London, England

I’ve been to London twice, and I loved it both times. The first time, it was for a trip around the UK in general (see Ireland and Scotland.) The second time was just a two day trip. If you don’t know already, you can get very cheap train tickets from Paris to London (definitely worth looking into if you’re interested in visiting both cities.) The train ride is also only 2 hours, so I went on a weekend and actually scheduled my train ride back to Paris on a Monday morning to go straight to work.

London 2018:

London 2015:

I’m a huge BBC Sherlock fan, so I geeked out on all things 221b during my first trip to London

The second time I went, it was actually all about Harry Potter (I am super late on the HP game. I just read all of the books and watched all of the movies last year, and obviously fell in love.) I’m not sure why my trips to London are always related to some book, movie, or TV show, but I have no regrets. This year, we did the Harry Potter Studio Tour. It was absolutely incredible.

However, there are simply too many photos to post and things to say when it comes to doing London for Sherlock or London for Harry Potter, so I will save that for a future post.

Here are my recommendations for other things to do in London:

• Tour of Parliament: I got lucky, because I’ve got a friend who works for parliament so we got a very in depth, intimate tour for free, and we learned so much! I would highly recommend looking into guided tours of parliament if that’s something you’re interested in
• Madame Tussauds: The one in London is the original Madame Tussauds.
• National Gallery: One of the most visited museums in the world, and it’s free! There’s something like 40+ rooms in this place, so there’s tons to see, but if you’re like me you’ll head straight to the impressionists. I love to see some Van Gogh or Monet wherever I can.
• Harrods: recommending Harrods is like recommending Les Galeries Lafayette in Paris — something I would not normally do, but I recommend at least going through very quickly as it’s iconic in the city. The main reason I went was for the Princess Diana/Dodi Fayed Memorial at the bottom, which was unfortunately removed in March 2018.
• We happened to take a walking tour when we were here and it was so beneficial. I also did this in during my stay in Berlin. If you’ve got the time and don’t have a super-packed schedule, doing a free walking tour (which can be found with a quick google search) can be highly beneficial and as it was for me at times, the highlight of your trip. You learn a ton on these tours and see so much that you would probably never learn/see on your own.
• London Sky Garden: A less touristy thing to do, that’s totally worth it. It’s London’s largest public garden, and it happens to be a rooftop bar. Gorgeous views of the city and great cocktails. It’s always free to get in, but before 6 you have to make a reservation. I recommend going after 6 anyway… the colors at twilight are incredible.
• Borough Market: A beautiful market recommended to me by a local that I checked out and loved.
• The obvious monuments: Buckingham Palace, Westminster Abbey, Big Ben, Tower Bridge, etc.

• Eat: Fish and Chips, obviously! You can get this almost anywhere.

   Tips:

• Remember that you’ll need to exchange your money as the currency is not euros.

• Remember to also bring a converter for your electronics that adapts to the UK! Not all adapters convert in the UK as well. Admittedly, this is something I forgot during my last trip.
• Princess Diana fans: as I mentioned above, remember that unfortunately, the Diana memorial has been removed from Harrods as of March 2018.
• Keep in mind that “London Bridge” is actually a very normal looking, underwhelming bridge. It’s Tower Bridge that looks very fancy and that most people take photos of/on. Luckily, both bridges are within sight of one another.

• From my experience, it is a myth that the guards at Buckingham palace stand still as statues and you can mess with them all you want. On the contrary, they were quite fidgety from what I saw. If you’ve had a different experience, though, I’d love to hear about it.