The Afternoon Pause

I'm lucky enough to get to spend a day hanging out with my best friend pretty much every week, deadlines permitting, and we seem to have fallen into a routine. We meet at Kings Cross for coffee, and then peruse Boots, Mac and Accessorize. We meet on Oxford Street and go to Franco Manca or Honest Burger, before hitting up H&M, or she comes to mine and we invariably end up driving to Ikea for meatballs and a candle restock. We live in one of the busiest cities in the world, with a thousand and one things to do on our doorstep, but we rarely do anything else.

Whenever we head Oxford Street, we tend to walk past a ton of cute independant coffee stores, and we always say 'we should go there one day', but we never do.

So this week (after pizza at Franco Manca and hitting up H&M), we did!

Under the advisement of Katy, we headed to Taylor St Baristas, hidden behind Claridges, less than a five minute walk from Bond Street Tube Station (and our favourite central London Boots store). We were pretty exhausted from the previous three hours of pounding the pavement and we were definitely experiencing an afternoon slump, so we headed through the grey door in desperate need of a caffeine and sugar fix!

Both of us agreed on arrival we needed to come back for lunch, Daphne was eyeing up the Brocolli and Stilton Soup with a sourdough roll, and I had my heart set on a giant superfood salad complete with sweet potato chunks and beetroot, mmmm.

But since we'd gorged ourselves on pizza a few hours before, we settled for a snack instead. Daphne had a slice of coffee and walnut cake to accompany her latte, whilst I went for a a Tangerine and Ginger loose leaf tea, and a flapjack. Daphne demolished both of hers pretty speedy, so I assume that means they were delicious, and mine were freaking fantastic. The tea was sweet and gingery, and the flapjack was jam packed with delicious berries and almonds too. So good.

We spent half an hour resting our feet and recharging a little, and it felt so good. Everything is so go go go right now, that just stopping and letting the world go by for a while felt so good. When you have a lot going on it sometimes seems like the right thing to do is just keep going until everything is done, but taking a little time out can really help re-energise you, and stop everything seeming so overwhelming.

I think I've got the coffee shop bug! If you've got any recommendations, hit me up!