Day 6 in London: Richmond! And The Grenadier.

Tuesday, March 25

*Real time update! We’re home! We got home LATE last night (Friday night… well, actually early Saturday morning by the time all was said and done).

It was a long trip: we left the apartment at 8 am London time –> tube to Heathrow –> breakfast -> 12 pm flight (7.5 hours) –> layover in Boston –> 5:30 p.m. flight (2.5 hours) to O’hare –> get car from hotel etc –> drive ~ 2 1/2 hours home (with stop off for food + drop my parents off). Pulled in our driveway at 1:06 a.m (6:06 a.m. London time, or just shy of 24 hours from when we left our apartment!) WHEW. I love to travel but I honestly do not like the actual “travel” part of it, at all. I find it exhausting! If someone can please make teleporting a real thing, that’d be great.

I am happy we have TWO full days now before back to work and school! We don’t always leave a buffer, but I’m trying to do this a bit more now when we can. It certainly helps and is a relief.*

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Okay, back to London! I did pretty good keeping up with posts but got a few days behind. I have 3 full days left to recap!

Up next, day 6…. RICHMOND!

Visiting Richmond was not exactly on my “must do” list, but we ARE big Ted Lasso fans (and recently rewatched with the boys (well, yet to finish up season 3 with them). Ivan was highly interested when I mentioned the Richmond option to him, and someone I know went and said it was a highlight of their trip (even though some people in their party hadn’t even seen Ted Lasso). He said it was just such a cute town, and a nice taste of something different from downtown London.

Also, our apartment in South Kensington was conveniently located to it. Richmond is at the end of the District line, which goes through our tube station, so it’s a super easy, straight shot there. (I ended up loving our South Kensington location!! I would definitely stay in that area again. It was a great central location right in between Heathrow and “downtown”, but only 2-3 tube stops from many major sights. The South Kensington tube stop is on the Picadilly, Circle and District lines, which could get us basically everywhere and anywhere in a snap. It was also convenient to other things we did more on the west side of London (Windsor, Richmond, Wembley Stadium). It’s not as crazy crowded as some of the main touristy areas down around Westminster, Trafalgar Square, etc. which was soooo nice, but had a totally thriving, energetic, authentic vibe, too. There were dozens of coffee shops, ethnic restaurants and 2 perfect English corner pubs in either direction- which we alternated between for a nightcap basically every night! 😉)

Anyway, I had tentatively penciled in a Richmond visit for Tuesday, knowing we would have a late night Monday at the football game. Richmond is just a 20 minute ride or so from South Kensington, and I knew we also wouldn’t need all day there or anything.

We slept in and had a slow, lazy morning Tuesday after the Monday night game and staying up frozen eating pizza til 1 am. LOL.

It ended up being almost noon by the time we headed out! Oh well. This was a full trip with so much activity, walking, touring, etc. that we were really due for a down day.

Took the tube there:

And then set out to find Ted’s stomping grounds! 😉

The plan was to have lunch at “the pub” from the show. On the way there, we found “the park”, also featured prominently in the show! Looks just the same! 🙂

Street next to the park:

Approaching the corner square shown in basically every episode! This was fun!

The phone booths and Ted’s bench!

And the shot I was waiting for… the pub!! (Actually called The Prince’s Head in real life; in the show it’s the Crown and Anchor.)

This is “Ted’s street” here below:

And Ted’s flat! (Not really… I mean, obviously they film the interior in a studio or something, but this is the exterior used.)

I was tickled to be standing there in real life. Ha. I know it’s just a TV show, but I really do love that show, and it just gives me the warm fuzzies all around.

Of course, when opportunity meets demand… a store appears. Lol. There is a new, very nice Ted Lasso store, right there on Ted’s street! ha.

Ethan bought himself a keychain, and I bought him a little pin for his soccer backpack.

Asher and I got both got highly overpriced stickers. I am planning to put it on my corkboard in my office for a little pick-me-up when needed. 🙂

Inside the store:

Cute locker room area upstairs with all the names:

I had to take a picture of Asher with these chimps outside: the name placard said their names are Asher and Issac, which struck me as hilarious, because one of Asher’s best and oldest friends is named Isaac. What are the odds!

Finally the guy loitering on this bench (lol) finally moved, so we had to take some pics on Ted’s bench:

We did end up going in to eat at The Prince’s Head (aka Ted’s pub), even though the interior of the pub is not actually the interior used in the show!

Nevertheless, they obviously lean into their claim to fame and had some Ted Lasso stuff inside:

It had gotten LATER than we wanted for lunch time, like almost 2:00!, which was problematic because we had dinner reservations at 6:45 in London. We needed some lunch though, but didn’t want huge portions that would keep us too full for dinner.

Ivan and I ended up just splitting a burger, which was the perfect amount. My parents shared a chicken Caesar salad I think and I’m pretty sure Ethan just had a side order of fries for lunch. Haha.

After lunch, we just moseyed around town a bit, and ended up down by the Thames River.

The main part of town is CUTE!! And had a bunch of awesome shops, like shoe stores, Lululemon, etc. We didn’t really want to “shop”, but looked around a little.

By the river:

Boat rides are popular here in the summer. Our day was pretty mild, but it was cloudy and not really making me feel like a boat ride.

I did stop to browse in a NICE corner bookstore! It was perfection. Wish I could have browsed longer.

I liked their bookmark section:

Then we basically headed back to the tube station and went back to South Kensington. We wanted some buffer downtime before having to leave for our dinner reservation.

We then had a couple hours to relax at the apartment; I ended up taking a short nap!

The Grenadier

Our Tuesday evening plans were a special dinner out! We had reservations at 6:45 at a historic pub called The Grenadier. My sister and brother-in-law had given us a gift card for Christmas, knowing we had this London trip coming up. It ended up being a really perfect night, so the gift was an excellent choice! (Thanks again J!!)

It wasn’t too far from our place, just a couple stops. Ethan even wore khakis.

It’s located on a little side street, honestly almost hidden and was a bit hard to find at first! (This is the side entrance.)

It is an itty bitty place, so thank goodness we had our reservations! The bar was packed and it seemed to be in high demand.

We had the nicest time. 🙂 Here we all are at our back corner table:

The pub is named for the Grenadier, shown below. Per the website, it’s named after this guy, named Cedric, who was caught cheating at cards and was punished by being beaten to death. Per legend, his ghost is now trapped here. (Okay, a bit dark, but TBH a majority of London’s history is a bit dark. 😅)

People staple money to the ceiling in an effort to “pay his debt” to set him free, but apparently so far it hasn’t worked, and his ghost remains.

We found plenty of U.S. dollars, and even some Mexican pesos! And some fellow Wisconsinites, I think? “Go Pack!”

Ivan and my dad had their cask beer, which is an old, traditional way of making beer dating back thousands of years, apparently, and gives a unique flavor. I will admit I did not know cask beer from a casket, but hey, I learned something new.

The food was DELICIOUS!!!! They are known for their beef wellington, which both my mom and Asher ordered.

I had a beef pie, also delicious.

Ivan had a chicken dish which was really good too, and Ethan and my dad had fish with a reportedly amazing risotto.

I did not need it but decided to go for dessert. I hadn’t had anything sweet really all week, and was in the mood! We split this pecan pie dessert. Yum.

We had a nice, slow dinner- I think we were there over 2 hours. We all thoroughly enjoyed this evening. 💗

We dropped the boys at the apartment, and then decided to go for another beer at the pub. I was personally STUFFED and did not want another beer (I think I had just enough room for either dessert or a second beer, and the dessert won.)

Everyone else had room for a second beer, though. 😉

Being Tuesday night, at almost 10 pm, the back half of the pub was pretty quiet, though the bar area is always active. Isn’t it so pretty? This was the same place we ate on our first night, just a few doors down from our apartment. Again, I LOVED our location!!!

I just had a cup of hot tea and we chatted until they called last call at 10:30 and turned the lights up! They close at 11 during the week.

And that was our Tuesday! Quite low key overall, with the very late start morning. Actually, most of our day just resolved around eating in two different pubs. 😅 I really did enjoy meandering around Richmond and seeing the Ted Lasso sights.

I’m not sure I would say Richmond is a “must do” for most people, and if we’d had less time, I’m sure we would have cut this. But it really is a cute, upscale area, and as a midpoint of the trip/ more relaxed day, I feel this all worked out really well! 😊