Where do I begin on sharing our big adventure in England, Scotland and Ireland! It’s hard to even describe all we saw and did in those 13 days of travel (2 days of getting back and forth). It truly was a magnificent trip in so many ways and we are so blessed to have been able to do this, seeing these places in Europe for the first time. A trip like this is a whirlwind tour and you only hit the highlights, but it’s really fun to take in so many places in a short amount of time and we feel like we got a good overview of all the places we went. Sure, it’s always fun to see more, but you can only see so much in one trip unless you’re just staying in one place.
Again, we went on this tour with a group tour with Go Ahead Tours. This is our 3rd tour with them and we’ve been happy with all of them. This tour wasn’t sponsored, we paid for it all. I did try to get a group together to go on this tour (as a travel coordinator, if I had gotten 6 people signed up, my spot would have been free), but it didn’t fill up, so I gave up on that idea. We were definitely going ourselves, whether I got a group together or not. We traveled with 38 people total and many of them were traveling together, so some of them may have gotten travel coordinator perks. That’s a bit bigger group than we really like, but they fill them as much as they can.
Traveling like this does take it out of you and we had to come home and rest from all these adventures! But, it’s totally worth it. Mark and I both got a little sick while we were gone, but nothing really bad. I caught a cold in Edinburgh, but had some cold capsules with me and in a couple of days it was mostly knocked back. I never felt really awful. Mark started with a sore throat in Dublin and just rested for the day so that he could make it to the Irish dance and dinner that night. Our tour director was fighting something too, so she told me about something she uses, called Lemsip, a packet that you mix with hot water and sip. There was a little store around the corner from the hotel in Dublin, so I went and got Mark those packets and some cough drops and that really helped his not to get any worse. He was feeling pretty good the next day. Many in our group had some cold and cough symptoms, so things were going around. You can’t travel without being exposed to germs and viruses, so that’s part of it. I’m just glad it wasn’t worse for us!
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The Tour Director makes all the difference in these tours and so far, we have had really good ones. Rae was our tour director for this trip and she was excellent. She went above and beyond in making sure we were all happy and content and if things went wrong, she was on it fast. I loved her saying, that if we saw something amiss or were unhappy about a situation, we should “see it, say it, sort it”. The British way of fixing things! Rae is from Liverpool and that was one of our stops, so we got a lot of history on this area from a native. I loved her red hair, but she said it wasn’t natural, she has darker hair. It sure looked like it was to me!
I’m not going to try to share the history of all we saw, but I’ll give an overview of the things I can identify. Many of you have traveled a lot and you probably know way more than I do about the history and background of many of these places. I ask Mark a lot of questions when we travel, because he is a big history buff and has a lot more knowledge than I do. Apparently, I didn’t pay enough attention in History class!
After a long night’s travel, we arrived in London bright and early the next morning, before 8 a.m. We couldn’t check in our hotel, but after our driver picked us up and took us to the hotel, we dropped our bags and decided to head out for a walk. We did the pre-excursion, meaning the official tour didn’t start until Sunday and we arrived on Friday for a couple of extra days in London. We had also signed up for excursions for those days, so that was fun.
LONDON
Our hotel was in the Kensington area, which was a very nice area and we stayed in the Holiday Inn Kensington High Street. It was a very walkable area, with lots of shops and restaurants readily in walking distance. Mark had left his jacket with hood on the plane, so one of the first things we did was find a store to replace his jacket. We found a H & M close to the hotel and he found a great jacket with hood.
I knew I wanted to see Harrod’s while we were there, so we took off that morning on a walking tour and pulling it up on my phone, it looked like it wasn’t too bad a walk, but we ended up walking over 5 miles that first morning, which wasn’t easy on no sleep. We were pooped when we got back to the hotel, but we did see some fun things along the way.
Queens Gate at Kensington Gardens. The gardens were huge and looked so pretty, but I confess we didn’t go inside and look around. There’s only so much time and on tired feet, we tried to maximize the walking and not kill ourselves. Neither of us sleep that great when we travel, so that’s always a challenge, to get enough sleep to keep up with the schedule. We were dragging for the first couple of days.
This is a statue of Robert Napier, who is an English notable. I don’t know his history.
We finally made it to the famous department store Harrod’s and let me tell you, it’s impressive!
Everything is designer and expensive, so we just walked around a bit and I ended up getting a sandwich to eat outside while we walked since I was getting hungry.
They had so much food, pastries, so many things to look at and choose from.
Of course, the red telephone booths caught my eye, they are everywhere.
I forgot what this building is, but I think it’s the Natural History museum. We didn’t make it in here either.
STONEHENGE
Our first excursion the next day was out to Stonehenge and that was such a treat. We had exceptional weather while we were over there and really didn’t get rain until we got to Ireland and even then, it didn’t ruin our day. I loved all the sheep and cows all over the UK. They are everywhere!
It’s pretty wild to see Stonehenge in person. We got some of the history of these stones, but if you don’t know it, go and read about it. I won’t try to explain it all here. Mark, of course, knew all about Stonehenge.
I took a lot of pictures, but I’ll just leave it at this one. It’s quite impressive to see in person!
SALISBURY
We then went on our way to a small town, Salisbury, where we had lunch and visited Salisbury Cathedral. It was such a sweet little town!
We had time to walk around and take it all in and then we met up at the cathedral for a tour. Mark and I had lunch at a cute Italian cafe and found a great pizza. I’ll share some of our food below.
So beautiful inside, this working church has over 800 years of history. It’s home to the tallest church spire in the UK, the world’s largest working mechanical clock, and one of the sites of one of the 4 surviving copies of the 1215 Magna Carta, which we got to see.
It’s a really beautiful cathedral, with more than 250,000 visitors each year.
Really cool to see the Magna Carta original, but no photography allowed.
Such a beautiful setting.
While in London, we found gelato, so that was fun. Mark was so happy to see they had his favorite, Amereno Cherry. I got it too and it was so good.
TOWER OF LONDON
Our next outing in London was the Unesco-listed Tower of London. I really had no idea what is was, but it’s a 1,000 year old fortress in London. It’s home to the largest collection of Crown Jewels, the White Tower, Traitor’s Gate, Bloody Tower, and the famous ravens. I took pics, but didn’t want to share too many here.
It was quite a fascinating place to tour.
We saw the guards, who take their jobs seriously.
The White Tower, we went inside and saw all the artifacts in there with so much history.
Guards outside marching.
We went through the White Tower and saw so much, but I don’t want to overwhelm you all with too many photos, so I chose the best ones. We did see the Crown Jewels, but no photos were allowed. They were magnificent!
Tower of London Bridge
More that we saw on our London excursion, Royal Albert Hall. Some of our people took the tour and said it’s really beautiful inside. I know a concert would be amazing here!
Albert Memorial was quite impressive.
Big Ben which everyone wants to see. It was fun to finally see all this in person.
Westminster Cathedral had a long line to get in. This wasn’t part of our tour, but I’m sure it’s gorgeous inside. I know it’s been part of so many weddings and funerals.
We passed by Downing Street, home of the British Prime Minister. I even know it’s #11 Downing Street, although I read that some of them live at #10 as well. It’s a famous street!
More beautiful architecture in London. London has really beautiful buildings, as does most of Europe. We could take a few lessons here in the US in beautifying our cities.
BUCKINGHAM PALACE
It was really neat to see Buckingham Palace in person. We didn’t get up too close, but took it in from afar.
It is quite impressive and there were plenty of people out that day.
Of course, we had to take our photo in front of the palace.
We saw the changing of the guard.
Our guide mentioned that this boulevard was where Princess Diana’s casket was displayed and where the boys walked behind that we all witnessed on TV. Such a magnificient place!
This is the balcony where weddings, babies and deaths are announced. It was much smaller than I envisioned.
WINDSOR CASTLE
Another visit was Windsor Castle, a short drive out from London. It was quite impressive as well and this is where the Queen liked to stay. Outside the castle, is shopping and food and we enjoyed going through there.
Mark and I both really enjoyed this visit.
Quite impressive, it has 1,000 years of royal history. I’ve never been a big royals of England fan until Diana came along. Then I was in for all the news. It was such a sad way for her life to end.
Inside Windsor castle walls, we visited the Chapel too and it was quite beautiful.
We toured all the inside public rooms that were available to see and wow, was that gorgeous. Even though this castle is huge and royal, it reminded me of the huge mansions in Newport, RI that we have visited and also the Biltmore in NC.
The grounds were immaculate.
Toured the chapel on the way out of Windsor and it was gorgeous. They didn’t allow pics in these spots or in the castle rooms.
We had our first meal with the whole group at this pub and it was very good. It was within walking distance of our hotel.
We also had fish and chips a few times and tried it here at Devonshire Arms pub, also close to the hotel.
The neighborhood around the hotel was really gorgeous and pricey. We felt safe the whole time we were gone. I had a few people ask me about that, since we’ve all heard of the unrest and violence going on in London with certain immigrants. We thankfully didn’t see any of that while we were there, so it was nice to be able to walk and feel safe outside.
Here’s a look at some of the food we had in London. It was quite tasty. Fish and chips at two different places, both were good. We did have fish and chips again in Ireland and they were the best of the trip! Mark and I ate at a Thai restaurant near the hotel and it was very good. I loved my Panang Curry chicken (top left). We got a great pizza in Salisbury, gelato in London, those donuts are from a shop at Windsor Castle and they were fabulous. I also had a scone there too at Windsor. The pastry meal is a meat pie, which we got at the pub on our first group meal. It was quite good as well! Mark had a harder time with the food than I did. I love trying new things and enjoyed most all of our meals.
Here’s a look at my capsule wardrobe. If you missed my packing post, about packing in carryon only, check it out. I thought I’d tell you after the trip how that went. Well, it went really well and here are a few of the outfits I put together on the trip with my capsule pieces. I did wear everything and all my pants twice at least. The only thing I didn’t wear was the jumpsuit & kimono I took. I could have worn it, but just kept on my day clothes instead of changing. Everything else, I wore. It was warmer in London, so I wore my short sleeves there and then as it got a bit cooler in Scotland and Ireland, I wore long sleeves and sweaters. It all worked out well! My black jacket was perfect most days and we even got hot in London and Edinburgh. Ireland was a little cooler with rain showers a couple of days, but overall we had really exceptional weather. I only wore my raincoat in Ireland a couple of times. My roller bag set and backpack worked perfectly for packing all my things and it rolled wonderfully. My white color is no longer available, but red is. This cosmetic bag below was great, I’m sold on it!
I will say that next time we take a longer trip like this, we are going to get medium sized suitcases. We don’t even own any right now, but I’ll be looking for some in the next few months. We have a big trip planned next May with some folks at our church and we are doing a land tour first for 8 days and then a 7 day Mediterranean cruise out of Rome, so that is going to be quite the trip! We definitely need more clothes for that trip so we’re going to get a size up on suitcases.
That’s a wrap on our London portion of the trip, so next time I’ll move on to Edinburgh, Scotland, another really great stop on our trip. That was the only city we visited in Scotland, so it was short, but very nice. It’s a really big city, but we tried to make the most of it in the time we had.
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