London Itinerary & Lessons Learned

November 27, 2015 by Samantha Bissell 2 Comments

It’s my last night in London! I’m having some beer and pizza at my hostel and daydreaming about planning another trip (thanks to Pinterest). I think I’m going to do another one soon – I don’t want to stop!

Here’s a recap of everything I did in London. Overall, I feel like my trip was a great introduction to the city, and I did a good mix of cultural attractions and more laid-back explorations. I loved it! I’m going to have to come back – there is more to see than I could do in a lifetime.

Monday
•Train arrived at Euston and took the tube to Wombat’s City Hostel.
•Walked around the Wapping area (accidentally, as I was actually trying to go to the Tower Bridge).
•Made it to Tower Bridge!

Tuesday
•Sandeman’s tour.
•Lunch at a pub with other people from the tour.
•Neal’s Yard (a major highlight for me).
•Walked for a long time around Westminster.
•Met up with a friend of a friend for a walk along Southbank and dinner in SoHo.

Wednesday
•Breakfast near the hostel with two women from my dorm room.
•British Museum with Sophie from Bristol.
•Walked to Charing Cross Road and around the Seven Dials/Covent Garden area.
•Brief visit to the Victoria & Albert Museum.
•Ate a crepe while taking in the beautiful Christmas scene outside the Natural History Museum.
•CalcuLates at the Science Museum.

Thursday
•Evan Evans tour to Stonehenge (I think this was the best part of the trip)

Friday
•Visited the Sky Garden for a great view of the city.
•Went to Daunt Books on Marylebone High Street to explore their famous travel section.

What I’ll do differently next time:
•Research and plan where to eat, and buy groceries to keep at the hostel. I ate sporadically and unhealthily in London, because I kept eating food for convenience rather than sitting down for full meals, so I ate a lot of bread products/potato-based things/sweets. Next time, I’ll research good places to eat ahead of time so that I can get healthy, filling meals. I’ll also fill up on snacks at the grocery store to bring with me every day, because those can be left in the hostel fridge and I can just take what I need every day. I craved things like fruit, yogurt, orange juice and protein bars, so next time I’ll get those things and store them in the fridge.

•I’ll also bring food with me from home! I totally could have filled the extra space in my backpack with protein bars, dried fruit, tea bags, and some ramen noodles for good measure. I should pack food the same way I would for a hiking trip.

•Yoga. On my next trip, I’ll schedule at least one class. At home, I seldom do yoga, but traveling on planes and public transit combined with sleeping in a hostel bed made me feel stiff and sore. I craved some movement and stretching, and I did what I could in my hostel, but nothing does the trick quite like a class.

•Spend more time enjoying the build-up to the trip. Read more articles and guidebooks, watch documentaries and movies set in the country, read books that take place there, and just soak up as much information as possible. I’m so happy with what I planned, but I want to stretch that joy out even longer for my next trip by mentally preparing and building up the excitement.

What I’ll do the same way next time:
•Stay at Wombat’s City Hostel London. I am such a fan of hostels and I plan to continue using them! Wombat’s was clean, safe, easily accessible (a 10-15 minute walk from the Tower Hill underground stop), and they provided everything travelers need: a big locker for storing backpacks, an outlet and USB port by every bed, individual lights on every bed so that you can turn on your light without waking up your roommates, super clean bathrooms, etc. I’ll also check out their other locations around Europe on future trips!

•Travel in the off-season. I wasn’t waiting in long lines and pushing through crowds of other tourists, and I hear that’s what it’s like during the summer. The weather was the same as it is in Boston in November–in fact, London was a little warmer–so there was really no disadvantage to traveling during a winter month.

•Walking tours. I love seeing the city on foot and tours are a great way to meet people.

•Pack light. My backpack weighed 20 pounds, which is a very reasonable amount to carry. And I could pack even lighter next time if I planned to do laundry at my hostel rather than bringing clothes for every day.

•Talk to anyone and everyone about anything and everything.

•Solo travel in general. This is a whole new world. 🙂

Aubrey Holes are features at Stonehenge!