I can’t believe that it’s less than two months before we leave for England! We’ve been planning this for a year now, and things are finally starting to seem real. We have our passports, our plane reservations, our lodging reservations, our Brit Rail and Heritage Passes, our reservations at the Globe, and even a rough itinerary (the kids put together the itinerary, after agonizing for months over which sites to include and which to reluctantly put aside for another trip. There’s only so much you can do in two weeks!)
Here’s what the kids have decided on (in no particular order):
The London Millennium Eye
Westminster Abbey
Amphibious Frog Tour (http://www.londonvisions.com/tours_frogtours.htm)
St. Albans Museum
Verulamium Roman museum with living-history docents in Roman army uniforms
British Museum
St. Paul’s Cathedral
Shakespeare’s Globe exhibition
Winter’s Tale at the Globe
Victoria & Albert Museum
Science Museum
Natural History Museum
Hampton Court
Portsmouth Historic Dockyard (including HMS Victory and the Tudor vessel Mary Rose)
Arundel Castle
Oxford (punting, museums, and more)
Bath
Stonehenge / Salisbury
The Tower of London
Tower Bridge
The Monument
Bank of England Museum
Clink Prison Museum
Old Operating Theatre
Overnight living history adventure on the reconstructed Golden Hinde (I may have to pass on that one, as my arthritis won’t like my sleeping on the floor. Fortunately, the apartments in London are rented for the entire two weeks, so I can go back there to sleep)
York (Jorvik Viking city, York Minster, Railway Museum)
As an Anglican chorister, I’m hoping to fit in a Sunday service or an Evensong at one of the cathedrals…the regular choirs will be on hiatus, but I’m told they often have wonderful guest choirs during the summer.
I still can’t quite believe this is happening! I think I’m doing even more bouncing off the walls than my daughter!
I’m so jealous!!! You are going to have a blast! I can only imagine your excitement…do you think there’s room in your suitcase for me? I can curl myself up pretty small…
The Victory is living history - it’s incredible to see and as you’re walking about her decks, and then try to imagine what life must have been like on a stormy Atlantic, to say nothing of being in a naval battle.
Beth and I are getting excited about meeting you during your stay!
Taking a look at your list, I’ve roughly put numbers against London attractions which are in reasonable proximity to each other. I’d suggest allowing at least half a day for each museum visit, they’re BIG, except the Clink which is tiny.
I’ll take a closer look tonight and give you a better idea of what you could reasonably do in a day - e.g. the Tower of London could be a whole day visit, or you could do the Tower Bridge museum first, etc.
The good news is, London isn’t that big, i.e. it only takes maybe 1/2 hour to get from any Central London attraction to any other, but if you scoot around those half hours add up.
Anyway, it looks like a mammoth schedule, some of those places I haven’t been to myself yet!
Red, have you guys thought about how you’ll be getting around within London? I presume the tube, and two weeks of travelcards for a group of people is really going to add up! Of course some of the things on your list aren’t in London, so you won’t need travelcards to see them..
I suggest looking into visitor travelcards, they might be cheaper for you but you have to buy them before you arrive.
There are lots of websites that sell visitor travelcards, just google “London visitor travelcard” but I don’t know the merits of any of them.
(A travelcard is a credit-card sized paper pass that allows you unlimited tube and bus travel, within a given time period and area of London. London is split into six travel zones with Central London being zones 1 and 2.)
You can take a look at current regular ticket prices here:
..and if the visitor pass looks like it will be a better deal for what you need, you might want to go that route. The website mentions Oystercard, that’s a plastic card you request and can put pre-paid funds on. Prepaying gives cheaper travel rates, but as non-residents I’m not sure you could get Oystercards…
Since you’re visiting Portsmouth dockyard and then later Arundel castle, you might like to think about a quick trip (about 20 minutes) from Pompey just around to Portchester to visit the Castle there.
You get a great view of the harbour from the roof of the 12th century (1130) castle keep (assuming you’re brave enough to climb the narrow spiral staircase all the way to the top…and down again!) and the place is loaded with history (12th century priory church in the grounds) and Richard II’s palace.
Its wall is the original Roman fort, complete with bastions. A splendid day out if the weather’s nice!
Sounds like an excellent trip, Redwolf. Be sure to check out Westiminster Abbey’s and St. Paul’s web-sites, as they list the Evensong canticle settings and anthems by day–or at least they did in July 2005 when I went to Merrie Ol’ on a layover. I ended up at Westminster Abbey and they did the Smith “Presces and Responses” and Mendelsohn’s “I waited on the Lord”. I forget the Mag/Nunc. We got to Evensong about 15 minutes beforehand, and I wish we had arrived earlier, because we ended up in the transept, as the choir was filled. We could only see about 25% of the choir, but it was still heavenly.
You might also want to try one of those double decker bus tours to be the complete tourist. If you don’t get off at any stops, it takes about 2 hours and it was a good intro to the sights for me.
Lastly, the kids might find this boring, but the Cotswolds is a beautiful region for driving around. I took a lot of good pictures out there.
I like it, it makes a great landmark, unlike the (Dimmer)dome. I’ve been on it three times, maybe four. It’s great after dark (the best time to see London).
One of the nice things is the gal who is coordinating this trip (one of the school parents who is also a historian and drama teacher) is very familiar with all the areas we’re going to. We started this thing out with a huge list of possible things to see, and then each child who will be going was given a section of the list to study and report on to the others. Now that they’ve got the list narrowed down, she’s going to start working on the actual itinerary, figuring out how much time (approximately) we’ll want to spend at each site and how to group sites to minimize travel and to maximize the amount of time we can spend at each. Some of the activities have defined spans, such as the play, of course, and the living history experience on the Golden Hinde.
I’m going primarily as a chaperone, so I don’t know how much free time I’ll have to go off on my own, but I’m hoping I can work some in. Having friends both here and at IGTF who live in London, I definitely hope to have a chance to see people as well as sites.
We’re going to be having one more planning meeting for the adults before we go, where we’ll work out the final details. I’ll mention the idea of Travelcards to the coordinator…they sound like a good idea, and there’s probably still time to purchase them. We have purchased Brit Rail passes (for travel outside of London, I presume) and Heritage passes (which I’m told will defray the cost of some of the venues).
We’re probably going to be having our lunches in pubs…our fearless leader knows several that aren’t the “chain, touristy” places. Dinner we’ll probably cook in our apartments, to save a bit of money (one reason we all voted on self-catering accommodations…with three moms, three dads and a teacher along, we figure we can set a pretty decent table ).
I’m really excited, can you tell? This is going to be great fun, and a wonderful experience for the kids (not to mention us adults!). Of the bunch of us, though, I think I may be the only adult in the group who’s never been to England (actually, the only countries I’ve been to other than the U.S. are Colombia, Mexico and Canada).
I emailed the person who is coordinating the trip about the Travelcards. She said “Great idea!” and went ahead and ordered them for us. It really is a wonderful idea, as we’ll be relying heavily on the Tube and other forms of public transit, and the last thing anyone wants to do is have to fumble for correct change in an unfamiliar currency when you’re trying to shepherd a bunch of kids around an unfamiliar city!
San Francisco offers something similar (don’t know if they have a special pre-order situation for visitors, but you can buy daily, weekly or monthly “FastPasses” for MUNI that gives you unlimited use of MUNI busses and MUNI Metro – the underground/streetcar complex – as well as limited use of BART), and I always recommend them to people who are traveling there…so much more convenient than change, and a lot safer and less stressful (not to mention cheaper) than renting (and parking!) a car.
