Girls' London Getaway: 8 Day Itinerary

It's coming up on Shorty's birthday again, and in our (newish) tradition, that means another girls' trip is coming!

This time, London is the dream destination - since Shorty and M have never been! Shorty found a very good deal on airfare from LA to London and booked a week long trip, then a few more of us decided it would be a great girls' getaway. Here's what we're trying to pack into the week we'll be there - it's a mix of seeing the sights for the newbies, and doing some off-the-beaten path things for those of us who have been before!

DESTINATION:  
London, with a quick overnight trip to Bath

DURATION:
8 days, 8 nights

London: Meantime Brewing Company

I've mentioned Meantime on the blog before, but hubby and I were talking about beer and London a few days ago and it reminded me just how much we'd loved our tour. So, I figured they deserve their very own post!

Hubby and I, along with SD, hit up a tour at the Meantime Brewing Company last October. SD suggested it, and since hubby loves Greenwich so much, we figured it was a perfect way to spend a Saturday afternoon! The tour costs 20£, and was absolutely worthwhile.

London to Brussels: The Chunnel Train

The Chunnel train is something that both Hubby and I were super excited to go on. We both love public transportation, and trains, and it seemed like the ultimate one - a train that goes under a channel!

 Inside the "standard" class car on the Eurostar train.

TRAVEL TIP: Buying train tickets in Europe for "long" trips (1.5 hours +) is almost always cheaper if you buy in advance online. Also - if you don't have a credit card with a chip (a lot of US banks are now issuing them), leave time to go into the ticket booth, as the ticket kiosks usually only take chip cards. When we were in Belgium, we missed two trains from Brussels to Bruges because we had to hunt down the ticket office and then stand in line!

Travel Photo Tuesday: Tower Bridge, London

Tower Bridge, London

It seems as if I've been on a bit of a London kick lately! We had a really nice time in London last October, I think when you have good friends in a place it makes that place 8x better for you. Anyway, Tower bridge is one of my favorite places in London - there's just something about it that I love so much! I took this shot from a boat back to London from Greenwich - something I highly recommend!

Travel Photo Tuesday: London Eye

The London Eye & Big Ben

Walking along the river in London is one of my absolute favorite things to do there. I don't know what it is - there's just a lot of life and bustle and so many things to see! Stop off for a cup of coffee or tea, a beer or cider, a bite to eat, or to just sit for a few minutes and people watch... so many options!

London: Getting Around

Let me first say this: London is crazy. It's a very cool, vibrant, amazing city, and it was so incredible to see our friends, our first trip there in 2012 was NOT a relaxing trip! We got better with the additional visits, and now I feel like we're pros!

 The Piccadilly line on a map of London

GETTING AROUND
When I was thinking about what I wanted to express about our trips to London, one of the biggest things ended up being something I really wasn't expecting - getting around the city.

London: The City and Sights

London is a very interesting place. 

It's beautiful, with a mix of old and modern, clean and dodgy, quiet and crazy.

When we returned from our first trip in 2012, there was a lot about London that we hadn't liked. The rush. The rude people. The occasional feel of being in "just any" big city.

Someday, I'll catch up.

Wow. So things have been absolutely insane over the last few years. We've been doing our fair share of traveling, and I've been very neglectful of writing about it!

What have we been up to the last couple years?

2013:
I made a New Year's resolution to do at minimum a small trip every month, and I did pretty well! Not only did we do some really fun weekend trips, including a road trip to Arizona, and a quick overnight trip to Savannah while I was in Atlanta for work, but we also snuck Europe in there in October when I went to a business conference in Cannes. Hubby and I tacked on London, Bruges, and Paris to Cannes, and it was really fun.

Bruges, Belguim, October 2013

London: Tea Time

Finally getting back to some posts about our 2012 trip to London to see SD and Sis! To kick it off, one of my favorite afternoons of the trip - Afternoon TEA!

All ready for tea!

One of the my favorite activities on our 2012 London trip was having an afternoon tea with my two girlfriends. It's a definite "must do" while in London in my book - especially if you're like me and LOVE tea.

London 2012

I blinked, and then all of a sudden it was almost two years after Hubby's and my trip to London in 2012. We decided we wanted to visit our good friend SD, as well as my honorary sister-from-another-mister, Sis. Both were living in London at the time (Sis has since moved back home to Vienna), and we wanted to get away to somewhere that wasn't hot and sweltering Los Angeles.

Travel blog fail.

Well, it seems that I've done an absolutely terrible job in the last year and a half with blogging about my travels!

It started with a sort of lackluster trip to London in October 2012, and then I just, well, I don't know, I guess we just got busy with life. In addition to being crazy busy at work, I also got engaged and married! Meaning that from here on, "BF" will now be called "Hubby... :-) 

But! I'm back to make a renewed effort to bring this travel blog up to date.

Here's a quick rundown of what we've been up to in the last 20 months or so:

October 2012: Trip to London

February 2013: Monterey weekend
March 2013: Long weekend in New York
April 2013: Work trip to Las Vegas
June 2013: Road trip to Arizona
September 2013: Work trip to Atlanta, paired with an overnight in Savannah thrown in
October 2013: Work trip to Cannes, paired with a week in London, Bruges and Paris

February 2014: Work trip to New York
March 2014: Bachelorette weekend in Palm Springs
April 2014: Work trip to Las Vegas
May 2014: HONEYMOON in the Cook Islands
June 2014: Work trip to Miami, then a quick weekend in Arizona
July 2014: Work trip to New York

Whew! Seems like I've been up to much more travel than I thought! I also have a couple of additional trips coming up this year, which I'm pretty excited about.

August 2014: Quick two night trip to Portland for a baby shower, plus an additional work trip to New York
October 2014: Work trip to Cannes with a few nights in London on the way over
November 2014: Work trip to Atlanta

I'll come back to this post and link some things once I've blogged about them! Here's hoping I can get up to speed soon....

London! (The itinerary!)

We're going to London later this month! I'm so excited!

Air New Zealand had some amazing round trip fares for direct flights out of Los Angeles to London, so we jumped on the opportunity to visit two friends that are living there. It's been over a year since I've seen SD, and it's been over FIVE years since I've seen CH! I've never flown Air New Zealand before, but so far it's been a great experience with them - they have a really, truly fantastic customer service line, are friendly and never rude, and gave us free London Passes with the purchase of our tickets! The London Pass is going to come in handy, too, with line jumping and free entry to a ton of attractions. 

So, what do we plan on doing? 

Nothing, and everything.

I want at least 1 day of this trip to be dedicated to not having any plans. In the other two trips I've taken this year - New York and the Wild Wild (Mid)West, our days were packed to the gills with stuff to do. Must see this, must do that, must eat here. So this trip? Not a whole lot of that. I want some quality time with BF. I want some really fun, casual times with our friends. And I want to actually be able to soak in a true idea of what London is like!

There are, of course, things I want to see - Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, the London Eye, the London Tower and Tower Bridge, St. Paul's Cathedral, Harrods, the rugby museum, the bridges. Maybe Windsor Castle. Maybe the Chislehurst Caves. A coworker told me that the Soane Museum can't be missed. There's a DaVinci Code tour that looks my inner nerd thinks sounds awesome.  And there are bike tours and boat tours and canal tours and seven new attractions... the list goes on and on. 

On the top of my "musts" list - afternoon tea! I love, love, love tea, and I feel like it's a quintessential thing to do while visiting London. Not sure where we'll end up, but I'll be sure to post about that later! 

And someone on a TripAdvisor recommended this "marvelously cheap" outing for visitors: "Take the Docklands Light Railway from Bank station in the direction of Lewisham. Get off at Island Gardens and walk through the historic pedestrian tunnel under the Thames. Pop out in Greenwich and stroll around - perhaps eating a picnic in the park or going to the Maritime Museum (free)." It sounds good to me! 

All I want out of this trip is great escape - good, relaxing time with BF and my friends, and to feel completely NOT stressed when we get home. And I think we've got a pretty good plan (or, non plan?) to make that happen!

So, have any of you been to London? Is there anything out there that we shouldn't miss?