LONDON 2026-01-25
A travelog, part 2.
Exploring Hackney
My first full day in London! It started with a top boy* breakfast, at Number One Cafe Hackney.
* Top boy (UK, slang): A leader, kingpin, or boss in the drug trade or gang hierarchy. [Source]
Me with my full English and napkin bib.
I swapped out sausages for black pudding because bacon plus sausages was just too much meat. And I love black pudding.
Then we strolled through Victoria Park. It was my first time there.
Egyptian geese! They are invasive, apparently.
We walked through the neighborhoods of Hackney and Bethnal Green.
Vibrant street art for a free Palestine.
K pointing out that this postbox is from King George's time. (The initials say "GVR.")
We stopped by Hackney City Farm to admire the animals.
Goats! They were very vocal.
Love the colors on this little shed.
Museum of the Home
The Museum of the Home focuses on domestic life in almshouses: Houses founded by charity offering accommodations for those in need. The permanent exhibit featured recreations of rooms from various households living in London, spanning the 20th century.
A townhouse in 1878.
I love this bathroom from 1956. The tiles!
Look at the cat doilies! Those would go perfectly in my cat-themed living room.
My favorite was the home of a Vietnamese family from 2024, complete with a karaoke machine in their living room and calc on the kitchen sink. The attention to detail was really something!
This could be my grandma's kitchen, except she was a bit neater.
The karaoke machine was free to use, but the machine was low on power and didn't work for us at that time. :(
We stopped by the gift shop and I bought a milk bottle from 1987! It was £15, which is kind of pricey, but the museum was FREE (all of the museums were free!) and all purchases support the museum. So it was worth it.
The milk bottle in my kitchen. I don't know what to put in it yet. Maybe a fake flower.
We didn't realize there was a whole 'nother side to the museum, which showcases more parlour rooms from centuries beyond! There's also way more historical stuff, but by that point I had mentally checked out†. So K, Usagi, and I just walked around chatting and taking selfies. There was also an old TV where you could play Mario Kart on SNES, so K and Usagi had a little race.
† My mental capacity for museums is 1 hour (focused) + 1 hour (unfocused). So 2 hours max. After that I'll just visit the gift shop or wait in the café.
This would also be perfect in my living room.
A home-cooked dinner
After the museum, we headed back to J's where she cooked us up a healthy meal.
A nice balance to all the milk cake I'd been consuming on this trip.
We stayed up chatting until bed time again. This time, I knocked out and slept well.