London, New Market, Bath, Buckinghamshire

We traveled back and forth between different areas of the UK, so this post is organized by city rather than chronologically.

London

First visit:

We were excited to visit England, as both Mom and Dad had lived there before marriage in the 90s and still had friends and relatives in the country they hadn’t seen in over 20 years. We were also anticipating seeing new friends we’d met months ago while traveling in other parts of the world!

Deep beneath the English Channel, we rode by train through the Chunnel from Paris to London. We reunited with our relative at a train station, we girls piled in his small car, and H and Dad were left to go on an adventure figuring out the London tube. It was so nice to stay with family!

Our first day in London was a successful one, hitting a few of the main sights. We picnicked in Hyde Park in the drizzling rain surrounded by extremely green grass. Then, we walked by Buckingham Palace, the London Eye, and Big Ben which was, unfortunately, covered in scaffolding.

On our second day in England, our relative toured us around the beautiful 12th century village of Henley-on-Thames. It’s a picturesque town with a famous annual boat race, and interesting sights like Dusty Springfield’s grave and George Harrison’s estate.

Later that day we went back into London, starting with Paddington Station, then on in search of Mom’s old flat, and then a stop at Hamley’s–a ginormous toy store filled with eccentric shop workers and masses of children. There was massive amounts of Star Wars and Harry Potter merch. We also checked out Picadilly Circus, along with the throngs of tourists, narrowly avoiding a protest march.

Second visit:

We came back to London and hit all our bucket list items we missed on our first visit. Starting off, we enjoyed wonderfully warmer weather, talented jugglers and musicians and beautiful flowers in Covent Gardens.

Madame Toussad’s wax museum was a lot of fun! it’s really strange being surrounded by almost-people. We kept thinking they were really people standing there! The wax celebrities were really easy to recognize. Such a cool and weird museum!

There are four kids in our family, and we’re in England….so we had to take the iconic, Beatles Abbey Road photo!

C and I have been watching Doctor Who together on this trip so it was perfect that we got to visit some major London sites with a Doctor Who tour. Our guide knew all there was to know about it as well as lots of trivia about the buildings in London and other shows/movies that were filmed there.

Meanwhile, the rest of the family went to see the musical Wicked at the West End, which was phenomenal. They continued to sing Defying Gravity for the next several days.

New Market

After waiting at the rental car office in Luton for a painful 6 hours (thank goodness they had wifi–lots of homework was done and blog posts were written) for a nonsensical reason, we unfortunately missed a special rugby game at Dad’s old rugby club in Bury St. Edmunds that we had been looking forward to. Instead, Dad met up with the guys after the game for a beer (or two) and the rest of us headed for Mom’s old co-worker’s house where we were camping out. Once again, we are incredibly thankful for the wonderful hospitality we have been blessed with on this round the world journey! 

Our friends took us around the main sights of nearby New Market: we flew kites and got to see where the New Market race horses run in the mornings as well as my mom’s old office. But mainly we just enjoyed getting to know Mom’s friend and her family–so many laughs.

There was a lot of debate about whether or not to purchase tickets to Stonehenge because it was pricey…just to look at rocks? After a recommendation from a friend, we finally decided to do it and were happily surprised! There was more to Stonehenge than just the monument. There’s a very nice exhibit and replicas of ancient homes. Some of us were distracted by the sheep in the surrounding hills too.

Bath

We stayed at the very cozy and luxurious bed and breakfast (The Lorne House, formerly home of the Thomas the Tank Engine author) owned by a couple we met earlier in our RTW trip in the back of a tuk-tuk on the way to the Elephant Jungle Sanctuary in Chiang Mai, Thailand. It was so nice to see them again! In the mornings, we enjoyed a delicious, full English breakfast.

Another rainy day in England brought us to the Roman baths. The informative audio guides included in our ticket walked us around the baths. It was really interesting not only to learn about the thermal waters but get insight into the lives of the people of those ancient times.

Wrapping up the day, we walked to the historical row of houses called the Crescent and then the Fashion Museum, which shows women’s and men’s clothing style from the 1600s-2000s. The Fashion Museum had an interesting audio guide that guided us through the displays of mannequins and nearly ancient clothing as well as an area to try on outfits.

Leaving Bath on the way to another relative’s house, we stopped at the cute town of Lacock where they filmed parts of Harry Potter, Downton Abbey and other period pieces. After a delicious lunch with our relatives, we went to Gloucester Cathedral where more scenes from Harry Potter were filmed (C and K were super excited to see all these filming locations as they’ve read many of the HP books while we’ve traveled).

Buckinghamshire

On our return trip to England, we once again, stayed with a family we met earlier on this Holliday360 journey! This time, we had met them in Salzburg, Austria on the Sound of Music Tour. We are completely overwhelmed with the generosity we’ve experienced while traveling. Thanks, “Sound of Music family” 🙂 We spent a wonderful home day with their family, just doing normal stuff. Good conversations, kids goofing off, grilling pizzas and lots of laughter.

These reunions with new friends and old, really help us slow the trip down and enrich our round-the-world experiences. We are eternally grateful and can’t wait to return the favor to them in the USA!

Next up–Wales!