England in July

For our recent trip to a Norway fjord & gaming cruise, we wanted a little buffer time in England upon arrival, just in case. Fortunately, aside from the rough flight to Toronto, we landed in Heathrow mostly on time.

We had special guests waiting for us at the airport: Mark (who has handled Stonemaier Games’ replacement parts in the UK for nearly a decade) and his wife, Donna. We had arranged for a car to take us all to Stonehenge, one of my favorite places. It was as beautiful as it was on my last visit 20 years ago.

In London, we stayed at a beautiful historic hotel that included a WWII-era cellar now filled with wine. The hotel upgraded our room to the biggest I’ve ever seen–the first of two bathrooms alone was bigger than most hotel rooms I’ve stayed in!

We had a few lovely meals in London, including fish and chips, a fish cake at the top of the Sky Garden, and curry at an Indian restaurant near Trafalgar Square. I was worried I’d feel like too much of a tourist by taking the hop-on-drop-off double-decker buses, but they were actually a really handy mode of transportation (unless the bridge is up, in which case we had to wait for a long time). Plus, London has lots of green space for pleasant walks.

We spent a few hours specifically at the Tower of London, which is really more of a fortress than a tower. We walked across/through the walls, hung out with very pampered ravens, saw the crown jewels, and toured the central “tower” itself to learn about medieval weapons. We also had some much-needed coffee and ice cream (mixed together) at Picadilly Whip afterwards.

Our last stop before getting on the cruise ship was in Southampton, a port city with an impressive seawall. It’s where the Titanic departed from, though we didn’t have time to go to that museum–we had a boat of our own to board! I’ll talk about that part of the adventure soon.

Have you ever visited any of these places? What was your favorite part?