How was the trip?
Thanks for asking… had a great time! We arrived home last night. Gotta say we love having a direct flight from Denver. (And better yet with many empty seats. Yesterday sat with hubby to my right at his window seatwindow, vacant seat at aisle. Then realized I could relocate to the empty row ahead of us.)
The trip was lots of fun. First 5 nights was at Premier Inn (Plus room) at County Hall…. see photo from our room below. While there we had reservations for “Witness for the Prosecution” Agatha Christie drama next door. Last 5 nights were at Strand Palace, and where we decided to do another show… “Six” (contemporary musical about the wives of Henry VIII).
Really appreciated all the insights that helped us plan! Mostly we did sightseeing in London during our 10 night stay, but we took the Uber boat to Greenwich on Day4 and did a Cotswold/Oxford bus tour on Day8.
We both did lots of pre-trip research, but the only things we prebooked were “Witness”, tour of Buckingham Palace (our first few days were in last week of the Royals being away / palace open… figured it might get crowded), and Sky Garden (free, but you need to prebook 3 weeks ahead).
The rest we planned day by day since it is off-season… sites included Big Bus Tour, Churchill museum, Victoria & Albert Museum, Westminster Abbey, Greenwich (Maritime Museum, Obervatory - great 3pm tour!), Globe theater tour, Tate Modern, Tower of London, bus excursion, (Burford, Bourton-on-the-water, Oxford walking tour), British Museum (GetYourGuide tour), stop at Grey’s Camera store (on husband’s wishlist), Herrod’s and a walk in Hyde Park (my wishlist), National Gallery. Meals were all drop-in, no reservations. It was a busy time, but we felt unpressured… with plenty of time to “meander”.
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Sounds like a great trip!
Sounds amazing, Colorado_mom! Glad you had some time to stroll around and just enjoy, too!
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It was nice going this time of year, being able to book timeslot for many things the night prior (or just walk up like we did at National Gallery, V&A, Westminster Abbey). I will say that I was really happy to have a lot of layers, including my dollar store gloves and a black thin sweater I threw in last minute. Even 60 degrees feels chilly when cloudy, damp, windy…… especially for folks like us, spoiled by Colorado sunshine. We had some rain (usually sprinkles, sometimes showers) but a lot of clear days too.
My husband did a lot of pre-research to see ticket availability trends the prior week, had a helpful spreadsheet. The Churchill War Rooms was high only our list, but we knew it didn’t fill up much (except for earliest timeslot). It was really interesting, something I had not known about until friends encouraged it. Adding a link in case others are interested.
The tour included multimedia (audio, photos) device. Loved that because it was nice and quiet, no museum chatter. There was a combo of seeing the underground bunker rooms and a big museum exhibit area. We stayed a few hours, including a break for tea and scones.
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We were in London last weekend and saw an interesting show of British women artists from 1500s to about 1920 at the Tate and went to the Dulwich Picture Gallery to see a show of three generations of Yosidas a Japanese print making family. I enjoyed their main collection more than I expected. Not so much because I like Baroque art - I don’t - but the curators did an excellent job with the labels and connecting the collection in interesting ways. It’s also an important building from an architectural perspective.
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This Monet exhibit that we passed caught our eye
But… we had already seen at least some of these paintings at a wonderful Monet exhibit at Denver Art Museum. So we decided to pass.
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Here’s more info of our non-city days in Greenwich and Cotswold/Oxford (costs per person):
- Uber boat ride to/from Greenwich (20p round trip). First we toured the National Maritime Museum (free) including a 1pm talk at a painting of two ships at icebergs (one was The Terror, basis for a streaming show whe had started watching). Then we walked upppphill to tour The Royal Observatory (20p), stood on the Prime Meridian. The optional 3pm tour (5p, 1hour) was a fascinating - we were really glad to have lucked into that. Then we did a quick zip through the Queen’s Museum (free) before it closed. Dinner was at Trafalgar Tavern, a great, affordable place along the water a short walk from the boat dock… found it on a travel blog.
Explore Greenwich | Royal Museums Greenwich.
-Full day bus tour ($91 with senior discount), starting at Glouster Road stations. Toured Cotswolds (free time in Burford and Bourton-on-the-Water) and Oxford (1hr walking tour plus free time). We had considered taking the train ourselves from Marylebone station to Oxford and taking a local walling tour (there is a HoHo bus too, but the city seemed walkable). But we really wanted a sampling of the Cotswolds too, difficult to visit without a car.
https://www.getyourguide.com/oxford-l441/oxford-stratford-and-cotswolds-day-trip-from-london-t60796/?ranking_uuid=79d36637-f60f-48c6-af21-807074231cda&date_from=2024-09-30&date_to=2024-09-30
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You were smart to do the bus tour.
Many years ago, I insisted on a self-guided tour (taking the train from London) of Oxford. I’d been there many times before- decades ago, so figured it would be a no-brainer.
It had snowed the night before (a very rare event) and the entire town of Oxford owned one “gritter” (aka sanding machine) which was very laboriously gritting the streets when my group got off the train.
Needless to say, the “tour” involved lots of coffee near the train station. The town owned a gritter; many shop owners were trying to shovel snow with brooms and kitchen implements; the sidewalks were impassable.
Paid tours for me after that! Let someone else make the decision to re-route the itinerary!!!
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More adventurous travelers than us dislike bus tours, but in general we like them (and much easier on the marriage than driving/navitating a rental car).
In this case, a traffic accident backlog caused the bus to be almost an hour late. But kudos to the tour company for phoning some in the group and also getting word to us through another tour company at same pickup point. One nice thing was that our friendly waiting group was mostly Americans… some I’m sure with differing political view - but in that moment we were in solidarity (fuming about the situation, not politics).
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I don’t mind a small very specific tour - food tours are usually fun, the free walking tours of San Francisco are great, and we did a tour with 6 other people in Spain to Girona and the Dali Museum where visiting two places on our own without a car wasn’t going to be easy, but the big tours? I hate them!
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Here’s my son’s Oxford snow story - he’s an avid skier and raced with the the second team on the Varsity Trip. He had all of his ski gear there with him. After coming out of the college bar one evening and seeing some snow on the ground, he and his friends decided to grab his ski stuff and muck around at the University Parks. They found a rope somewhere and started pulling each other around. Some locals spotted them and offered to help, so they drove their car into the park to enhance the “rope tow” experience. Finally the Old Bill showed up and suggested to everyone that they head home.
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