London United Kingdom – Vacation Trip

November 2018

London, UK has always been a city that I wanted to visit.  There’s something about the palaces and historical buildings mixed with the modern day city life that I’m really drawn to… I love learning about the rich history behind each city and seeing all the unique and beautiful architectural designs of the monuments and iconic buildings.

A view from the top as we were about to land in London:

The streets of London:

We stayed at St. James; Court, A Taj Hotel which was quite central to everything.  It was about 5 minutes to the Buckingham Palace and very close to all the “tube” stations.

Here’s a view of Green Park as we took an early morning stroll through the park on our way to the station…. not so green (as the name suggests) during the autumn but I’m sure in the summertime, there’s a lot of greenery.

On our first night in London, we did a food tour in Soho with Eating Europe.  We had an amazing time with all the food and drinks!  Food tours is a now “must-do” on every vacation that we go on.  We first tried it during our Italy trip last year and had such a great time!  We met new people, had some good laughs (after a few drinks) and got to taste some really good local food.  You also learn so much about the area in a short amount of time.

Passing by the Buckingham Palace:

Walked past the Harry Potter show… I’m not a Harry Potter fan but the building was quite spectecular.

With the time zone difference (London being 5 hours ahead of Michigan), we slept in most of the morning until noon and did most of our activities in the afternoon and evening.  On the second evening, we went to see Wicked.  It was an amazing show!   Hrmmmm.. do you see any resemblance here… I just happened to be wearing a black hat that night 🙂

On the third day of our trip, we went out to the English countryside to visit Stonehenge and Bath.

We got to Stonehenge pretty early in the morning and it was quite cold.  I was a bit disappointed when we got to Stonehenge because I had expected the rocks to be more magnificent and thought we’d be able to get closer to the stones.

The city of Bath, on the other hand, was worth visiting.  Bath small village filled with great food, shopping and site seeing.

How neat is this curved apartment building?

A very charming entrance way.

After a full day of shopping and eating, we discovered this little gem area where we just sat and did some people-watching:

A trip to London would not be complete if we didn’t visit West Minister Abbey and the London Eye.  Both were just 15 minutes away (walking distance) from our hotel:

Rather than do a whole bunch of selfies, I decided to hire a professional photographer to take some photos of us in London.  We found a photographer through Shoot My Travel and were able to get our pictures within 24 hours.  If you ever wanted your vacation documented, I definitely recommend them!

This is me dancing to the beat of my own drums… as usual 🙂

This trip was definitely a much-needed break and it was nice to just get away for a few days.  We were in London for only 4 days and then flew to Budapest, Hungary for the rest of our vacation.