London, England

Things To Know:

• Currency/Expenses: London uses £Pounds. £1 is about $1.24 USD. Almost everywhere accepts credit/debit cards. Just be sure to call your bank in advance to let them know you’ll be traveling if you plan to use your card.
• Transportation: There are many ways to get around London. Walking is one way and we were able to walk most places. Uber is a thing if needed. We used Ubers at night to get to the bars. Lastly there is the option of getting an Oyster Card that can be used for public transportation like a bus or the tube (like a train). An Oyster Card is exactly like a metro card (New Yorkers- you know the drill) You use the machine to fill up the card with money and then you just swipe the card when you get on the bus or train.
• Hotel: President Hotel. Includes breakfast. It was kind of far from everything we did. About a 30 minute walk from Trafalgar Square. Get your Apple Watch or Fitbit ready to count your steps for this trip.
• FYI those Fancy Red Phone Booths are absolutely filthy. Take your picture and RUN.

Things To Do: as always, click the underlined links to get right to the tours I booked.

Tower of London: There is so much to do at the Tower of London. Tickets to enter are about $35 and you can spend hours exploring all of the towers, getting tours, and my favorite part of all, looking at the crown jewels. Great views of London and the beautiful blue Tower Bridge which by the way IS NOT THE LONDON BRIDGE (see section below)

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Tower Bridge: Always mistaken for the famous “London Bridge” and rightfully so. The Tower Bridge is a gorgeous site and the real London Bridge is unimpressive to say the least. Tower Bridge all the way.

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Trafalgar Square: Beautiful fountain in the center of the square, people playing music and art vendors on the street. Tons of restaurants and shopping surround the square.

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Harry Potter Walking Tour: Don’t butcher me for this but I’m not the biggest Harry Potter fan in the world. This tour took you around to see some of the filming sites in London. The tour guide looked like Hagrid and was really knowledgeable on everything there is to know about Harry Potter. Heads up- only a few of the sites you see were actually filmed there and most of the others are “based” off of the London location and you need to have an Oyster Card because they take you on the tube to some locations. If you’re not a big Harry Potter fan it's not worth it, sorry Harry. And if you are a big fan, I’d pay more money to get a better tour.

London Eye: Extraordinary views of all of London from up above. We got the tickets to get on the Eye and the River tour down the Thames River on the website for about $40.

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Saint Pauls Cathedral: Tickets are about $20. The Cathedral itself is magnificent from the inside out. You absolutely have to climb the 528 steps to get to the top of the dome. It's a lot of work but you have to push through because the views are completely worth the leg workout you’ve just given yourself climbing those stairs (Most of the stairs are spiral staircases… so watch your step!)

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Buckingham Palace/The Changing of the Guard: Check the link to see all the dates and times you can watch The Changing of the Guard. Get there as early as possible if you want a good view and be prepared to stand there and wait patiently with a large crowd. This place gets jam PACKED and security will scream at you if you do anything out of line. They’ll yell at anyone...old people, children, they don’t care lol. I stood on the right side of the gates and got a pretty good view. Very cool experience. Only thing that would have been better would have been to see the queen.

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Food:

Fish and Chips are all the rage in London. We stopped periodically at random places along the way whenever we got hungry. Most places were all similar pub style restaurants that served burgers, salads, and fish & chips. A couple of good places I tried were Sutton and Sons & National Cafe.

There are also 3 million Pret A Mangers on every single corner if you want a sandwich. They are unavoidable really.

Nightlife:

A few bars that all had a good nightlife scene with djs are Tiger Tiger, Zoo Bar, and Bar Rumba. They are all near each other and had good music and good drinks.

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Lord John Russel Bar: 2 for 1 drinks on a Wednesday night? Sold.

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Ballie Ballerson: This place was a super random find that I saw on my Instagram explore page and it was a hittttt. My friend was having a bad day and she works really hard to find us things to do on vacation so I wanted to find something fun and different and not so touristy for us to do on our last night in London. Definitely a little different than the other clubs we went to. This bar has three ball pits that you can play in! It was so much fun. Bought our tickets online for under $15 but you can get them at the door too!