So we are taking a break today from a go go go always on the move group bus tour and taking a more relaxed pace today since there is a few things that we scheduled and have planned within London that we are going to see. Let’s see how today’s slower paced chill day will turn out, will it actually be chill for once? We’ll see.

Interesting looking people on the tube today, it’s a Sunday after all and the traffic is very noticeable less than previous days.

We arrive at Waterloo station again before our line transfer and decide to get something for early breakfast, it may be needed for an energy boost in the morning. Station is less crowded today for sure, and this is at like 9:30am I think, yep Sunday is less people.

My sister and British you tubers have talked and praised something called the ‘meal deal’ a kind of unspoken combo between convenience stores and grocery stores here that usually includes your choice of a grab and go main, snack and drink together for a huge discount which roughly equates to 50% off had all the items were purchased separately. The main is usually a pre-made cold sandwitch but sometimes could be something else, even hot meals.

Our choice of meal deal from WH Smith a kind of quick convenience store similar to M&S Foods. Honestly, the sandwiches were pretty good and drinks but most surprisingly was the ‘snacks’ in this case they are basically ready to eat cold chicken nuggets of varying styles. Wow, shit’s pretty good and of very good value. I am impressed. Would get again.

Meal deal, your alright. I think we will get another ‘meal deal’ combo from another store for our last group bus tour tomorrow in the morning, it’s value is just too good.

Waterloo station and line is one of the newer modern stations and it feels that way too. It’s steps and gates are full clear gates which is nice.

After taking another line, I can’t remember but we end up near London Bridge station. Great views from the other side of the Tower bride and other skyline of the city/river views, noice.

After a short walk from the boardwalk we arrive at our first location for today, HMS Belfast. Yes, the WWII light cruiser of Azurlane fame which appears as a white haired anime girl maid. After the cold war and having decades of service it was moored here on the Thames river and turned into a museum ship, which is the fate of alot of these old warships end up getting, which is honestly a lot better than being scrapped for metals and whatnot.

On the deck of the HMS Belfast you can tell they spent alot of effort in trying to give history and context about the ship and the people who worked there, often times via cardboard cutouts like this or other physical props.

Gotta ring that ship bell yo. Most of the merch from this ship’s gift shop has the emblem/ensigns on the life tube on the right, it looks nice.

Proof of on boat existence, guns and shard in the back deck edition.

I guess the ‘NPC wave’ pose has rubbed off on my sister as well. I know these guns, they are a pretty good gun in Azurlane, not bad, good to see that they are real and pretty accurate.

Near the front of the Belfast deck, for once some other person was there who is able to take a decent picture of us, FINALLY. I commend you white women, you can take good photos, just like us.

Once you go down the ship there is alot of levels to explore, like around 9 floors or at least spaces you can visit showing how the crew worked, lived and ate. Above is some nice display with fake potatoes on display to show how it would look back in the day, they also included interactive kisoks with video to explain and flesh out the history of the space/what you are seeing, cool.

Some spaces are hard to get to with multiple stairs and such, one of them being a jail/prison solidarity containment area. If you manage to get to this space you are rewarded with such ace artifacts you can use to place for photos, they know man, they know.

Proof of being locked up, shame edition on a boat.

Other areas have displays of ammunition and other weapons and equipment, noice. These shells are also equips in Azurlane too, noice.

Oh shit, these guys know exactly what they are doing. They have an official collab room for world of warships game, damn that’s pretty cool lol.

You can jump in and play a real free match online via this terminal on a pc and mouse/keyboard. I wasn’t sure it was real but the other boats in the game where shooting for real, they were real people online, jokes. They also had stations with play station controllers and xbox controllers wow.

On even lower decks they have an interactive simulation of how to drive the boat as if it was on d-day like a game, pretty cool.

They definitely spent a lot of time and effort in developing these new modern spaces on the HMS Belfast, it’s honestly probably one of the best WWII boat museums that I have visited, and I have gone to like 4-5 I think by now. Very large and expansive with tons of history and real life props to illustrate how things were, even collab with games and World of Warships. On this day they also had a kids day activity where staff would put plush cats and mice in the rooms/display and you could do a stamp rally/photo rally to get a free sticker as a kid, really well thought out and would recommend. Good shit.

For our next destination or rather, special lunch we needed to cross London bridge. Despite the famous song, it’s kind of mid. Pretty baller logo tho for the bridge.

Pretty mid London bridge, it’s far more modern and less impressive and fancy than both the millennium bridge and no charm like the Tower bridge. I think it was probably rebuilt recently so maybe this bridge has existed for a long me, but the original is long gone.

On the way to the place and we see this large monument to I think the great fires of London. I don’t know much about that event in history but I guess there was a big fire that destroyed a lot of the city. Good thing that’s over with now.

And here we are after a not so bad walk, Blacklock, City location. Blacklock is a popular steak chain, similar to Flat Iron but I think a bit more higher end, but still not quite fine dining. I had to reserve online for our table but I think you could probably just walk in.

The decor of this place is very chill and casual but kind of fancy at the same time, it’s kinda similar to Fallow in what they are going for, or rather, what Fallow aimed to recreate for it’s own restaurant but a more pub style grunge twist.

Yea you could get a table here without reservations, noice. Notice the varying people of all sorts in this place, no barriers or dress/age code here, very accessible.

Of course, today being Sunday, many places like this have a Sunday only menu for the British tradition of having a ‘Sunday Roast’, eating roast meats and roast veggies with yorkshire pudding for a meal on this day. I am not sure the origins of this tradition but Blacklock apparently has one of the best reviewed and popular Sunday roasts among similar steak houses. The pictured above is what we got, the ‘all in’ sunday roast meant to share with at least two people, meant for 2 people people stacked all in one large place, I think $27 pounds per person. Wow. In the pile we had roast beef, roast lamb, roast pork, cracklings, roast veggies such as cabbage, carrots, potatoes, parsnips and two large yorkshires, the fluffy crispy bread things. They also give you unlimited gravy in a cup which is not shown in this picture, which is also nice.

We finished our fancy late lunch with an apple rhubarb crumble with ice cream and custard pour sauce on the side. Pretty good shit, only $8 pounds shared between us. Overall I would say that our Blacklock Sunday roast experience very good, all the meats were excellent and tender with very good flavor, the veggies were the star however, super caramelized and full of flavor, would again. I also appreciate the unlimited gravy. The total bill including built in service charge was just under $70 pounds, which is pretty good I would say, comparable to yesterday’s Flat iron dinner, good shit.

After Blacklock we did a brief visit of leandenhall market, which unfortunately was mainly closed since most stores were closed for Sunday with the exception of a few restaurants and so.

Leandenhall market was used as inspiration for some of the places in Harry Potter films, most notably Dialon Alley I think. Cool, even if just passing by for photos.

Our next chill destination of today is the Golden Hinde, an old ship also moored/stationed in dry dock which has become something of a landmark being there unchanged.

Admission to the golden hinde is cheap because it’s a very small boat. When I was doing research, I pre-paid my HMS Belfast tickets months in advance, they recommend you do that. When I looked for the golden hinde, they never even offered that option, they just said pay when you get there. I understand why know, it’s only $6 pounds.

On board of the ship we quickly realize that this boat kind of sucks lol. It’s super small, old and from the minor history they put on within the ship, we find out that it is not the original golden hinde from like 500 years ago used by famous explorer Francis Drake, that has long since decayed to nothing and this is a reproduction of the original made in the 1973. Hmm.

While a reproduction made in the 70’s, it still sailed the seas for decades, moving around and I guess docking on various place for people to come and check out for fun. In the 2000’s it was basically kind of retired and set here in london, waiting for further repairs and such, repairs which may or may not ever come, since it is based on entry to this boat and minor merch sales.

There is like only 4-5 other people inside the boat right now, might as well sit down in peace and ponder if this was really worth the price.

It’s very narrow and the ceilings are very small on the two other floors that you can go into, you can’t stand up, you have to crouch, not really a good experience unless you are a kid or a midget. All in all, I do not recommend going to the golden hinde at all, it’s just kind of shit just for vibes, you don’t get anything out for boarding it and I think it would be better left just looking at it from afar, like how most people got used to is.

Being on a boat again, made me thirsty for a drink. Tried out some old tyme capri sun in a pouch. I remember this from back in the day when I was a kid when I visited Florida or so. Trying it today? It’s shit, some of the worst fake orange juice that I have had in a long time. You are basically just paying for the packaging and form.

Our last and final event of the day is a performance at the Shakespeare Global theater, as arranged/planned for by my sister by request. One of the famous places that baiters go to see real life Shakespeare plays in their natural real environment.

We had alot of time to kill before the play, like over an hour. We thought about sitting inside for this cafe inside the place but opted not to because the drinks are too expensive. We went to the starbucks across the street tho and was there for almost an hour or so. Sure.

The gift shop has some interesting items, some Shakespeare adapted plays made into manga style format lol. Wow, I guess anime/manage really is mainstream here. Jokes.

When the time came for us to go inside, we had the option to rent seat cushions because normally you sit on hard wood benches. We got the rented cushions, cost like $2 pounds or so. The actual seats we got that we brought months ago was $80 pounds, for sitting seats. Most of the seats are general admission, where you have to stand which is cheapest like only $7 pounds, but you know, you have to stand for hours to watch the show.

Proof of seating existence, go into npc mode, my butt hurts already, even with the cushions. The play we are going to see is called ‘the merry wives of windsor’ which honestly is widely regarded as a ‘mid’ play by shakespear comedy. Never heard of it really so let’s see how it goes.

This is what the theater looks like inside when we are close to the play starting. Look at all those standing peasants, cheap but man, I don’t have the endurance to stand for like 3 hours for a play here. We were not allowed to take photos but they often record this play and upload it to youtube, maybe this recording might appear one day, who knows.

After the show, everyone exited and or returned our cushions. As for the play itself and it’s story, yea, it’s pretty mid, pretty dumb comedy and kind of confusing and poorly constructed. It is entirely supported by it’s actors which were all outstanding performers which single highhandedly carried the entire show. Nice, but this play is so mid, at least it’s not super bait shit like romeo and juliet.

We began heading back to the tube to go back to our hotel and grab something to eat. By the time the play ended, most food and restaurant places were closed and or closing soon, so we had to try and find something still open. We needed to cross the millennium bridge to get there and it has a nice view too, man so many different kinds of bridges and such over the Thames, too many in my opinion.

It delivers excellent views of the city skyline however. Nice after the falling setting sun. Good shit.

When it nears it’s end you see a nice view of St.Paul cathedral, another popular famous iconic landmark. Nice shit.

Pretty gangster statue of men loading some shells, wow, on the way to st Pauls.

We ended up going to this station quite a lot in our travels but exiting it during this time is interesting as it’s still quite busy, hmm.

As most food places are closed only a few remain in our area, such as this fish and chips shop. Ben’s Traditional fish and chips. Oh boy, time to have our second try at fish and chips. We have walked by this place a few times on our way back from the subway and it was always busy and bumping with the patio, so why not.

A decent selection of fish types and reasonable prices with all the typical chip shop offerings like curry sauce but other more weird stuff like fried halloumi cheese.

The owners or at least operators of this place at this time were brown so let’s see if brown people can make good fish and chips. We technically could have sat in, but being tired after a long day, we just did takeaway and wanted to eat it in our hotel. New experience unlocked.

Our meals to end a long day, more chill and less walking but none the less still tiring even so after the HMS belfast and the many ladders and such. We got once again cod and haddock, with curry sauce. They include tartar sauce and you can add your own salt and vinegar at the shop before taking it home. Overall, this fish and chips is way better than the first one we had, it was much more crispier and flaky than the first place and the chips were better too, less dry and had good soft fluffy insides. Both fishes were the same but I think the cod was better for this place, very good. It’s considerably better than the first place, I mean, now I feel like I had real authentic fish and chips, good shit. The curry sauce still tasted like Japanese curry but that’s not a bad thing, it’s great on chips. Sorry Koreans, I guess the browns can make better fish and chips than you guys in London. Good shit.

With that said, we end our day eating fish and chips in our hotel, ghetto but still a nice experience. Tomorrow is another bus tour day so let’s see how that goes. We are nearing the end of our trip in London so hopefully nothing goes wrong, everything has been great and smooth sailing thus far, let’s keep it that way. Don’t want to be a Stuart or Robin Cohen you know.