Royally Obsessed (London)

Hi your royal highnesses, and welcome to my 3 months of travel posts! This summer, after 2 years of long distance, my boyfriend and I decided to quit our jobs and travel Europe…. Our first stop, London!

I’ll get into the planning aspect of our trip in a later post, but for now please enjoy all things England below.

Where we stayed:

We were so fortunate to have family friends who have a house in Northamptonshire, which is ~1.5 hours North of London. Staying in the countryside was like living out the life in “The Holiday,” which just so happens to be one of my favorite movies (:

What We Did:

Since we were staying outside of the city, we decided to rent a car. Yep, they drive on not only the wrong side of the road, but also the wrong side of the car. HA! Good thing I wasn’t the driver. Renting was very simple, we went through Budget and for a 6 days it cost us ~600 Euro’s split between the two of us (~300 each). Having the car was very helpful, as the village we were staying in did not have a grocery store or restaurants, so we had to drive 15 minutes to eat.

The first two day we spent relaxing and getting adjusted to the time difference. If you, or in my case my boyfriend, are interested in F1 car racing, we visited Silverstone and I would recommend if you are in the area and looking for something low key to do. There is a big museum and if you’re lucky they might have some race cars doing test laps on the track.

We visited the Cotswalds region one day, and more specifically we went to Stow-on-the-Wold. This town was one of the larger towns in the Cotswalds region. We spent the day walking around the shops and hopping into cafe’s for coffee and quick bits to eat. I wish we had spent more of the day walking through the neighborhoods and walking paths. However, we stumbled upon a very unique Indian inspired house and garden and ended up doing a walking tour of the grounds: called Sezincote House.

2 days in London:

We spent 2 days in London. Taking the train from where we were staying was very simple. The first day we walked around all the historic sights, ate lunch in Covent Garden, walked around Piccadilly Circus and Trafulgar Square, and ended with a a show in the Theatre Distrcit — we saw Agatha Christie’s The Mousetrap! Which is actually my 3rd time seeing the show in London and it is still great every time.

The second day we spent at Tower of London. Here we did a guided tour with the Yeoman Warders (Beefeaters), which happen every 30 minutes, and had access to visit the Crown Jewels, the Armoury, the Medieval Palace, Bloody Tower, Tourture Tower, and ended with a great view of the Tower Bridge! On our way back to the train station we stopped at the Liberty London store… which is a dream! As well as Selfridges. both stores were already setting up for Christmas and I snagged 2 ornaments (:

London Underground Tip: it is cheaper to use your phone or card to pay while moving through the entrance gates than it is to buy a ticket at the machine.

There is so much of England to explore, I would recommend looking on Pinterest to find blog posts on how to navigate and what to do.

See you in Germany, xo

Anne