THE URBAN HONEYMOON IN LONDON'S ART NEST: CITIZENM LONDON SHOREDITCH
When you think of London, does the word honeymoon come to mind? I guess most people wouldn't think of putting those two words together but instead prefer a tropical getaway with cocktails in hand and lazing by the beach all day - but we wanted something a little different.
After getting married in Greece, followed by a week of relaxing sailing through Croatia, we decided to change it up a bit and end our honeymoon in a big and very much loved city - London. Our previous visit to the city lead us to the busy, touristy spots so when choosing which area to stay in this time around we found an overwhelming amount of suggestions to check out Shoreditch. BTW, thanks for all the recommendations!
CitizenM teamed up with us for our stay and before we even talk about the hotel let's start with one of the most unique check ins we have ever had, one that has ruined check-ins for us completely. They have a self-service check in (the first time we have ever come across anything like it), yep you don't need to speak to anyone, hand over your credit card or wait whilst they make a few calls to see if your room is ready.
This is an introverts dream, the process was so smooth, we had a choice of 3 rooms - we even got to pick our room view and floor! After generating our own room key, we grabbed the lift up to the 6th floor to unpack and get ready to head out to explore the area. The rooms in the hotel are designed to be small but efficient, and everything from the luggage storage under the bed to the iPad control system was exactly that.
After settling in we went out to explore the area. We quickly found Shoreditch to be quite the trendy district of East London. It's home to a bunch of chic bars and restaurants, the cutting edge Brick Lane Market, and miles of colorful street art. We loved rugging up in winter gear (yes we know we were here in summer and after a year of no winter it was a warm welcome) as we walked down streets, visiting coffee shops and finding street art along the way.
If there are any coffee addicts, our favourite spot was Attendant, go check it out.
^^ best quote ever "I'm not angry. I just need coffee"
We spent our night in Shoreditch with two fellow Aussie friends of ours, who we actually had never met before (internet friends finally meeting - woohoo!) Miranda & Mark are an inspirational couple who are also crazy travel lovers and run an incredible travel blog called The Common Wander - you guys should definitely go check them out and their beautiful Instagram.
They moved from Melbourne to London over 6 months ago and we told them that we wanted to spend our first night in London having a pub meal, and that's exactly what we did. Mark took us to one of his favourite local spots The Water Poet and we chowed down on some pub grub and chatted so much we don't even have a photo of our amazingly large meals or cool pub shots. Sorry! It was a great feed though so we recommend you guys check it out if you're ever in Shoreditch.
Flying The Nest was welcomed as a guest of citizenM, however as always, our opinions are our own.
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