This irresistibly cheerful Chilean café offers homemade pastries, empanadas and fresh breads, served with perfectly seasoned avocado, chopped tomatoes and other small daily pleasures. The coffee is excellent, the tunes are Chilean – as in fact is everything else. It appears to the be the centre of local Chilean community as customers beetle in and out with their paper-wrapped oven-warm pastries and breads. Of course, Pisco is much in sight and on offer – you just have to drink your Sour before the 4pm closing time. 

Head out of the back of Paddington Station and you’ll emerge into the network on canals that leads to the charming neighbourhood of Little Venice, just to the north. Right opposite the steps find Darcie and May Green, two converted double decker barges brightly decorated by artist Peter Blake. Darcie is home to the kitchen offering a menu of classic Aussie-style brunch and diner classics through the day, May is the cute bar with full selection of classic and funked up cocktails. Both have an extensive list of Australasian wines by the glass or bottle. A table on the open top deck in the summer is a rare treat to watch the ducks and commuters pass by. As you’d expect from an Aussie outpost, the coffee is excellent, the wines big and the welcome warm. 

The great network of mews – the cobbled old London streets that thread their way between the grand streets of central London, housing the horses and carriages of the ‘ton’ have long since been converted to characterful, often brightly coloured residences. The last two active mews stables in the city can both be found on Bathurst Mews. You can rent a pony and be taken out for a ride around the park, or wander down the very pretty arched Hyde Park Gardens Mews through which the horses clop back and forth on their way to the park throughout the day.