Here’s how we spent our first 3 days in London this past July!! See below for all the details on where we stayed and what we did while we were there! I hope this helps you plan your perfect trip to London too!
Day 1: Arrival Day in London
We headed out to London with a late afternoon flight from Houston. We landed 9 hours later at 7:40 London time. I love that we got there so early!! The first thing we did was take the Elizabeth Line to our hotel, Great Scotland Yard. This hotel was a great location near Westminster! I would definitely stay here again. Plus, we transferred our Chase points to our Hyatt loyalty account and stayed for FREE on points!
Our room wasn’t ready because it was so early in the morning, so we went off to see some sights. Up first, we had to take a picture at this iconic photo spot, which wasn’t very far from our hotel! Next, we crossed over Westminister Bridge and took some more photos.
Then we headed to St. James’ Park, crossed over the beautiful Blue Bridge in the park and headed towards the Mall that leads to the palace. After this, we walked over to our lunch stop.
We went to the Gloucester, where we couldn’t resist trying our first fish and chips!! After this, the plan was to walk around Kensington Park, but we hadn’t slept well on the plane ride and we were exhausted. We headed back to our hotel to find our room ready, and we took a 30 minute nap!!! I know this goes against the jet lag rules, but we just couldn’t help it!
After our little nap, we headed back out and took the tube to the best afternoon tea location!! We went to The Ivy Chelsea Garden. This was a beautiful restaurant! I’m so glad we decided to have our tea here. I did make reservations for 3:00 before the trip. I got the Cream Tea, which is just tea and scones. It was a perfect London thing to do on our first day!!
Then we headed back to the hotel, took another 30 minute nap, and then got dressed to head out to visit some pubs and have dinner in Covent Garden! Our hotel was right near this area, and I highly recommend visiting this area! It was beautiful! Walk up St. Martin’s Lane, and just before Mr. Fogg’s Tavern, head down Goodwin’s Court on the right! It has a very Harry Potter feel!
Mr. Fogg’s Tavern would be a great place to stop for drinks too!
After this, we headed up to the street, Long Acre, and took a right to head to Slingsby Place. We walked through here and headed to our first pub stop at the Crown and Anchor!
Isn’t it gorgeous?! I had my very first cider here! Loved it!
After we left there, we headed to Lamb & Flag for another drink stop! This is the oldest pub in the Covent Garden area. We loved it!
Then we headed to our dinner reservation at The Nag’s Head. It had a beautiful staircase leading up to the restaurant upstairs.
I tried my first pie! The Nag’s Head serves their pies with a red wine gravy! It was delicious! After this, we did plan to go to a few more stops, but we had been up for so many hours by this point. We were ready for a full night’s sleep!
If you want to see a video of our Day 1, go here!!
Day 2: Exploring More London Sites
Today was a huge day! We went from one end of the city to the other…well not really because London is huge, but it felt like it. Thank goodness for the tube! We got an early start and headed back into Covent Garden to stop at St. John’s Bakery Neal’s Yard. Neal’s Yard is such a cute, little, colorful courtyard.
We grabbed some coffee and a few pastries and then headed to the nearby subway to head to…
I was so excited to visit the Notting Hill area!! I really did my research and found some great walks to see the pretty streets. We also went shopping a little down Portobello Rd. I would definitely do this again! The homes were so cute!
In addition to Portobello Rd, we went down Denbigh Terrace to Denbigh Rd to Westbourne Grove to Ledbury Rd, down Lonsdale and back to Portobello Rd. I loved this walk and wished we could have stayed longer.
We bought some souvenirs for our kids, a beautiful tea set for my oldest daughter, and a cute top I can’t wait to wear this fall!
We hopped back on the tube to head back to our hotel to change. It had definitely warmed up!! Our hotel really was a great location! As we left the hotel and headed towards the Westminister Bridge, we noticed a ton of people gathering along the streets near the gates to Parliament. There was also a band playing. We asked a few people what was happening and were told that the King was coming!! So B.J. and I worked our way to a great spot to wait. After about 15 minutes, we saw the procession coming, and there he was!! It was the coolest, most random luck event of our trip!! It turns out that it was the opening day of Parliament! We were so excited to have caught that!!
After that, we headed across the Westminister Bridge and towards the London Eye. We weren’t really interested in riding it, but we did want to see it. After that, we hopped on a tube to head to Borough Market!
I love a good food hall or market in big cities! This one was HUGE! We didn’t even scratch the surface of it, but we tried to hit the highlights. I did get one of the sausage rolls and The Ginger Pig…delicious! I also tried a Humble Crumble dessert. I wanted to try more, but the lines were SO LONG and there were so many people! I would like to go again, but I would want to go before it gets too crowded.
After this, we headed to walk along the Thames towards Tower Bridge. Isn’t it stunning?! It’s not a very long walk at all from Borough Market.
We crossed Tower Bridge and headed to the Tower of London! I had pre-purchased tickets before our trip. I had booked the tickets for 2:00 and we didn’t get there until about 3:00, so I was worried we had missed our time. But it all worked out, and it was no big deal at all! We were able to go in and see what we wanted to see!!
We spent about an hour at the Tower of London, and then took the tube back to our hotel to change for dinner and our big plans for the evening!
Dinner was at The Crutched Friar. It was really good! I got another pie, and at this point, I was feeling like I couldn’t wait to try to make these this fall! BJ got the Braised Beef Short Rib, which was delicious too!
Then, it was time to head to our Historical Pub Tour!! It was such a blast!! It was really one of our favorite parts of the entire trip!! Ricky and his dog, Diggity, were awesome tour guides!! We not only had a great time, but we learned so much about this history of the City of London.
Our tour started out near St. Paul’s Cathedral and focused on the oldest part of the city. We visited 4 historical pubs, and we learned about this history of each one. Many of these spots were visited by the likes of Shakespeare and Charles Dickens!
Our first stop was The Cockpit. Isn’t this building so cool? And when you walk in these pubs, you really get a sense of how old they are!
Many of these pubs had hand-pulled cask ales, ciders, and I even tried a Pimm’s!
The Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese was probably my favorite of all the pubs! We went way down into the basement for this one! Knowing this one was built in 1667 just had me fascinated! Loved it!
It really was the best night!! I highly recommend this tour!!
What a day!! If you want to see a video of Day 2, go here.
Day 3: Windsor Castle and Buckingham Palace
We headed out early for our combination tour of Windsor Castle and Buckingham Palace. We booked this tour through Viator. We started out by heading to catch the tour bus to Windsor.
I absolutely loved Windsor!! It was the cutest town, and I wish we could have spent longer here!!
I’m so glad we came here! We got to tour the castle and even St. George’s Chapel, which houses the burial sites of Queen Elizabeth II and family and even King Henry the VII! This was so cool!!
I will be returning to Windsor one day! It was such a beautiful town!
We left the castle, and then headed out to eat at The Carpenter’s Arms. I got a delicious burger!! Then we headed back on the tour bus to London to head to Buckingham Palace.
I have approximately zero pictures of Buckingham Palace, which is a bummer! But they were pretty strict about photos. We did enjoy our tour though. After this, we headed back to our hotel to change and headed out to dinner in the Covent Garden area. We ate at a great little pizzeria, Fatto o Manno.
That’s it for Day 3! If you want to see a video of the day, go here!
I’ll recap our second half of our trip where we headed out of London soon! In the meantime, here is a list of what we did each day! And don’t forget to follow my travel page on Instagram, Our Point Destinations, for all the details on how we used points for this trip!
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