

I was in India for 2 weeks. Sambhav and I had a intimate wedding with 30 of our closest friends and family in Jaipur. It was an overwhelming heart-filling soul-changing overdose of love and life.

As we were flying back into london, a calm descended over me. A calm that only comes along once you feel you are home.

London has been one of the hardest yet easiest city to call home.

I moved to London in like peak-pandemic era mid-november 2020. It was cold, and damp and dark. We were locked in for 5 months and I had zero friends. Yep felt like one of my worst decisions to me.

Why am I telling you this? Because I don’t wanna peddle this idea that moving abroad/ living in London is all glamourous. If you are unhappy, you stay unhappy even when you move to a new place . Inner peace and that sense of belonging are built, one brick at a time. A lesson London taught me so very well.

December always brings along this restlessness and urge to change a few things. If you are going through a change, or trying to settle into something - here are few things I will tell you that wish someone told me back when I was battling with this change.

Learn to enjoy your own company. Go out for walks, get a drink you like. Go to a park, go to a museum, go to a workout or hobby class. Go alone and build that gravity inside you to feel grounded when things seem to be changing around.
You can make friends at any age. You don’t often stumble upon friendships, you have to make them happen.
Build your own traditions. Festivals and birthdays of my parents are still the hardest when I am out here. Crafting small traditions have helped fill in those gaps.
Romanticize your life, it makes all things easier. And you attract more of you want. Wherever you are, there is good around you. You just need to make an edited filtered 10 secs of video to realize it. 😅

To celebrate this milestone, I am sharing my piece of london with you. I have lost count of how many times I have walked these routes. I use them to ground myself, to fall in love (again) when I need to.

🌸 victoria park - columbia flower market

Start your day with a walk in the 🌳 victoria park, lazily making your way to broadway market. You can have the best falafel of your life at 🥙pockets, or a cheeky espresso martini in cozy aya & suki. Fill your soul up with crystals at 🔮she’s lost control, and this 📗 artsy book store. Time your way to reach 🌸columbia flower market around thirty past 1 to get some flowers or a new plant baby. Lug your heavy plant baby and have lunch at delmania east, another cheeky cocktail at 🍸nightjar and a coffee that is definetly too late in the day at 🥐 jolene.

🔭 greenwich - dishoom

Start your day with a riverside walk at greenwich, meandering through greenwich food market to collect coffee and croissant and hike up the 🔭 observatory. The view of london is stunning, and the 🐶 dogs make your week. You can stop by 🍜 rosa’s thai and should stop by 📗 waterstones before walking under thames through a 🚶‍♀️tunnel and make your way to dishoom for some bun maska and vada pao, or mallow if you are feeling fancy. Walk by the harbour quay and cap it up at 🍸alchemist, or 🍨gelato at badiani’s.

🖼️ national gallery - soho - marleyborne

Start your day at the 🖼️ national gallery, one of the most peaceful, grounding places in the heart of london. make your way through soho park to stop by 🛕iskon if you are feeling it, and/or at 🪄 house of mina lima. soho is full of food, but if I can pick one stop at 🥘 fatt pundit. Grab a cheesecake from 🍰 kova, or ube ice cream from 🍨mamasons. One last hike to make a pilgrimage at 📗 daunt books in marleyborne, before capping it up at either 🍸below stone nest or udderlicious.

talk soon x
chhavi

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just some tea, please.

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