UK. The Home of Stories

We spent the morning exploring Kensington Gardens in Hyde Park, where the Peter Pan statue is. In the afternoon we went to the Harry Potter Studio Tour, just outside of London. We spent several hours going through the tour, which has sets, costumes, props, photo ops, and more. We also ate dinner here, and I was surprised at how good the food is! It is easy to get to using public transportation, as there is a direct train from London Euston Station to Watford Junction, where you can get a shuttle bus to the tour. Unfortunately, being a bank holiday in England, that line was closed down for maintenance the day we visited, so we had to navigate our way through several different buses to get to Watford Junction!

Today we took a day trip to Oxford. It is very easy to get to from London; you can take a direct 1 hour train from Paddington Station. Our train left around 9:30 am, but if you can go a little later, I would suggest it, because it is a pain to try to navigate rush hour crowds on the London Underground! We had booked a 15 min. time slot to view the Divinity School at Bodleian Library, which is a gorgeous room where they filmed several Harry Potter scenes. For the rest of the day, we just walked around Oxford on our own, and visited several of the different colleges there. There is a small fee to get into each college, but you do not have to book ahead of time. You can also take a guided tour of the Bodleian Library, or a Harry Potter walking tour of Oxford, but we just walked around on our own.

We took another day trip today to Warwick Castle, which is just under a 2 hour train ride from London. It was about a 15 minute walk from the station up to the castle. I really enjoyed Warwick Castle. We spent a few hours here, and then arrived back in London in the afternoon. We got cheap tickets with a restricted view to see Les Mis at a West End theater that night, which was the highlight of our time in London for me. I would 100% recommend getting tickets to a West End show! It was so good, I didn't mind at all having a restricted view, although it did help that we were very familiar with the story of Les Mis.

We toured St. Paul's Cathedral in the morning. I climbed the steps up to the Stone Gallery, but not all the way up to the Golden Gallery. I was pretty winded by the climb! I was also disappointed that the Whispering Gallery was closed when we were there. We each got an audio player and headphones, so we could roam around the whole cathedral at our own pace and learn as much or as little about each area as we wanted. It was beautiful inside, but I personally was not really interested in the cathedral. In the afternoon, we left London and traveled to central England, where we stayed with some friends. The English countryside was beautiful, and the sun came out for the first time on our trip! Assuming you don't have friends in central England, I would suggest staying in Sheffield as a good base for the exploring that we did the next two days.

Pride and Prejudice day! Today we went to Chatsworth House, which was absolutely stunning! It was used as the filming location for Pemberly (Mr. Darcy's house) in the 2005 version of Pride & Prejudice. Everything from the rolling hills to the landscaped gardens to the stunning entryway to the modern art sculptures throughout the house was beautiful! This was one of my favorite days in England! Another place you could go instead (or in addition to, if you have time) is Lyme Park, which is the mansion where they filmed Pemberly in the Colin Firth version of Pride & Prejudice.

We visited another Pride & Prejudice location today: Belton House. This house is much smaller than Chatsworth, but still grand, and was used as the filming location for Rosings Park (Lady Catherine's house) in the Colin Firth version of Pride & Prejudice. The house and gardens were lovely, and they had a really nice stables themed cafe in the old stables, and a large used bookstore, in addition to the regular gift shop.

We left central England and traveled up by train to York. York was really special! I loved roaming through the crooked streets of the York Shambles. We ate at Gert & Henry's, and I got yorkshire pudding in York! We also took a tour at York Chocolate Story, and got lots of free samples! There are so many great things to see in York; I wish we could have stayed longer, but I am so glad we at least got some time here. I think it's a must on any England trip. Our hotel room wasn't ready when we arrived around noon, so we left our luggage at the left luggage storage facility outside of the train station until we were done exploring. We stayed at a really cool hotel called The Lawrance.

It's off to Scotland! We took a 3 hour train from York to Edinburgh, and then rented a car at the train station and drove 4 hours (though it actually took us a lot longer!) to Fort William. If you're able, I would suggest taking the tram out to the airport to rent the car, instead of at the train station in the city center. It was no fun trying to drive on those tiny, crowded streets! It was also pouring rain ALL day, which made it difficult to see! We were completely exhausted by the time we arrived at our airbnb in Fort William. It rained every day that we were in Scotland, but this is the only day it poured non-stop.

We rode the Jacobite Steam Train from Fort William to Mallaig on the coast. The scenery was beautiful, and the train, which was used as the Hogwart's Express in the Harry Potter movies, goes over the Glenfinnan Viaduct, also famous from the Harry Potter movies. The trip takes about 2 hours there, 2 hours to explore and eat lunch in Mallaig, and then 2 hours back, although we were very delayed because we had to wait for another train to cross the viaduct and reach a point where two trains could pass again (the viaduct only has room for one train). I personally got bored and was not a huge fan of this experience, but my husband really enjoyed it. When we finally arrived back in Fort William, we drove out to Glencoe to take some pictures. We had driven through here on the way to Fort William, but couldn't get any pictures because of the rain. It really was absolutely stunning! Then we stopped at a local grocery store to buy some food for dinner.

We drove out to the Glenfinnan Viaduct to watch the morning steam train go by. I had been planning to see the afternoon train the day before, but things didn't work out that way. It was actually better to see the morning train, because the afternoon train will have the engine on backwards and not look as cool. I really enjoyed this experience, it just left the rest of the day very full. We then drove past Dornie, where we would be spending the night, and over to the Isle of Skye. We had fish and chips in Portree, and then drove up to the Fairy Glen. We didn't have a lot of time in the fairy glen, because we were just trying to fit too much into this one day. It was still fun though, even though we couldn't stay long. Then we drove back to Dornie, and stayed at the Dornie Schoolhouse Hotel. We were in Dornie to watch the sunset over Eilean Donan Castle, and this was truly magical. It was absolutely the best part of the trip! For dinner, we found a hidden pizza shop called Pizza Jo's.

We drove 4 hours back to Edinburgh, returned our rental car, and checked into our room at the Hub by Premier Inn, which was a really great hotel, and very close to the train station. We ate at a local cafe, browsed some bookstores, and did (tried) a wizard themed escape room.

We spent the day exploring Edinburgh, which is a beautiful and charming city. The main attraction for the day was Edinburgh Castle, which by the way is not all enclosed in one building. It is a conglomeration of a lot of buildings, and also VERY windy on top of the hill! So it probably is not a good idea to leave your jacket behind because it's finally a nice day out! We also went to see a movie (my husband can't miss Marvel premiers!) at The Scotsman Picturehouse, which was a very fun theater.

We walked to the tram stop at St. Andrew Square to get a tram to the airport. Then we flew home from Edinburgh Airport.