LONDON 2026-01-24

27 Jan, 2026

A travelog, part 1.

Since my trip was so short, I figured I could get away with writing about what I did every day, excluding travel day, because yawn, boring.

I landed at Heathrow Airport around 12:15. It took me over an hour via the public transit to meet my friend near Oxford Circus. She was going to take me boot shopping, because I wrote in the group chat that I would love to replace my boots, if possible.

The first picture I took. My friend asked me to describe what I could see because I got off at a different exit.

Boots, check

We stopped by Clarks first. I didn't see what I wanted. I also didn't want to walk into 10 different shops since we were meeting friends at 14:30, so J suggested we go to Dr. Martens, which is more my style. Within 15 minutes I walked out with a spankin' new pair of boots.*

*We asked for tax refund, but stores no longer issue them because of Brexit. So the staff just gave me a detailed receipt. More on this later.

A late lunch

We then took the train to King's Cross station. I had only been inside the station but never outside. We were supposed to eat at a Malaysian place called Hawker's Kitchen, but it was closed, even though it said it'd be open. So we opted for South Indian instead, at a place called Tamila. Our friends R and Usagi joined us.

Chicken lollipops.
Rice, roti, chicken curry, and butter paneer, to share.

We each ordered what we wanted and shared. (I don't like naan or roti and prefer plain basmati rice with my curries.) I also ordered mango lassi, which is a meal in itself! I was so stuffed by the end, but we managed to finish it all without any leftovers.

Housmans Bookshop

Right across the street from Tamila's was Housmans Bookshop, where J wanted to take us. It's a great lefty bookstore. The top floor has mostly non-fiction, and the bottom floor has secondhand books, fiction, children's books, and graphic novels. I already had 3 books picked out, so I just had a quick look downstairs.

My book haul. I'll have plenty to read this year!

Love at first bite

After that, we headed back to J's (where I was staying). K was already there. We reunited and chatted, then ordered some quick bites from Chaiiwala, where I learned about milk cake.

K sent this to the group chat because they were out of pink chai milk cake.

As the text states, milk cake is:

"a rich, creamy, and indulgently nutty sponge cake served in a [flavored] milk bath and topped with crushed [corresponding topping]†."

† So if it's pistachio flavored, it's drenched in pistachio milk with crushed pistachio; biscoff flavored is with biscoff milk and crushed biscoff.

The description for the pink chai cake:

"Milk cake chaiiwala style; Kashmiri pink tea poured over a genoise sponge with buttercream."

(Apparently it was sold out a lot, because the next night K and Usagi brought back pistachio milk cake again.)

We hung out until bed time. I thought I would have time to play some games on my iPad, but nope! I was exhausted. I showered and went straight to bed, but had a difficult time falling asleep since it was my first night in a new place. (In fact, I woke myself up from biting my tongue in my sleep. 🥲)

No more tax refunds!

Back to the boots. Turns out you can only claim a tax refund if you purchase something from the UK and ship it directly to an address outside the UK! I did a quick search to see if I should just return the boots and buy them on Zalando when I'm back home. Luckily, I still saved money by purchasing them in London (6 francs, woohoo)! They were also sold out on the website anyway, and coincidentally I had bookmarked these exact boots (I totally forgot). So it all worked out in the end, and I'm really happy with them.