Where Sasha Went

A Day at Kew Gardens

The second we decided to go to England I knew I had to spend a day at Kew Gardens. I had been reading about it for years through historical fiction, and non fiction books of various subjects. I was always fascinated by the scientific and seemingly innocent drive to collect and study the worlds plants. And how that opened up the doors for some of the most destructive advances in world trade and shipping that ultimately caused things such as the opium wars in China. The endeavor to collect and preserve as many plant species and display them to the public officially started in 1759. But was officially founded in 1840 which is when the construction of the glass and wrought iron houses that stand today begun. Today the Kew Gardens are 330 acres of walking paths, trees, bridges both over water and in the tree tops, several historic buildings that can be toured, green houses, cafes, art exhibits and a tea house. Kew Gardens We got to the gardens just a couple hours after they opened but there was already a line to get in. Payment is taken at the main gates and they do take cards, which is nice because it isn’t cheap to get in. From there we were handed a map and set off on our own. We wandered around the typical sights, sort of ever searching for the desert house, which is actually the Princess of Wales house, it isn’t marked very clearly on the map what that green house holds. It also appears to be much smaller on the map than it really is. We also wanted some food but every place we stopped seemed to just be cold sandwiches from a fridge and it was a little chilly that day we were hoping for something a big more substantial. We wound up eating at the Botanical, which was very beautiful and had a great view of the Palm House but the portions were far too small for how hungry we were. We later discovered The Orangery which is where we really should have eaten. Moral of the story, Kew is really lovely and I would certainly go back again it is big enough that I doubt you could actually see everything again. And the maps that are handed out are very helpful, but in hindsight we probably should have planned a bit better, given some of the info we wanted was not included in the materials handed out at the ticket gate. Newens Tea House Newens Tea House was something I found at the last minute. We were loving the tea services we had so far on the trip and wanted to have one last afternoon tea experience. The history of the place is really fascinating and I think is a must do for anyone who loves history and pastries. Allegedly King Henry 8th came across Ann Boleyn and her Maids of Honor eating this light as air tarts, when he tried them he was so smitten he took the recipe and locked it up in the castle. Time went on and in 1850 a man named Newen built the Newens Tea House at the location it is today, however it was destroyed in the blitz. It was rebuilt on the same location and sits there today as the only place in the world the makes the unique little pastries. We had our doubts about exactly how good they were, but we went to experience the history all the same. We had some amazing Russian Caravan tea, scones and clotted cream of course. And the pastries, and oh my heavens they were amazing. If you are visiting the Kew area, I personally think this needs to be a number one spot on your list. Kew England Kew England itself is a district within the Richmond area of London. It had its role throughout history for drawing in royals, as well as artists and even sheltering individuals during the French Revolution. Today however it is mostly just a very nice, if not very expensive residential district. The train station is quite small, and once you pop outside of it you instantly feel the drawn to the area. Small shops, tree lined streets, beautiful well kept homes everywhere you look. There is very little noise and traffic. Just a lovely quiet part of town all around. We wound up staying at the Kew Gardens Hotel, mostly for its proximity to both the gardens and the train station. It actually turned out to be even closer than I thought. For some reason the map made it look close but still a fair jaunt, but it turned out to be no more than a couple blocks from either. The hotel was more expensive than anywhere else we stayed, but it was well worth it for us. And still probably considered a budget room. The hotel is both a restaurant, pub and a hotel. So it can get a bit noisy at night. If you want to stay here and are a light sleeper I would just suggest requesting an upper floor room. Otherwise the rooms are updated and very nice. The dining space is really lovely and the food top notch. The rooms come with wi-fi and breakfast which in and of itself is a feast. After our long day of travel and touring around Kew I took a nice long bath in the giant tub in my room and we woke up the next day to a breakfast feast that lasted us almost back to the states. All in all I couldn’t have been happier with our stay in Kew and if we ever make it back will likely have to repeat a day at Kew Gardens since we didn’t actually manage to see it all. We will also most certainly we repeating our stay at the Kew Gardens Hotel.
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Eating in Bath, England

Eating in Bath England is easy to do, well lets be honest I tend to find eating anywhere easy to do! My point is Bath being a spa town, tourist attraction, weekend getaway sort of place and being home to 80,000 residents means there is a good number of great restaurants in the area. However, I was reticent going in. I had some bad experiences with English food in the past, and with the Heathrow airport if I am being honest. So I did have it in the back of my mind that I may not be very happy with the food when we go there. I could not have ben more wrong. We in no way had difficulty finding decent food. If anything I kept eating even though I wasn’t hungry just because there was so much great food to experience.  Seafoods The first place we tried was Seafoods. It was our first night, we had been traveling all day and the night before because getting to Europe from the West Coast of the USA takes an eternity. We had checked into our apartment and the hunger hit us. Need. Food. Now. And what else does one eat in England if not Fish and Chips. We searched a few places and because Bath is a bit fancy most of the places that come up were offering large fancy plates and a higher cost. We wanted authentic and local. So we picked the smaller and cheaper of our options and landed at Seafoods.  We wanted to sit outside and were told there was no table service outside. So we ordered the small of both fish and chips, we also ordered the traditional sauce and a garlic aioli from the counter and made our way outside. And then there was a bit of confusion. We were sort of forgotten about and 20 or so minutes later the women we ordered from came out and asked again what we ordered. We told her and 10 min later our food arrived but either she gave us the large on accident or in England small means something very different. It was so much food I could hardly eat half. But it was so delicious I ate way more than I really had room for.  Even though it was a Bank Holiday and the town was overrun with tourists the area and restaurant had a very local feel. Lots of folks milling about and ordering take away, sitting and eating in the park across the street from the other restaurants. And the ice cream shop next door must have been something else because the line never got below 15 people. We were both too full to try it after dinner but I will be forever curious exactly how good that ice cream must have been to warrant that kind of crowd, especially when it wasn’t the only ice cream shop close by.  The Raven Another quintessential English experience is eating in a pub. A local suggested The Raven. It a lovely little spot hidden away in a side street bustling with locals. Thus exactly what I wanted. It was clean and well kept with two bars, one on the ground floor which was extremely crowded and one on the first floor (or what we Americans would call the second floor). The bar tender at the ground floor shooed us upstairs because there wasn’t really any place to sit and I am oh so thankful he did. It was much quieter and the large windows offered a lovely amount of light and views of the streets below. In taverns and pubs in England there is usually not table service, you order at the bar and pay on the spot. I ordered two different kinds of pies, sauces and sides suggested by the bar tender because I had no idea where to start and shortly our food was delivered. I could rave about how good those pies are all day but I won’t. If you ever find yourself in the area just make sure you go and try them yourself. Chicken and ham pie, with mashed potatoes and sage sauce. Don’t question it, just order it. You can thank me later.  Patisserie Valerie Another English staple is the afternoon tea service. Though surprisingly this is relatively new tradition to the English people. The drinking of tea has been a part of English society for a very long time but it wasn’t until the seventh duchess of Bedford (Anna) that the idea of a light meal service between lunch and dinner was popularized. Among the landed gentry it was not uncommon for dinner to be served after eight pm, leaving a good long stretch in the day with no food. Thus the habit of afternoon tea complete with snacks was born.  There is no shortage of tea services in Bath. I have mentioned that the Pump Room which is associate with The Roman Baths offers a variety of services from just scones and tea all the way up to champagne service with a tray stacked with goodies. Emma from Gotta Keep Moving has a nice run down of the more popular places to take tea in Bath. If that is the sort of think you are looking for.  Operating as my truest self I of course opted for the least assuming location for an English tea service, a French patisserie. I will be honest the location, lack of line and low cost had nearly everything to do with the decision but it did not disappoint. Patisserie Valerie was established in 1926 and operates out of a art deco store front complete with original windows and glass vaulted ceiling in the main dinging area. It isn’t large, the service was a tad slow but the tea hit the spot and the tower of food was outstanding. It turned out to be so much food in fact we had to take all the desserts to go and ate them later that night in our apartment.  Cornish Pasties  Cornish Pasties probably seem like an odd drawn when not in Cornwall. But much to our delight there was a large density of Cornish Bakeries in Bath which meant we got to eat the foods of Cornwall even though we didn’t have time to visit it (this trip).  If you are unfamiliar with the tradition of the pasty. It is similar to a hand pie or empanada. A circle of short cut pastry is filled with uncooked meats, sauces and vegetable, folded in half, sealed and cooked to perfection. We visited a couple different locations, both claiming to be award winning and famous and all that. Both were excellent.  The first was the Cornish Bakehouse which has several locations across England. We ate here on more the one occasion, for one because it was great but it was also conveniently located on the way to the train station so it made for a quick stop on the way to where we were headed. They also had their pasties out of the oven sooner than other locations which didn’t hurt. I think my favorite meal of the entire trip was here, it was a surprising red chicken curry pasty that I am determined to recreate now that I am home. The other location we tried was The Cornish Bakery which also has a couple locations in Bath, one of which is right across from the Pump Room near the baths. We excited our apartment a tad too early on the day we left Bath and it had started raining so we chose to wait it out in the tiny little bakery. We had tea and a delicious carrot cake while we waited and then took a sandwich and sausage rolls to go. On second though the sausage rolls may have been the best thing I ate in England. I will probably change my mind again. It was all too good!
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The Roman Baths – Bath, England

The Roman Baths in Bath, England is both the town’s namesake and the main attraction in the city. There is archaeological evidence that the Celts used the area as a natural hot springs even before the Roman invasion. The Romans built the temple between 60-70AD and the baths you can see today were built over a period of 300 years after the original temple was built. The original baths are below the current street level, so what you see when walking around the city are dated from the 19th century.
I haven’t managed to find much about the bath complex during WW2, but over a weekend in April 1942 80 Luftwaffe flew over the city of Bath and bombed it. It is said that most people who saw them coming didn’t duck for cover thinking the planes were headed for near by Bristol. The bombing was the start of the Baedeker Blitz which was a reaction to the RAF bombing and destruction of the city of Lubeck. This resulted in 19,000 building being bombed in Bath alone, 1,100 being seriously damaged or entirely destroyed of which 218 were of architectural significance. St. Andrews church was entirely destroyed and is now a park. St. Johns was nearly destroyed but efforts to restore were completed in the 90s. The names of those lost to the bombing can be found at the War Memorial outside the gates of Victoria Park. 
Visiting the Roman Baths
The bath complex is a open air square with the Sacred Spring, Roman Temple, Roman Bath House and museum as well as the Pump Room which is a restaurant and tea room. There is also a gift shop that exits visitors on the main pedestrian street and can be accessed by non museum goers. We didn’t visit the baths themselves. I think had we been in town longer we would have, they look quite impressive. And I love a good historic site. But even being there off season the lines to get in were wrapped around the building and we wanted to see more of the town rather than spend half the day standing in line. If you wanted to go I would try getting there early and midweek if it can be helped.
You can visit the Pump Room without visiting the rest of the buildings and the restrooms in the building are open to the public, one of the only ones I found in the city. The Pump room offers a variety of tea services, which we were considering but we wound up choosing a different location due to price and crowds. But the building is gorgeous and if you want fancy tea in a fancy building with a great view you should really go here.
The other main attraction in this area and perhaps the most obvious is Bath Abbey. Early kings built on the religious site in the 700s. The site was fought over during the Norman Conquest. It was reorganized in the 10th century, rebuilt in the 12th century, dissolved from the Catholic church by Henry the 8th and restored in the 1860s. When I visited they were digging up the floors in sections for more restoration work to improve the in floor heating from the thermal waters in the area. Rumor has it they unearthed 8,000 bodies from the church floors, it should be noted it is an entirely normal practice historically for parishioners to be buried under church floors.
The building of the Bath Abbey that stands today is known for it’s historic significance and architecture, specifically the fan vaulting on the ceiling which was designed by Robert and William Vertue. The brothers designed a number of well know buildings including a similar ceiling in Westminster Abbey for Henry the 7th. Additionally the entire church is made of a butter yellow limestone that is unique to the area, most of the city of Bath and buildings in near by towns are built with the same stone.
If visiting the church is on your bucket list be sure to plan around religious holidays and check for hours. The church is still holding regular services and tourists are only allowed in during specific touring times. Obviously you could attend a service to get in, but the lines for the services are long and you wouldn’t have the freedom to wander the building or take pictures.

Secret Things To Do Near the Baths
Behind the Bath Abbey is the Parade Gardens a walled park on the river front. The parks were rebuilt in the 1930s on the grounds of 17th century pleasure gardens.  It costs to get in and it is cash only, but if its a nice day I would say the charge is well worth it. There are also food stands at the top of the gates before you go in so you could always buy a picnic and settle in for an afternoon rest.

To the left of the Parade Gardens over the River Avon is the Pultney Bridge which was built in 1774. It like the bridge over the Grand Canal in Venice has shops built into it and was a very popular shopping district in its day. Though it was still pretty crowded when we were there. There are both restaurants and shops on it now, one of which a quaint little map shop selling original historic maps. If I had enough money to afford such a think I would have bought one, they were gorgeous.
If you walk over the bridge you will notice a small stairway on the right hand-side after you pass over, this stairwell goes into and under the bridge depositing you on the other-side of the river where another lovely park sits along with restaurants with outdoor seating. This stairway is significantly harder to see coming from this side of the river, which is what we did. I thought we were walking into a restaurant kitchen rather than the bridge, though it wouldn’t be the first nor the last time I have accidentally wandered into a busy not public kitchen.

If you continue to walk away from the bridge along the river you see a wonderful view of the city that you wouldn’t get otherwise. This side of the river also hosts a small riverfront park, but rather than streets and cars there are a good number of restaurants offering outdoor seating. Continuing down river from the bridge you get an excellent view of down town Bath and a quite little restaurant on a long boat.

If you follow the river down to the next bridge and then turn east and wander up the hill you run into the most charming waterway and greenspace. It goes on for quite a ways in both directions but along this canal is a series of locks. I couldn’t find an exact date on the lock system. But they are a part of the larger system of locks connected to the Bristol Floating Harbor which was built in the 1800s and the Bath Locks have two bridges that date to the same time period.
They fell into disuse and then were restored in 1968 and are run today manually by volunteer labor via the Kennet and Avon Canal Trust. This was probably one of the highlights of the trip. Watching the long boats come and go, and watching them manually (when I say manually I mean two young men physically move the winches that open and close the locks) manned was very impressive. The volunteers are all very nice and were happy to answer all of our questions.
The long boats that run up and down the canals can be rented for day use or overnight. We almost stayed on one, I think it would have been a hoot, but having seen them in person there wouldn’t have been a ton of privacy sitting up here on the canal. There is also a small restaurant and ice cream stand up near the top which would make a nice little rest stop should you need it.

Crossing the river at the last of the locks brings you back to the Bath Train Station and right near the aforementioned St. John’s church. The church  is near the bath complex sitting along the river, in fact if you walked the opposite side of the river you probably saw the back side of it just down river from the Pulteney Bridge. It isn’t as impressive as the Bath Abbey but it is still very impressive, especially compared to modern American churches.
My favorite thing about this location was the are stations around the inside walls describing the history of the church. I don’t see this a lot and was happy to read about the history in the location rather than later after I had toured it.  This church like most in England was originally Catholic but dissolved during Henry the 8ths reign. St. Johns was also nearly destroyed during the blitz and the signs do a nice job discussing the damage and restoration efforts which were extensive.

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Goat Street Social – Dingle, Ireland

Being alone, without any means of finding things to do and in terrible weather can be a horribly defeating feeling while on vacation. I was certainly in danger of getting down on myself and feeling like I had wasted a lot of money for nothing on the first day of having had sat out on hiking.

But when the jewelry shop worker at Jon Weldon  suggested I take shelter in a cafe up the street my whole day turned out. Goat Street Social is a rather small establishment that serves coffee, brunch, and lunch though I was only in it for the hot drinks and cake. I was lucky to find a table as it was entirely packed but I wedged my way in. After having removing as many wet layers as socially acceptable I set my things up to dry and enjoyed a nice pot of tea and some almond orange cake. I grabbed the only novel off the high shelf above my head and started reading about Ewan McGregor’s motorcycle trip from Scotland to South Africa.
I didn’t finish the book, though it was a decent read. The place started to get really busy and I didn’t feel right holding up the table any longer given I had finished what I came in for. I gave up my small table to a couple. I could tell the waitress wanted to make sure I was actually ready to leave and not feeling pressured but was immensely grateful to not have to turn another customer away.

I went back the next day as I once again chose to sit out the hike. The terrain was not going to be great for my more comfortable but also significantly less water proof shoes. So while I waited for my ride again I headed straight back up. This time choosing a cappuccino and the sticky toffee pudding. Which was to die for.

In researching information about the establishment it appears that there used to be a place called The Goat Street Cafe in its place which has since closed. The new cafe, Goat Street Social is however open, obviously since I went there…twice. They must be new given how little information is on the internet. The cafe can be found at Grove, Dingle, Co. Kerry, Ireland and is open 10:30 to 3pm seven days a week though it does close for bank holidays.

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Hi SociTea – Los Angeles, California

The second thing I did on my solo day on Hollywood Blvd,  very busy, very touristy street was have tea.  There is a lot to do on this street from famous theaters, to driving tours of film sites to more than one wax museum. It is the walk of the stars with anything and everything you could want to do with movies. And I love that, because I love movies. But I also love being in quiet places and recharging. I also love tea.

My goal was to find a high tea service where I could relax and spend a couple hours reading. During my research I found a lot of highly recommended places, mostly hotels with Sunday only service. This is fairly common so I was neither surprised or disappointed.

Finally after a lot of searching I found a place called Hi SociTea that shares the building with the W Hotel just off Hollywood Blvd. I must repeat that is shares the building with the hotel, for all my research it looked like the tea bar was in the hotel. Which it is not, so says the concierge at the W Hotel who was real confused about what I was asking for.

Having finally located the entrance I was pleasantly greeted by dark navy walls, high windows, friendly service and more tea choices than I new what to do with. I settled on a ginger roobis, which was the best roobis I have ever had. I went back and fourth trying to decide if I wanted the full tea service, which was what I had originally came for. But despite being on my feet all day I wasn’t terribly hungry. After waffling for a good 5 minutes and asking the very patient server a million questions I settled on just the tea and a Scottish Salmon Sandwich.

The sandwich was heaven. Sourdough bread, lox, lemon, capers…there are no words. I sat in the window watching people come and go chatting with the two employees while I devoured my tea and sandwich. I learned that they are planning on expanding into the building and will have more tables in the near future. And that their full tea service will continue to be available every day of the week. Though if you are like me and decide it is too much food you can always order anything off the full menu piece meal.

I officially loved everything about this place, and am sad that it doesn’t live in Oregon. I would go every single day. I am not kidding.

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