I was in UK and Ireland for about 17 days and I want to share and pinpoint places that I visited. Unfortunately it’s not the perfect itinerary, but it gives you an idea of how many things you can do in one day.
Left Vancouver on August 25th and arrived London (LHR) on the 26th.
Day 1: arrived to LHR. It was during the Olympics so there were many helpful Tourists Ambassadors that were providing information of getting to city center. There are basically a few ways to get to London city center. There are basically two lines that you can take with the underground train. However, if you have many luggage like we did, it’s better off to take the airport shuttle. I think there’s only one company that provides the service and they advertise it as 18 pounds each. It cost us about 55 pounds for both of us at the end because we had 3 big luggage in total.
Comments: We were staying at Radission Edwardian Blu Grafton Hotel, which is situated 30 seconds away from Warren street station and about a 20 min walk from Euston station (train station). There’s also many buses that stop in front of our hotel and also many restaurants and supermarket that’s around us. I consider it as a convenient location if you are planning to travel outside of London. If you only want to spend time at London city center and do shopping, I recommend staying at Marble Arch/ Oxford Circus/ Picadilly.
We ate at our hotel’s restaurant which provided a great deal for a 2 course meal and rested that evening.
Day 2: Woke up early because of jet lag and started to explore around.
Comments: Even if you are only staying in London for a few days, it’s a good idea to purchase an Oyster card. You are able to get your deposit and remaining money in the card back when you refund. Your fares will be 20% cheaper when you use your Oyster card compared to paying with coins. It’s convenient because you will not have to worry about carrying heavy lose change around. Also, it can detect how many times you use in a day and it will not charge you more than a $7 day pass if you are travelling in the zone 1 area, which is the city center area.
My mom wanted to go to Chinatown (Piccadilly station) to visit the local travel agency. However, it was not open during Bank Holiday so we had to visit again.
Comments: We bought a Labara SIM card which costs 10 pound and comes with 5 pounds worth of minutes. They have cheap rates when calling international, and have free minutes when calling to a Labara phone.
We end up eating at the W hotel’s restaurant called Spice Market. It’s a fusion restaurant and from my experience, I think they combine Chinese, Japanese, Thai and Vietnamese food together. We then bought tickets to the Chicago show for that evening. I wasn’t able to find the half off ticket booth, but perhaps it’s worth to find out.
It was a short walk to Trafalgar square as well, and we end up wandering our way to the Savoy Hotel (Fairmont) on the Strand to find out Gordon Ramsay’s restaurant, the Savoy Grill. Unfortunately we didn’t see the lobby’s coffee shop earlier, where it serves high tea next to the beautiful river view.
We got changed and took the bus back to Savoy Restaurant for dinner. The dinner was prompt since it was a pre-theatre menu. We had plenty of time left to walk to the Gatwick Theatre.
The theatre wasn’t big, but I quite enjoyed the intimate setting. Even though I was sitting on the upper deck level, my distance from the stage wasn’t that far.
joeyho1214 