More April Travel Adventures: Battersea Power Station, Japan House, and the Thames Lido (300th Post!)

Here are a few other April travel adventures I'm yet to write about - as usual, in and around Reading and London!

Battersea

Battersea Park is one of our favourite London parks, and on a recent visit there, we decided to see a bit more of the area, by visiting Battersea Power Station. This is a prime example of the regeneration that has taken place in certain areas of London, as it was once a coal-fired power station spitting out smoke, but has now been converted into a very fancy and modern shopping mall.

When we visited, there was an art trail of painted elephants, and we had fun trying to spot as many as possible in and around the mall!

Kensington and Chelsea

Our next trip to the capital took us to the other side of the river, where we started our day out in Kensington, visiting Japan House. This cultural centre is a museum, shop, café and restaurant all in one, and is a beautiful space to visit. Japan is a country we'd love to visit at some point (I'm interested in the temples and cat cafés, and of course Claudio would love to see the cars!), so we had a great time looking around and enjoying a matcha. One weird thing that I would recommend doing there is visiting the bathroom, as they have authentic Japanese toilets with heated seats!

As the tube to Kensington from Paddington had been absolutely packed, we decided to walk to our next destination: Chelsea. We passed by this interesting building called Michelin House, which used to be the headquarters of Michelin (unsurprisingly!) but now has other uses. The actual building was closed, but in the entrance there was the most beautiful flower market.

Our final stop of the day was Claudio's choice! We went to the exit of the Salon Privé car event to watch some of the supercars leaving. We got to see a large range of cars: Aston Martins, Ferraris, Lamborghinis, McLarens, and even a Bugatti in the distance, so Claudio was pretty happy!

Thames Lido

We're planning on moving away from Reading in the coming months (though we're not sure where to yet!), so have been making a list of all the places we want to visit around the town and making the effort to visit as many as possible before we leave.

One of these places was the Thames Lido. We've had our eye on going there for ages, as we both love swimming, but it is rather pricey. However, the prospect of moving away from the area convinced us to finally go one Friday evening in April.

The building looks quite unassuming from the outside. You could easily miss it when walking past.

However, the inside is something else entirely! The lido is so beautifully decorated and contains a swimming pool, jacuzzi, sauna and steam room. The ticket gives you access for two hours, and we had a really enjoyable and relaxing evening there, finished off with a drink at the poolside bar.

While the tickets are expensive (£25 from Monday to Thursday and £30 from Friday to Sunday), you definitely get a very different experience to what you'd get at a standard leisure centre swimming pool - it's a much more picturesque and relaxing environment and much less crowded. We really felt like we were on holiday at a fancy hotel in a warmer country during the few hours we were there.

Staines-upon-Thames

We've been looking at various potential places to move to over the last couple of months and recently visited the town of Staines-upon-Thames in Surrey. Though we didn't particularly like the town centre and don't see ourselves moving there in the future, there were some nice areas, particularly by the river, that we enjoyed exploring.

That's all for now, but I'll be back soon with more travel content, right here on this blog.

I want to finish off this post by marking the fact that this is actually my 300th post on Charlotte's Travel Adventures! I've now been posting here for well over seven years and don't plan on stopping anytime soon, even though I don't post as often these days as I did in the past. 

Since my 200th post three years ago, a lot has happened in my life! I spent three months living in Malta, before returning to live in the UK in late 2023. In 2024, Claudio and I got married in Chile (with a later celebration in the UK), and after successfully applying for a spouse visa, we moved into an apartment together in Reading in 2025, and are now working in Surrey and London.

Over the last three years, I've travelled in 11 countries, 4 of which I hadn't visited before. Our travel highlight definitely has to be our honeymoon in Thailand; it was our first time visiting Asia, and we had an absolutely brilliant time.

Hopefully, we'll have lots more exciting adventures to post about between now and post number 400!