mEMYries: June 10th - Last Day in London

**I wrote this on June 10th**

Today was pretty difficult for me. I was so lucky that I got one more night with Allison and I was absolutely not ready for her to leave but it was super hard saying goodbye all over again! She left really early in the morning (we got her a car this time, we weren't messing around with the tube again) so I went back to sleep and when I woke up and she wasn’t there I was so lonely. Looking on the bright side, it’s wonderful that I hated seeing her go, means we had an absolutely wonderful time together! We really were perfect travel buddies, both love the UK immensely, wanted to do all the same things, made each other laugh non-stop, and just had tons of fun on all of our adventures. I tried to blog and be productive when I got up from my nap but I really had to get out of the room, just too lonely in there without her! I decided to go check out a market I’ve heard about in Notting Hill which is also an area Allison and I hadn’t explored yet. It was a lovely street called Portobello Road with a lot of antique markets. I’m very happy I went during the week day because it wasn’t crowded at all and I read online how crowded it can get on the weekends. After exploring for awhile I found a nice café, had a crepe, and wrote a lot of postcards.

I then took the tube to regent’s park. It’s a lovely park, very large and inside has Queen Mary Gardens. I’m assuming the Queen Mary they are referring to is Mary of Teck, George V's wife and the Queen’s grandmother. The park has George V’s monogram all over the place. If you’re wondering a regent is a monarch in their own right i.e. Elizabeth is the Queen Regent or someone who rules in the place of a monarch because they are too young or incapacitated. There can be a Prince Regent as in the case of George IV who ruled while his father was incapacitated. He was known as HRH The Prince Regent and did not become George IV until his father had died and he was officially king. Another regent in history was Jane Seymore's brother (Edward) who ruled as Edward VI's regent when he was too young to rule himself. There is no need to use the term King Regent because a King automatically outranks a Queen. There has been one instance where the King and Queen were equal, William III & Mary II. They were joint monarchs and reigned 100% together until Mary’s death. They were first cousins and both had equal claim to the thrown AND William killed his father-in-law the king (and Mary’s dad) so they then ruled together. Ok enough of all that, I really enjoyed walking through the park and gardens and made my way to primrose hill, a suggestion from a friend I met in Spain. Primrose hill has an excellent view of the city and it was very relaxing to sit and enjoy it for awhile. By then I must have walked several miles and was ready to go back to the room. I had Indian for dinner at the first Indian place Allison and I went, blogged, packed, and went to bed!