So what do Meghan & Harry do all day?
They were a huge hit in Brixton, but it was only their second official engagement in 2 months...
THEY charmed the crowds in Brixton this week with their second official public engagement. But when not on royal duties, how do Prince Harry and Meghan Markle spend their days?
With four months to go until the wedding, we reveal the couple’s daytime routine, from exercise regimes to cosy date nights and their favourite Italian restaurant . . .
EATING OUT IN TRENDY SOHO
MEgHan is an avid foodie and likes to dine at Bocca di Lupo, a chic Italian restaurant in Soho, London, whose celebrity clientele includes actors James Mcavoy and Ralph Fiennes.
For ‘flexitarian’ Meghan (she sometimes follows a vegetarian diet), there are plenty of mouth-watering dishes: from truffled radish, celeriac and pomegranate salad (£14) to sea bream carpaccio (£18).
She and Harry regularly return to Dean Street Townhouse, a georgian-style venue owned by the Soho House group (of which the pair are VIP members), where they had their first date. In the Twenties, Fred astaire, noel Coward and Dylan Thomas were guests; today, cocktails — among them a ‘Soho negroni’, made from gin, martini and bitters — cost £11 apiece.
a few doors down is Soho House, where low-lit dining rooms, a private cinema and fireside snug offer a perfect retreat for the couple.
They’ve also been seen at Little House, another private club in Mayfair, where Meghan brunches on £11 avocado and poached eggs, washed down with a £7.50 ‘glow’ juice, containing ginger, lime and guava. ‘They share plates,’ says a member approvingly. ‘The lighting’s low and they don’t get bothered.’
YOGA AND JOGGING
BoTH Meghan and Harry are fit and athletic, and like to start the day with exercise. While Harry heads off to the KX Health Club in Chelsea — a gym that costs £575 a month and whose members include actors Eddie Redmayne and Hugh grant — Meghan prefers running six-mile circuits around Kensington gardens twice or three times a week.
Recently, she has confined her outings to Kensington Palace green, where she is protected from sightseers by a newly planted screen of hedgerow.
She’s not thought to have a personal trainer and instead devotes her time to yoga, which she’s been practising for several years (her mother, Doria, worked as a yoga teacher).
She’s also a fan of workout DVDs, including Tracy anderson’s — a favourite of gwyneth Paltrow and Kim Kardashian — and Pilates Platinum, an american cardio and strength workout which she credits for her toned limbs and taut abs.
Meghan has promised pal Millie Mackintosh, the Made In Chelsea star and Quality Street heiress, she’ll attend one of her SBC (‘Skinny Bitch Collective’) sessions — ‘the most exclusive fitness class on the planet’.
Invitation-only, the classes are full of supermodels and a-listers, involve high-intensity ‘animalistic’ exercises and cost about £40 a session.
BEAUTY RITUALS
aS SHE prepares for life as a princess, Meghan has been taking time out to pamper herself and ensure she looks her best for every public appearance.
Royal sources say her dewy complexion is down to Sarah Chapman, who owns the Skinesis clinic in Sloane Square, London, and counts actresses naomi Watts, Uma Thurman and supermodels gigi Hadid and Jourdan Dunn among her devotees.
Sarah — whose hands are reportedly insured for £1 million — is a skincare supremo whose treatments include a £220 LED light therapy facial and 60-minute skin resurfacing therapy for £450.
There is reportedly a sixmonth waiting list for her services, but Meghan — who swears by Sarah’s £149 Stem Cell Collagen activator Duo and £44 Ultimate Cleanse — seems to have skipped the queue.
She counts on Sherrille Riley of nails & Brows boutique in Mayfair for fortnightly manicures and pedicures (from £41 each), as well as ‘The audrey’, a £48, 20-minute eyebrow shaping service, inspired by audrey Hepburn, which promises to ‘instantly lift the face’.
For more intensive treatments, Meghan visits nichola Joss in Covent garden, whose services include a £250 ‘bespoke sculpting inner facial’, a bizarre procedure that involves massaging the inside of the mouth and cheeks. She was seen at the salon before Pippa Middleton’s wedding last May.
COSY NIGHTS IN
REMoVaL vans have been spotted bringing Meghan’s possessions to nottingham Cottage, the quaint twobedroom home in the grounds of Kensington Palace, which she moved into last november.
Harry has lived here since 2013, and Meghan is believed to have transformed nott Cott from bachelor pad to elegant marital home. gone is Harry’s messy living room and the hammock strung between two trees in the garden; instead, Meghan has filled the interiors with soft cashmere throws, Diptyque candles, white wooden furniture, vases of peonies and beach prints by gray Malin, her favourite photographer.
Having spent much of the past 18 months apart, she and Harry love nights in, cooking together — sources say Harry likes fish pie and beef Wellington, while Meghan’s tastes extend to spicy fish and Caribbean jerk chicken — and relaxing over a glass of £80 Italian Tignanello red wine.
They regularly watch box sets on netflix, and sources say they’ve recently enjoyed BBC shows Feud, Spiral and McMafia. a Palace insider says: ‘They’re spending as much time as they can on their own together, with lots of casual suppers and TV.’
SUPPER WITH PALS
TWICE a week, the sociable pair can be found at friends’ houses in West London, catching up over dinner. Pals include Hugh van Cutsem and his wife Rose astor, Tom and Lara Inskip (whose Jamaican wedding they attended last year), and Mark Dyer, often dubbed Harry’s ‘mentor’, whose Texan wife amanda Kline is said to have particularly taken to Meghan (and in whose Fulham gastropub, The Sands End, the pair enjoyed secret dates).
Meghan is building her own network of glamorous, wellconnected British women. She enjoys Sunday lunches with Tanya Burr, a 28-year-old beauty blogger and YouTube star, whom she met at Wimbledon last year, and bike rides with Millie Mackintosh, also 28.
other new friends include blonde socialite and stylist olivia Buckingham, PR guru Violet von Westenholz (rumoured to have introduced Meghan to her prince) and Vanessa Xuereb — the self-titled ‘Queen of Soho’ and group membership director of Soho House — with whom Meghan has a matching friendship bracelet.
WHO’S ON THE LIST?
UnLIKE William’s wedding, which was a semi-state affair, Harry and Meghan want to have complete control of the guest list, which is one reason they chose the comparatively small St george’s Chapel, Windsor.
Below-stairs staff say Frogmore House in Windsor great Park is emerging as a possible location for the reception. Frogmore is a favourite of Prince Philip, who often holds Christmas parties there.
QUEEN OF SHOPPING
MEgHan has taken to shopping on the upmarket King’s Road in Chelsea.
Before Christmas, she was spotted nipping into smart beachwear store Heidi Klein — suggesting a pre-wedding holiday perhaps — and skincare saviour Sarah Chapman.
This month, she’s been seen in Lululemon, a Canadian sportswear shop that sells £88 leggings and £48 yoga mats, and outside royal warrant-holder and grocer Partridges, which stocks a range of U.S. foodstuffs.
Meghan shops alone or with one of her beau’s aides: Heather Wong, Harry’s new assistant private secretary, or projects manager Clara Madden. and when she’s not on the King’s Road, there are plenty of options on the couple’s doorstep.
Whole Foods, the U.S. grocer and organic food shop, is their
weekly supermarket of choice. They’ve also been seen popping into the basement food hall of nearby M&S, while Meghan replenishes the peonies around the house from Kensington Flower Corner, an independent florist with a stall on the corner of the High Street. GETTING ROUND TOWN One way to keep the paparazzi at bay is an ever-changing fleet of cars. One day it’s Harry’s sporty Audi RS6, the next a people carrier with blacked-out windows. Meghan has been seen behind the wheel of a blue VW Golf and has been driven in a Polo. And sometimes they’ll grab a taxi. A POSH BLOW-DRY MeGHAn has struck up an unlikely friendship with SpiceGirl-turned-fashion-designer Victoria Beckham, whose £500 cashmere jumper she chose for her engagement shoot last month.
The pair were reported to have met last summer and have stayed in regular contact via texts, with Victoria, 43, providing Meghan with a list of ‘exclusive salons’ to visit for hair, make-up and beauty treatments in the UK.
On previous trips, Meghan had her hair blow-dried at Charles Worthington in Covent Garden, but is now thought to have moved to Hershesons in Knightsbridge. WEEKEND RETREATS THe couple prefer quiet relaxation to wild weekends, and tend to retreat to the countryside on a Friday night, often the Cotswolds. They’ve visited Soho Farmhouse, the rural outpost of the members’ club, at least twice together, and in October 2016 Meghan enjoyed a solo trip to the swanky sanctuary, where she stayed in a £250-a-night cabin set amid 100 acres of peaceful countryside.
They regularly visit Highgrove, Walkabout: Meghan and Harry in Brixton this week. Far left, Meghan enjoys a meal out and, below, practises yoga Prince Charles’s Gloucestershire estate, where Meghan is said to have bonded well with Camilla, and Anmer Hall, where they stayed with William and Kate at Christmas. Sources say they’re also planning a weekend to Crickhowell in South Wales, where Tiggy LeggeBourke, Harry’s former nanny, has a picturesque B&B.
The weekends also serve as useful scouting sessions. Palace insiders say Meghan and Harry are searching for a home outside London, probably in the Cotswolds.
Royals, however, rarely buy their own homes. The Queen provided Anmer Hall for William and Kate, and Charles’s Duchy of Cornwall estate owns several properties he could make available to his son.
DOG LIVES IN LUXURY
DOG-LOVeR Meghan was deeply disappointed to learn that she had to leave Bogart — a Labradorshepherd mix and one of her beloved rescue dogs — behind in Canada, as he was too old to make the trip to Britain. He’s now being looked after by some of her friends.
Her beagle, Guy, however — Meghan’s second dog — was flown over in november and has settled in well at nottingham Cottage. On weekends when they’re in London, the pair can be seen taking Guy — who has his own union flag coat and only eats organic food — for walks in the Palace grounds.
When they fancy a change of scenery, there’s also Battersea Park, where they were spotted buying a £65 Christmas tree (and given free mistletoe) in December.
According to reports, Guy broke two legs last month, but is now said to be on the mend and eager for walkies to resume.
MARKET FOR A PRINCE
On HeR now-deleted Instagram account, Meghan posted photos of trips to Portobello Road in West London, where she loves the bohemian atmosphere and quirky items for sale. She’s believed to have dragged Harry to browse antiques and vintage crockery at the Saturday market a few times. Her house in Toronto had an antique French mirror and a battered suitcase reinvented as a coffee table, a shabby chic theme she is said to be replicating at nottingham Cottage. It seems antique-hunting is in Meghan’s blood: her maternal grandfather, Alvin, was an antiques dealer in LA and passed his love of collectables on to his granddaughter.
SNEAKY FILM NIGHTS
THe couple are avid theatre fans and have enjoyed several dates in London’s West end to see the Lion King Musical and The Curious Incident Of The Dog In The nightTime. All in black and wearing beanie hats, they also enjoy regular cinema dates, slipping in unnoticed to screenings around Chelsea.
WHAT ABOUT BABIES?
AIDeS insist the couple will stay at nottingham Cottage for the foreseeable future, but Palace officials have begun inquiries to identify a suitable royal apartment for when they start a family.
One possibility is moving back to St James’s Palace, where Harry and William lived with Charles after Diana’s death.
Another includes the swanky home at Kensington Palace, currently occupied by the Duke and Duchess of Gloucester, once they retire from royal duties.