Day 5 - Stop, Relax, Regroup: A Day in Chiswick
Not all days are built equal. Some are for walking 15,000 steps, exploring the sights, and covering a lot of distance. Others are for putting your feet up, catching up on life admin, and having a few too many wines.
10/11/2023
Friday morning started with a longer day of work. The morning routine is becoming second nature now for both of us. Even though we are holidaying, I think it’s important to establish some type of normality in our lives.
After finishing work for the morning, we headed into Chiswick with Grandad to pick up some groceries and essentials. I think he likes to have company on his trips and enjoys showing us where to get the best deals on every little thing haha. Apparently it’s best to catch about 3 buses to get to a tiny market in Hounslow or Shepherd’s Bush to buy the cheapest potatoes!
Once we returned home, Chels & I had a quick lunch of dal & roti (can’t get enough of the stuff!), and prepared to head back into town for an afternoon of exploring more of Chiswick and surrounds.
We took the 237 Bus Route to the Thorney Hedge Road stop, which is at the start of the Chiswick main street. We then walked the entire length of the street (plus down side streets) to explore everything we could – roughly 2.5km one way – we did both sides of the road up & back.
On our travels, we passed through some great little shops, like the AA London Gallery – a local art gallery that specialises in the promotion of contemporary fine art from a select group of Aboriginal and British Artists. Also Foster Books – a quaint little shop that stocks hard to find, out of print, used, and rare books. It is located in a bow-windowed building, the oldest shop on Chiswick High Road, and has been trading there for over 50 years.
PS. We came back later so I could get a cool night photo of the little book shop.
After browsing a few of the shops along the street, we came upon one of Chelsea’s new favourite shops – The Good Wine Shop. A shop that prides itself on conveying passion for small family wine producers you won’t find elsewhere – many of these families farm organically and vinify with additives. We got speaking with Ben (who we consider our first friend in England – who may also just consider us as “customers”) about all the different areas of the world they source wine from, and also got as far to have him recommend places for us to visit, handing us a card and saying to send him an email with where we are going and he can recommend wineries and other attractions to visit in those areas. Lovely bloke!
After a nice long chat, Chels and I sat down to enjoy a couple of glasses of a white and red wine Ben had recommended (see menu photo for reference), as well as some crisps (chips for those of you back in Aus). This is where you caught me writing yesterday’s blog. On our way out we also met another lovely worker who was interested in our blog and may actually become our first subscriber that isn’t related to one of us!
After a few good wines, we strolled back along the street, searching for some dinner. In our search for somewhere to eat, we noted most places seemed empty and not what we were looking for. We shortly realised it was only 4pm and maybe we should do something else before trying to find somewhere to have dinner.
This obviously lead us on a bit of a pub crawl, stopping in at the Crown & Anchor pub for a pint of local ale (a bit quiet for a Friday afternoon). The local bartender is actually heading to Perth in February and asked us for tips on things to do... We told him to skip Perth and head to the Gold Coast or Melbourne haha.
After finishing off a pint, we then headed across to Packhorse & Talbot, which had a lot more people in there enjoying an after-work beer(s).
I went up to the bar to grab a drink and returned to find Chelsea making friends with a woman named Vanya (and her partner Kevin who was a bit taken aback by his partner ignoring him to speak to some Australian girl). Vanya and Kevin live locally and gave us a few recommendations on places to visit while around Chiswick and the surrounding areas.
Chels and I decided we’d probably had enough wine & beer to last us the night, so we left the pub in search of some food. We stumbled across the Hare & Tortoise, a ramen and sushi restaurant – perfect! Chels got the Ramen (of course), and I had a Tori Katsu Curry (yum!).
After that scoffing down, we strolled down the street towards home. We got side-tracked and ended up in a local thrift shop, with Chels finding a large coat & scarf that she had to have (20 pounds), and I also managed to grab a ski-like jacket – perfect for Switzerland (also 20 pounds).
We don’t have any plans for tomorrow apart from avoiding Central London due to it being even busier than usual on a weekend, so you’ll have to read tomorrow’s blog to catch up on that!
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Cheers,
Matt & Chels
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