Weekend in London

For the Early May Bank Holiday weekend we went to London for sightseeing and to visit the Warner Brothers Studio Tour. We had a lovely time away and did so much in three days. I’ve popped a brief summary of what we did on each day in this blog post and some images from our weekend away as well.

Friday

We travelled to London after finishing work at mid-afternoon. We caught a couple of trains from South Wales to London Paddington and arrived around 8:30pm. From there we hopped on the tube and travelled to Barbican and it was only a couple of minutes from there to get to our apartment. It was a long journey so we just had food and went to bed early that evening.

Saturday

I woke up really early Saturday as I had gone to sleep before 11pm the night before. I don’t know what it is but my body wakes me up when I’ve had six hours of sleep! We got up and left the apartment before 8am and headed for a Starbucks coffee. Shortly afterwards we realised that Barbican underground station was closed Saturday to Tuesday for maintenance work!! Our next closest was St Paul’s which was a ten minute walk down the road.

To begin with we headed to Green Park where we walked to Buckingham Palace and then on to Westminster Abbey, the Palace of Westminster and the Elizabeth Tower (Big Ben). After that we headed across the bridge to The London Eye and continued on to Waterloo Station. We had tickets booked for The Shard Experience at 11am but we headed there early and were let in at about 10:30am. This was something I had never done before and I absolutely loved it! I much prefer this experience to The London Eye and it isn’t very rushed either. You are free to spend as much time as you like there and the sights were spectacular! We were lucky to have a boiling hot bank holiday weekend and the visibility was amazing!

After The Shard we headed to Covent Garden where we had lunch at Shake Shack. We did a lot of walking after this and went from Covent Garden > Trafalgar Square > Leicester Square > China Town > Piccadilly Circus > Regent Street > Carnaby > Oxford Circus > Oxford Street > Marble Arch. We did this all by foot as these locations are nicely positioned and the walk between them is lovely!

After getting to Marble Arch we decided to go to Notting Hill Gate to see the blue door from the movie Notting Hill and walk through the Portobello Road market. It was a lovely area and I will definitely visit there again when I go back!

From Notting Hill Gate we went back to St Paul’s to get ready for our evening meal in Leicester Square Chiquito. We had a lovely meal and went to bed fairly early as we’d walked 14 miles on Saturday and had to be up super early to get to the Warner Bros Studio Tour by 9am.

Sunday

We booked the WB Studio Tour of Harry Potter back in January as it books up so quickly. There was work going on so we couldn’t get to Watford Junction on the underground so we headed to Watford on the Metropolitan line and walked the other side. It was only a 20-30 minute walk to the bus stop when we got there which wasn’t too bad and the weather was lovely so it was quite nice to have a leisurely walk out of the city centre!

We got the shuttle bus to the studio tour and went in roughly 9:30am. I have been there a couple of times before so this was my third trip. I hadn’t seen The Forbidden Forest before as this is a new part of the tour. It took lots of courage for me to go through this section as I’m an arachnophobe but I did manage it! They had dry ice in there as well and it was very eerie. We had breakfast in the cafe there and a Starbucks coffee before continuing the tour. I think we were in there roughly three hours and then headed back from Watford Junction to London Euston.

We headed to Harrods next and then had a leisurely walk around Hyde Park and the lake there. The weather was perfect for this and we grabbed an ice cream and cold drink to cool off. After heading back to St Paul’s and seeing the cathedral we decided to go back to the apartment and figure out what we were doing that evening.

We decided to go back to Chiquito in Leicester Square as we all wanted to try something else off the menu and we also booked to watch Avengers: Infinity War in 4DX at the Cineworld there. It was a late night and we got out roughly 12:30am and then walked back to the apartment. It was a couple of miles away and the tubes had closed at that point. We had a lovely couple of days looking around London and we walked over 10 miles Sunday!

Monday

We travelled home by train on Monday so we could be back for work on Tuesday. The trains were a bit of a nightmare again so we ended up travelling from London Waterloo > Basingstoke > Reading > South Wales. The trains were pretty quiet though which was a plus and a nicer alternative than travelling from Paddington back!

It was such a lovely weekend and we did so much walking during our time in London. It’s one of my favourite cities to visit and I’m glad I could show mum and Mark around and be their tour guide!

Have you visited London lately? What are your favourite things to do/see there? Thanks for reading and have a great day!