England

I went to London, England in December 2022. This is my story.

This trip was planned by EF Ultimate Break, so I can’t take credit for most of the activities. I just woke up one morning around early November and really wanted to go somewhere. I felt like I had been waiting and waiting and still hadn’t been to Europe, so I went back to the travel website and picked one of their trips that was happening in December. It’s really hard to book a trip with them less than 30 days before the trip, and I lucked out and booked it 31 days before the trip, so I didn’t have to pay extra. I also booked my own flights, and after talking to others on the trip that was a good decision for me. This trip was made up of 39 other people aged 18-35 (though the oldest I met was 30) and they were mostly all solo travelers. There were a few twins and a couple, but they kept to themselves. Everyone else was super friendly and open to getting to know you. If you are ready for your first international trip, but don’t want to go alone or plan it then I do recommend EF Ultimate Break. Bonus: the trips are usually mostly female, and you have a tour director the whole time who is usually pretty cool.

Now onto the trip. For day 0 I took a red eye out with a layover in Denver. The flight from Denver to LHR is about 9 hours, and I HAD THE WHOLE ROW TO MYSELF!! The plane was super empty and quiet. It was wonderful! IDKY, but I have written in my trip notes that I had a chicken dinner on the plane and a “really really great cookie.” LOL I think my expectations for plane dinners was super low before my first long trip because I usually enjoy plane food. Anyway, so we land at like 10am, and I was wearing sleep clothes and wanted to change. I go into the first bathroom I find after exiting the plane, and change into my day clothes. Now, I already mentioned how empty the plane was, so I think that combined with my 15 minute bathroom refresh time meant I walked the entire 20 minutes to Customs without seeing another human. Customs was completely empty, too. This is my first solo trip (at least this part), and I’m super excited and smiling ear to ear. And then I approach this new-fangled automatic passport entry system. I’m trying to watch the video so I know how it works and only got to read the first slide before an agent ushers me forward as if I’m holding up the line (there’s literally no other travelers around). The first slide says take off your glasses…so now I take off my glasses, and I’m squinting to read the next directions. I guess the combination of my then green hair and the squinting and not looking in the correct direction meant the system didn’t recognize me. Now I guess I look super suspicious because I have to talk to the old-school agent system and she is grilling me about my plans. Lucky for me, I read, in detail, the planned trip and knew where I was going already so I was able to answer her. She did ask where I was staying, and I told her the neighborhood. She said “Oh? I don’t know that area….” I just shrugged and stood there because I’m not from London, so I have no way to tell her what it’s next to. She let me by after stamping my passport.

So I finally make it through customs. I have some trouble activating my eSim (S/O to Holafly), but I just needed to turn my phone off and back on, of course. The tour director helped me out via email on directions to the hotel. (If you let EF book your flights, then they actually have a hired driver take you.) Now I think it’s time to tell you that when packed for this trip, it was supposed to be 40-50 and a little rainy while in London. After exiting the airport and boarding the train, I found it was 20-30 and SNOWING! I took the London Underground (OMG LOVE IT), and then walked half a mile through the snow to reach the hotel. I still don’t know why that was the way he told me to go because there’s a bus stop across the street from the hotel. I stopped in a random café and got a latte to go, and I made it to the hotel with HUGE blisters on my heals. I thought I had broken in my newish leather boots, but apparently 2 weeks of regular wear with no blisters didn’t mean I wouldn’t get blisters later. Luckily I made room for another pair of shoes that I could still wear. I checked in with our Tour Director: Matt, and then walked down the road to “The Beaten Docket” for a quick, and subpar, lunch. Learn from my harsh lesson: don’t eat a burger from a non-fast food place in London. Even if it’s called “American Burger.” After lunch, I went back to the hotel to pick up my room key after we were able to check in. I shared a room with two women in their late 20s and became friends with them.

That evening Matt showed us around the royal part of London and gave us an unofficial tour (the official tour was scheduled for the next day). We “saw” Big Ben (fun fact, Big Ben is the bell inside the tower. the two is/was called Elizabeth Tower). We ended the walking tour with a Welcome Dinner. Of course I had to have Fish and Chips. The table I sat with and a few others also went out “clubbing”. Or, we tried to. It was a Monday night, and all the open places were very empty. It was still a good way to stay awake and forcefully adjust to the time zone.

The second full day started with the official walking tour. We started by Elizabeth tower and royal London, and then we went over to The City of London (CGP Grey has a great video about what that means: here). We had a cute (and cold, I bought a very nice scarf and a hot chocolate) at the Christmas markets in Trafalgar Square, and then continued our tour ending at the Borough Market. See photos below from the tour.

Our guides left us at the Borough Market and the rest of the day was unplanned. I bought some calamari from a man yelling “cash is king!” and then I decided I NEEDED to find the Rosetta Stone. I had a few people with me that were interested in going to the British Museum, so off we went. We walked around a good bit of the museum going to the rooms that seemed like they might have the Rosetta Stone. We finally found it, see the image below. Or, I thought we found it. The plaque on the bottom says “This is a modern copy displayed as it was when it first came to the British Museum. The original is in Room 4.”

Well, a copy is not what I came for, so I set off to Room 4. Lo-and-behold, it was not in Room 4. I finally found a staff person to question about it, and found out they put the original BEHIND A PAYWALL titled: Unlocking Ancient Egypt. Well, I’m not one to let a small obstacle of $12 prevent me from making my goal, so one friend and I paid the fee. It’s hard to see in the photo below, but the real Rosetta stone is completely behind glass. The rest of the stuff behind the paywall was cool enough. I’ve been to Egypt and the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, though, so I’ve seen better. *hair flip*

After the museum, we went to Harrods. I was not at all prepared to spend lots of money, so I didn’t buy anything. It’s real fun spending other peoples money, though, so I helped a friend buy a dress shirt for their dad. It was almost 5 o’clock and we were all super exhausted, so we found the closest food place and had some coffee. It happened to be a Starbucks, but it was a really nice Starbucks. One friend really wasn’t about the London Underground and tried to get us an Uber back to the hotel, but 3 cancelled so we gave up and took the Underground. and OH BOY was that eventful. It’s now 5:20ish and the Underground is PACKED. I stuffed my face in my scarf and made my backpack into a purse that was in front of me and waited for our stop. I got myself a snack wrap from McDonalds and met up with Matt and a few others to watch one of the World Cup games in a local pub.

The next day was our last full day in London and it started out with an unplanned morning. About half the group decided to go see the changing of the guard. Shortly before it was to begin I urgently needed to use the restroom, so I ran over to a nearby park and got to use my first ever Pay Toilet (it took card). Because of my little side-quest, I did get to see the Horse Guards a lot closer than where the group was and I made it back in time to see the marching band up close.

After the guard swap was finished, a few of us set out to do some shopping near Regents street. Everything there was so fancy, and so we ended up going to SoHo with the cute little alleyways and side streets. It was still pretty fancy, so I found a silly touristy shop that had everything I needed for an affordable price. We tried to hangout in a local coffee shop, but it was closed, so we found ourselves chilling in Starbucks again while we waited for our “Tea and Scones Cruise.”

The actual tour part of this cruise was great, and we got to see a lot of the sights up close (see the London Bridge picture below), but the rest was lack luster. The tea was just black tea, and the scones was okay-tasting sandwiches with a single great orange macron. A few of us took a Black Cab back to the hotel, and I got to sit backwards! Couldn’t see out the windows for various reasons, but it was still pretty cool.

The next morning was a very early morning. We had to leave at 6am to not get trapped in morning traffic, but our Eurostar train didn’t leave until 10:45am! Before we could board the train, we had to go through customs/security. I was pretty nervous due to my last time through an automated passport system, but it wasn’t an issue at all. The security was a little lower than air travel, but more than driving across the boarder to Canada. The Eurostar is really cool in concept because it takes you under the English Channel, but for those few minutes you can’t really see anything anyway. I somehow ended up alone with a family of 3, but at least I got the window seat.

This pretty much wraps up my time in London! The rest of the trip is in Paris.