Kew Gardens

There are four UNESCO World Heritage Sites in London, which is a lot for one city! Until last month, I had been to three of them: Palace of Westminster and Westminster Abbey, the Tower of London, and Maritime Greenwich. These three are all (sort of) free to visit, although you have to pay to go inside some attractions.

Based on the title of this post, you might be able to guess that the fourth one is Kew Gardens!

This is a place that I'd wanted to visit for a while, but the high prices had put me off, as it costs around £25 if you're over 29 (which unfortunately I am, but only just!). If two of you are going, that works out as £50, which is a lot for a day out.

However, after doing a little search online, I found out that you can get 2 for 1 entry with a coupon from Days Out Guide, provided that you travel by train to Richmond station and show your train tickets on entry. As we'd planned to go by train anyway, this was really ideal for us!

After travelling to the park and successfully obtaining our 2 for 1 tickets, the first sight we went to see was the Great Pagoda, which stands at 50 metres high and was inspired by similar buildings in China.

After that, we explored another Asian-inspired area: Chokushi-Mon & Japanese Landscape. Interestingly, Chokushi-Mon (Gateway of the Imperial Messenger) is a near replica of the Gate of Nishi Hongan-ji (Western Temple of the Original Vow) in Kyoto, Japan. I've always loved Japanese gardens, and this one is super peaceful and beautiful.

Our next stop was Queen Charlotte's Cottage (I did not know I had a cottage in Kew Gardens, haha). This building was built in the 18th century and is more like a mansion than a cottage!

Kew Gardens is a huge place and it sometimes takes a lot of walking to get from one spot to another. However, the entire area is really picturesque and filled with exotic plants, so you're never without some kind of sight to take in.

When crossing the lake in the middle of the park, we were very lucky to see a cute fox hanging around in the hope of being offered some food!

We were quite hungry ourselves by this point, so decided to have lunch at the Orangery, one of the cafés on site. The building was beautiful both on the inside and outside, but the place was crowded and chaotic, and we definitely expected better from the food. We spent around £20 for two average sandwiches and two Pepsi Max (we wanted coffee, but both machines were broken!), which was a little disappointing.

After lunch, we went to take a quick look at Kew Palace. It's a bit small to be a palace really, but it's a nice old building all the same.

The next part of the gardens that we visited was our favourite. The Palm House features various tropical plants from different parts of the world and has a walkway around the top, from where you have great views of the plants inside and the gardens outside. It is very hot and humid inside and made us feel like we were back in Thailand again!

We then went to a completely different part of the world, passing by the Mediterranean Garden, which even has a little temple.

We then visited the Temperate House, which is similar to the Palm House but with plants from the temperate zones of the world (unsurprisingly!). This building is filled with beautiful plants and a little indoor waterfall.

The third greenhouse we passed through was a smaller one that was filled with plants from Western Australia.

We finished off our day by walking along the Treetop Walkway. This is pretty similar to the one in Westonbirt and is a great way to see both the trees in the park and views of the city of London in the distance.

Overall, our visit here was long overdue and we enjoyed it a lot. I really liked how the park had different sections that were reminiscent of different parts of the world, such as China, Japan, Australia, the Mediterranean, and tropical jungles, so going there was like going on a little global tour. I don't know if we'll go back there any time soon because of the price, but it's definitely a place worth seeing at least once in your life!

January 2026 Travel Adventures: Godalming, Kensington, Mayfair and More!

January in the UK is perhaps not the most exciting month to travel; short days and cold, wet weather are not most people's idea of fun. However, it's a month where tourism is lower, meaning lots of places are more peaceful than they are in warmer months or at Christmas. And the colder weather also makes it an ideal opportunity for visiting museums and other indoor attractions. 

We've had a few interesting trips out since the new year, both near our home in Reading and in London. Here are our highlights!

West London Audi and Gunnersbury Park

As you probably know if you're a regular reader of this blog, Claudio is a massive car fan! So one cold weekend, we decided to visit West London Audi, the biggest Audi dealership in Europe. It has seven floors filled with cars, plenty of which we could sit inside, and it also has panoramic views of the area - not that it's the most beautiful part of London! There's also a big Mercedes dealership next door that we visited afterwards. Overall, it was a fun, free, indoor activity, away from the capital's crowded touristic areas. 

We then went for a walk around the nearby Gunnersbury Park, a surprisingly picturesque park that we hadn't heard of before. It got dark while we were there, so the pictures didn't come out the best, but we really enjoyed exploring it, especially the Italian Gardens and the little Roman-style temple. It reminded us of visiting Villa Borghese in Rome!

Arborfield Green

My AI training work and search for a permanent job are keeping me busy, but I'm still trying to make time for the occasional trip out during the week when I can. I know that once I have a full-time role, I'm not going to have very many chances to do things like this anymore, so I want to make the most of this less-structured period in my life.

In January, I took the bus one Wednesday morning to the village of Arborfield Green, because I wanted to see these interesting horse sculptures that I'd spotted from the bus en route to California Country Park in November. They were really stunning to see up close!

Next to the horses, you can find an Australian café, Stables Coffee Co. I enjoyed a strong flat white and a very tasty pistachio cake slice there.

I also went for a walk around a little lake in this quiet, peaceful village.

The Museum of English Rural Life

One weekend, we wanted to get out and do something, but as is often the case, we didn't fancy taking a train or bus. So we decided to go to one of Reading's free museums, the Museum of English Rural Life. We really like walking in the area of the town where this museum is located; it's got lots of grand, old redbrick buildings, and the museum is no exception.

To be honest, we weren't expecting anything super interesting based on the museum's name, but we enjoyed it much more than we thought it would. I particularly liked the exhibition about Ladybird Books (it brought back memories of reading them as a child) and Claudio liked looking at the old Land Rover!

We also had a nice time exploring the old building itself and its garden.

Godalming

Naturally, over the Christmas period, we watched The Holiday, and found ourselves wondering where the Surrey village scenes were actually filmed. We looked it up, and found out that the scenes around the cottage (which unfortunately was fake!) and in the pub were filmed in Shere, and the scenes in the village high street were filmed in Godalming. To get to either of them by public transport, you need to first take the train to Guildford; then to get to Shere, you need to walk to a bus stop and take a 20-minute bus ride, or to get to Godalming, you need to switch trains and take a 10-minute train ride. We find buses round here can be quite unreliable, so we'll probably leave going to Shere until we've got a car. However, we decided it was worth an hour of train travel to get to Godalming, and to visit one of the settings of this classic Christmas movie!

As it was January, we could still experience Godalming with The Holiday's wintery vibe, but without the Christmas crowds. It's a very charming, old-fashioned town, and we enjoyed exploring both the street from the movie and its lesser known attractions, including a furniture store located inside a big old church!

Destinations Travel Show, Museum of Design and Mayfair

We were back in London at the end of the month, as I had been sent free tickets to visit the Destinations Travel Show at Olympia in Kensington. It was our first time going to this kind of event, and I was intrigued by the opportunity to get an insight into the marketing that the different travel brands there were using.

It was an interesting experience; we listened to a talk by a group of travel writers about the best and worst travel trends, watched a South African dance demonstration and an Italian cooking demonstration, and tried some food and tea at the Saudi Arabia stall.

Afterwards, we went for a wander through Kensington, taking in the grand architecture. Claudio was also happy to have a good look in the window of the Koenigsegg dealership!

We then visited one of London's many free museums, the Museum of Design. It was interesting to see the designs of various objects over the years. We also had fun participating in a pop-up exhibition by Canva, where we took our photo in a photo booth.

We finished off our day in London by taking the bus past Marble Arch to Mayfair, where Claudio wanted to go carspotting! We enjoyed walking around the elegant neighbourhood and were lucky to see Ferraris, Lamborghinis and Rolls-Royces!

I'll be writing again soon about more of our travel adventures! 🌏