Autumn 2025 London Travel: Garden at 120, Fiestas Patrias, Theatre and More!

Over the autumn months, we definitely visited London a lot less than we did during our first months in Reading, when we were going nearly every weekend.

After a summer where we spent a lot of time in some of the city's busiest and most touristic spots, we've recently been a bit more focused on exploring other, lesser-visited areas.

Here are our highlights!

Walthamstow, The Garden at 120 and Leadenhall Market

We really like visiting showhomes, and so went along to an event to look at a flat in a building for first-time buyers in Walthamstow. Although we now think it's unlikely that we'll move to London, we had a nice time looking around the flat, which was decorated in a style we quite like.

It was also a chance for us to check out Walthamstow, a part of the city we'd never been to before. We went for a sunny walk through Lloyd Park and then had pizza at Yard Sale Pizza. It's the sort of area we can definitely see ourselves living in.

Afterwards, we took the overground back over to Liverpool Street and walked to my (now former) office in Whitechapel. It's a nice 10-minute walk through The City, and the office itself is a super modern high-rise building.

Being in the area, we took the opportunity to visit the Garden at 120. This was an experience I enjoyed a lot more than the Sky Garden, which we'd visited during the summer. Unlike at the Sky Garden, we didn't have to reserve in advance and only had to queue for a short time in order to go up to the garden. And the views were just as good!

We finished off this particular trip to London with a drink in a pub in Leadenhall Market, which is such a classic and very typically "London" place.

Fiestas Patrias

In September, we celebrated the Chilean Fiestas Patrias here in the UK! We decided to attend an event at The Red Lion Café in Holborn, and had a lot of fun. There was music, dancing, a circus performance, and of course, lots of food and drink!

It was nice to have the opportunity to have some Chilean food and drink again. Here is everything we tried and our thoughts...

Mote con huesillos: This is one of my favourites - I love that it's both a food and a drink at the same time, and it's especially great to enjoy in one of Santiago's parks in summer. Unfortunately, this was definitely the worst version I've tried, as the juice didn't have much flavour and the mote was a bit dry.

Empanada de pino: I actually really liked the vegan version of this, which had vegan mince and olives. However, Claudio wasn't so impressed by the meat version.

Sopaipilla: This pastry made with butternut squash is a wintry favourite of mine, and this one was a nice big size. It went really well with the pebre (a salsa made with tomatoes, onions and coriander).

Chilean wine: Always a winner!

Terremoto: This is the classic Fiestas Patrias drink, but unfortunately, they ran out very early on in the day, so we didn't get to have any! It's made of white wine, pineapple ice cream and grenadine, so it's easy enough to make at home in Chile, where pineapple is the default ice cream flavour, but not so easy here in the UK! We will have to order one straight away next year!

Chilenito: Really tasty crunchy biscuit filled with manjar - maybe my favourite thing I ate at the event!

Alfajor: Similar to the chilenito but crumbly rather than crunchy.

Of course, it's not the same as celebrating in Chile itself, but it was a really nice day and felt almost like being back in Chile whilst being in London!

Richmond Theatre and Richmond Park

One of the most unique and interesting trips we've had to London this year was when we visited Richmond. I subscribe to the Get into Theatre mailing list, which is how I found out about the Richmond Theatre open day in September - a chance to get to explore all the different parts of a large London theatre. That's something I've always wanted to do, so we decided to go along.

Instead of taking the Elizabeth Line or the GWR into Paddington, we took the SWR train that goes to Waterloo, stopping at various places in London, including Richmond. We were really impressed with Richmond's train station - it's designed to look very retro and is definitely the most beautiful station we've visited in London!

Arriving at the theatre, I was excited to get the chance to meet one of my favourite TV stars from my childhood - Basil Brush! He was doing promotion for the theatre's panto and I got to take a photo with him!

After meeting Basil, we explored the different areas around the beautiful, old-fashioned theatre.

The auditorium itself was pretty spectacular, and it was great to get to sit in one of the boxes.

For the first time in my life, I had the opportunity to stand on the stage of a London theatre - something I've dreamed of since childhood! Obviously Richmond doesn't count as a West End theatre, but it was still a very special and exciting moment.

We also got the chance to enter the dressing rooms - an experience that made us feel like celebrities!

We then came back into the auditorium to watch showcases by a local choir and theatre group. Getting to watch live performances definitely added a nice touch to the event.

Following a great couple of hours at the event, we explored more of Richmond. We really enjoyed strolling through the calm, leafy neighbourhood, especially with a pumpkin spice hot chocolate from Knoops in hand!

We then walked along the river and up to Richmond's famous park, where we were lucky to catch a glimpse of a few of the deer that live there!

Richmond is absolutely one of our favourite places we've visited in London so far, and our day there was very special and quite different from some of our other trips to the capital.

Royal Ballet and Opera, Hercules in the West End and Embankment

The following month, we were back in London for another theatrical experience. This time, we went to see Hercules in the West End (my birthday present from Claudio)!

Before the show, we had a look around the Royal Ballet and Opera. It's free to enter and is a really opulent building that doesn't get too busy. A real hidden gem of London!

The production of Hercules was in the nearby Theatre Royal Drury Lane, where I went to see Frozen last year. It's a beautiful theatre, and we enjoyed the show a lot (though I was a little disappointed that the character of Pegasus was cut out)!

Afterwards, we had a nice walk through the city, stopping to enjoy the Egyptian statues at Embankment on our way to Fortnum & Mason to buy a present.

Fortnum & Mason turned out to be a very hectic experience and we were glad to return home afterwards! But overall, it had been a super enjoyable day in London.

The British Library

I went back to the office one last time on the day of Halloween in order to hand back my work laptop. To celebrate my new freedom afterwards, I went over to St Pancras to visit the British Library, a place I'd never been to before.

I love books and reading, so this was a fun place for me to visit. It was a lot more modern than I was expecting and really huge.

Notting Hill, Museum of Brands and Television Centre

Our final London trip of the year was to Notting Hill. I'd actually never been to this part of the city before, and we thought it would be fun to see some of the places from the film Notting Hill. It's not one of my favourite films, as I think the main relationship is a bit toxic, but it's quite entertaining.

The first place we saw was the famous blue door where Hugh Grant's character lives. It was a good thing we got there quite early, because a crowd started forming shortly after we took our photo!

We then went to find the bookshop from the film. Initially, we ended up at The Notting Hill Bookshop, which is actually not the one from the film (though it was still getting a lot of attention from tourists) before finding The Travel Book Co, which is the correct one (and which was super crowded)!

Afterwards, we had a nice time exploring some more of the area and getting away from the crowds a bit. It was nice to see some of Notting Hill's famous colourful houses and to get to meet a couple of its feline residents!

We then had a fun afternoon visiting the Museum of Brands. This is somewhere I particularly wanted to visit because I've been working in marketing for the last few years, but have recently been dealing with burnout, so visiting the museum was a bit of an attempt to bring back some motivation for my career path.

Obviously, conquering burnout takes a lot more than just a museum visit, but it was definitely an interesting experience. The museum is set out as a time tunnel that takes you from the Victorian era through to the modern day, showing you lots of examples of products and advertising, so you get a real sense of how branding has evolved over time.

The museum also has a nice café and even a sort of secret garden, which is a really tranquil space in the middle of the city.

Later on in the day, we passed through Westfield shopping centre (the largest mall in Europe!) as we wanted to see Television Centre. Even though the building is fairly nondescript, it was cool to get to see it in real life, having seen it various times on the TV! Nearby, we also came across an upside-down house, like the one we'd seen in Brighton in 2020!

This autumn's adventures in London were a little different, and we really enjoyed all of those trips.

This brings to an end my era of working in London, but who knows, maybe a new job will take me back there in the near future? In any case, we'll certainly be returning for regular visits in the new year, in order to take in more theatrical experiences and to keep discovering new surprises around the city!