The Leonard Home

I’ve been recapping our epic European adventure over the last few days and now we’ve arrived in London! If you’ve missed the last couple posts, we started with a week in Ireland, with a 4 day road trip through southern Ireland, followed by 3 days in Dublin.

London has been at the top of my dream travel locations ever since I first read Harry Potter in third grade. Since we were going to be so close, we hopped on a short flight from Dublin to make my dreams come true. And let me tell you, London lived up to the hype!

Where to Stay:

Our London hotel was incredible, and right across the street from the National Gallery. We were close to a tube station which made getting around the city really easy, but we did a lot of walking. I’d highly recommend Page8, especially if it’s your first time in London.

How to Get Around:

You can get an Oyster Card if you like, but I’d recommend that you make it easy on yourself by not purchasing a card that you can lose. Instead, you can use Apple or Google Pay straight from your phone at every turnstile at no extra charge.

The tube was super easy to use and got you close enough to everywhere you would want to go. The only time I would caution against is when you’re coming into the city for the first time or are leaving it and have luggage. I didn’t realize that most stations are not accessible and therefore didn’t have elevators or escalators. We were both extremely close to the 50 lb Delta weight limit for our suitcases and it was brutal carrying them up so so many stairs to get out of the station. For this reason I 100% recommend getting a cab to get to your hotel from the airport.

We arrived in London Sunday afternoon and were immediately excited to start exploring.

After a week in Ireland eating nothing but pub food, we were beyond ready to eat a meal that didn’t come with potatoes. London is famous for its Indian food and we knew that would be the perfect way to reset our palates. Tandoor Chophouse had some of the best food I’ve had in my life- I would highly recommend checking them out.

After we were fueled up, we started to wander around London. First, we headed to Piccadilly Circus. I think I was expecting more screens and lights from “Europe’s Times Square” but it was still fun to walk around and there were plenty of buskers to stop and listen to.

After that, we headed towards St James’s Park (pictured in the day’s header). We loved wandering around this beautiful park and watching the ducks.

St James’s Park is directly in front of Buckingham Palace, so of course that’s where we headed next. This area was pretty impressive with every gate and statue decorated with gold. We weren’t there on a date that was open for tours, so we just viewed the outside.

It had been a long travel day, so after that we took a meandering path back to the hotel and to bed to recharge for a full following day!

We started our morning with a Full English Breakfast (very good but I prefer the Full Irish) then headed out to explore.

We weren’t interested in watching the Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace, but we were interested in the Changing of the King’s Life Guard at Horse Guards Parade. They’re similar concepts but we thought the King’s Life Guard was much more interesting since all of the guards are on horseback.

Horse Guards Parade is near the National Gallery so we made that our next stop. This is a huge art gallery filled with so many famous works of art (Van Gogh’s Sunflowers, Monet’s Water Lilies). I’m not the biggest art buff, I just know what I like: like this giant super lifelike horse painting that looks like a taxidermy from a few rooms over.

Once we had our fill of the art gallery, we grabbed some pizza for lunch, then hopped on the tube.

Our first destination was Tower Bridge. This was Matt’s mom’s biggest recommendation for London so we dutifully headed there. It was set up as a museum along the stairs as you climbed up to the top of the bridge where you could learn about the history and the engineering behind the bridge.

After that, we headed to nearby Tower of London. I was interested in learning some of the darker history- the tortures and executions that were held here. Matt was excited by the history of the exotic animals that called the tower home, and the ravens that are still there. We both enjoyed looking at the Crown Jewels, but it was a very crowded area and was sometimes tough to get a good look. We were at the tower for 3-4 hours and it was my favorite thing we did in London.

This was a very busy day! We easily blew past 20,000 steps and were completely exhausted at the end of the day. For a day that’s easier on your legs, I think you could cut out the Tower Bridge tour and just enjoy looking at it from the Tower of London. After we finished up at the Tower of London, we grabbed a quick dinner and cozied up in bed, where we slept the hardest we had on the whole trip thus far.

We started Day 3 with some breakfast in a cafe, then took a walk to Westminster Abbey. Be sure to book these tickets in advance- we booked only a few days before visiting and there were very few time slots available. Once inside we grabbed our audio guides and enjoyed our self guided tour. The audio guides were great and super informative, and really brought the history of the abbey to life.

After we finished our tour, it was time for some lunch. We hopped on the tube to get to Borough Market. If you’ve been looking at travel content on TikTok, you’ve probably seen this place. There was an option for any type of food you could possibly want. We grabbed some meat pies for lunch and after we were finished we had to visit the TikTok famous chocolate covered strawberry stand. So so delicious!

Matt’s biggest bucket list item for this trip was the London Zoo. This was really fun, especially since it’s something I wouldn’t have considered myself. My favorite animal we saw was the Pygmy hippo- so cute! If we hadn’t gone to the zoo we would’ve gone to the British Museum, both of which I think would be great ways to fill an afternoon.

Hitting Day 4 of London and Day 11 of the trip, we were really getting exhausted. So we were thrilled that Day 4 was all about sitting down. We wore our nice clothes and I even pulled out a pair of heels (that’s how little walking we were doing). We didn’t get our start until later in the day, choosing to sleep in and then slowly get ready for the day.

We started our activity with Afternoon Tea at the first possible time we could- right at noon. We chose to take our tea at the Hamyard Hotel. It was delicious and very fancy!

After tea, we headed to The Palace Theater for our most anticipated event of the trip- watching Harry Potter and the Cursed Child. It’s a long play, only showing at 7 theaters worldwide (at time of writing) and doesn’t tour. The location in London is the only place you can see the show in its original full format, which is split into two 2.5 hour long shows in one day. We watched the first half, went to our dinner reservation, then back for the second half of the play. I’d recommend making a reservation at a nearby restaurant to avoid stress- the lines at nearby restaurants get quite long as people are trying to get food before plays start at nearby theaters.

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We loved the four days we spent in London, but the fun doesn’t stop there! We still had a train to catch! Stay tuned for the last post recapping our trip with three fabulous days in Paris!