Londontown

London is a literal dream.

Maybe it’s the architecture, maybe it’s the accent or maybe it’s the royal family (ok, it’s a lot the royal family) that sets London apart from all other cities.

We took a redeye out of Boston to Gatwick and I honestly feel that when we travel back to London (will explain why we’ll be going back in another post 😉), we’ll fly to Gatwick and not Heathrow. Gatwick is a 30 minute and £19 (total for two people) train ride to London proper. Our friends who joined us on this trip flew to Heathrow and took an almost hour cab ride that cost them £100.

Anyway, the entire reason why we went to London was because we got tickets to the Yankees/Red Sox game at London Stadium- the first time ever that the MLB has gone to Europe. I’ve been a Yankees fan my entire life, Dan a Red Sox fan and our friends (Amy and Kyle), and my dad all Yankees fans. So, we decided if we got tickets, we’d all take a trip across the pond! I’ll be recapping the game in a separate post, but our first full day in London (Sunday) was spent at the game.

Whenever we travel, we take a look on Viator.com to see what kind of tours/tickets we can purchase ahead of time so that we are guaranteed access to some of the top sightseeing attractions. Viator has always been extremely reliable, communicative and offers a wide range of different activities (all day tours, half day tours, single ticket purchases, hotel pickup, etc.). If you’re headed to a big city with lots of attractions to see, I highly recommend looking on Viator.

Monday we had tickets to tour Kensington Palace, which we purchased on Viator for about $22.50 a person. Amy and I were super excited about this since we both love everything about the royal family and secretly hoped we’d run into one lol. I’m not going to lie; Kensington Palace was not what I thought it would be. Parts of it I really enjoyed, like sketches of Princess Diana’s various dresses and gowns with her handwritten notes, and the gardens were stunning, but all in all, I’m not sure that Kensington Palace is a place to see (especially if you have limited time in London). The good part was you could spend as much time as you wanted there, and there was a café that had beer, which the guys were very happy about.

Once we were done at Kensington Palace, we strolled back into the city center through the Royal Parks. The weather was unusually sunny and warm, so we took full advantage of it.

We wanted to check out the food hall at Harrods and quickly realized we got there right at the rush of lunch hour and it was a bit out of control, but filled with an energy that I loved. The food hall in Harrods is massive, decadent, and well, royal, and has options for all different food palates. We each found something for ourselves and headed to Hyde Park where we rented chairs by the lake to rest and eat our lunch. The chairs were less than £5 for an hour and that was for 5 people (very affordable. Also, thanks Dad!).

Another tour that we booked prior to our trip through Viator was the Royal Walking Tour. This tour was a half-day tour and it was fantastic. It was a bit pricier than Kensington Palace ($95.65 a person), but it included all entrance fees and a boat ride. We had early entrance into the Crown Jewels at Tower London (we saw a real Beefeater unlock the doors guarded by military members to the jewels) and then we were first in line to view the jewels. Holy moly. The crowns are wild. Diamonds so large you think they are fake and they are mixed in with emeralds and sapphires, and so many other beautiful gems. It really had me wondering why I didn’t marry into the royal family (no offensive Dan🤣).

ALSO, the views of the Tower Bridge are AMAZING from this area. Even if you don’t book this tour, you should take the time to head to 1 Tower Hill Terrace to get some good photos of the bridge.

After we had some time to tour around the Crown Jewels, we then hopped on a boat and took a nice boat ride down the infamous Thames River to get us closer to Buckingham Palace to watch the Changing of the Guard. Unfortunately, Buckingham Palace was not open to visitors when we went, but we were excited to see the Changing of the Guard and to take some nice photos of the Palace.

One thing I’d like to note about this tour is that we did not have much time to walk around London Tower (where the Crown Jewels are housed) because we needed to catch the boat to make sure we got to the Changing of the Guard on time. I understand there is no way around this, but in case you want to spend more than 30-45 minutes at London Tower, I would book a different tour.  

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We were all really hungry after this tour and learned from our tour guide that the Borough Market was a great outdoor market with a bunch of different food vendors, so we made our way to that area. When we travel, we love checking out the city’s food market. You can learn so much about the culture just by observing what takes place at the market. We were all in the mood for different things, so we split up and moseyed our way through the market to find food. I got pesto gnocchi from La Tua Pasta that did not disappoint. Amy picked up some fresh fruit and that was delicious, as well!

Wednesday was our last day in London and we had tickets for the London Eye. We purchased tickets ahead of time from the official London Eye website. Tickets were about $34 a person. I had done the London Eye years ago when I visited London while studying abroad, but I definitely did not remember just how high it actually was. It moves pretty slowly, it takes 30 minutes to go all the way around, but I definitely got a little bit of vertigo. Luckily, they have seating in the pod and I hung out there while everyone else took pictures LOL. The views really are worth it though! You can see Big Ben (unfortunately it was under construction while we were there), Parliament buildings, Buckingham Palace, etc.

Fair warning, the London Eye is located in an extremely touristy part of town. We noticed prices were higher for just about everything, like bottled water and having to pay to use the public restroom-although this is a common practice in Europe, this was the only area we experienced it in London.

After the London Eye, we again took to the streets and made our way to Covent Garden, another outdoor market. It was here that Amy and I left Dan and Kyle to their own devices while we enjoyed tea at Whittard’s Tea. Amy and I both really wanted to experience high tea while in London, but neither of us wanted to pay a lot of money for it. This was the perfect compromise. You can choose the level of high tea you’d like! We chose the Piccadilly Tea, which included sandwiches, scones and tea, and only cost £15 a person! You could also add a glass of Prosecco for £6.50, but we decided to stick with the tea and treats only. It was the perfect atmosphere for girl time- had quite the British feel, good food and tea, and not pretentious at all. The guys ended up crashing our little tea party at the end (including taking bites out of our sandwiches) and the ladies working at the tea bar laughed and kindly said they would refund us for half of our sandwiches 🤣. They were joking, but I’m glad they didn’t seem to mind as long as Amy and I didn’t mind.

Getting Around London and Where We Stayed

London is an extremely large city and we found it super helpful to purchase an Oyster Card which gives you access to the tube a.k.a. Underground. You can add as much money on the card as you’d like and you can add bus and tram access to your Oyster card if needed, but we did not have a need to add this. The tube will get you where you need to go (including Heathrow which we learned and used when we headed to Dublin). The best part about the Oyster Card? You can turn it in for a refund for any remaining money you have on the card on your last day. 🙌🏻 You do need to have a minimum amount of money on the card (I believe it was £5 or £10) to get the refund. It’s important to add that each person in your group needs their own Oyster Card, you cannot share a card between two people.

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We stayed at the Ambassadors Bloomsbury Hotel in the Euston neighborhood. While the hotel room was tiny (I know this is v. European) but the tiny room did us no good when the entire bathroom flooded every time we took a shower because of the way the bathroom was designed 🙄. I’m not sure I’d stay at this exact hotel again, but we all loved the area!

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Well, this is London in a nutshell (from our experience of course). We didn’t want every single day to be packed with activities, as we find some of our best moments come from discovering a part of town on a walk, or learning about a certain neighborhood from a local. We definitely could have toured Westminster Abbey, Windsor Castle or taken a day trip to Stonehenge, but we were satisfied with everything that we saw and didn’t feel like we missed out on anything.

As always, thanks for reading! More to come on where we ate in London and the London Series!

Cheers.

-Steph, xx