I’ve pulled the trigger on my next trip. Well, not quite. I haven’t booked any flights, hotels, or tours, but today I bought a ticket to the Monty Python reunion concert in London this July, so now I get to organize a trip around it. I had been planning to take this year off from overseas travel, but when I heard that Python was reuniting, it seemed like the perfect excuse to make my first ever visit the UK.
I’ve been a pretty voracious consumer of British pop culture since I was a kid (at least in terms of television, music, and movies). Hell, I watch almost as many shows on BBC America as I do on any other channel . . . and probably drink even more tea than the average British citizen 🙂 , so I am very much looking forward to immersing myself in the culture while in London, and of course visiting the famous landmarks (“Look kids: Big Ben, Parliament!”).
I also want to see as much of the UK as I can while I’m over there, so if anyone has any suggestions about things to do, places to see/eat/stay, or anything else I should know about traveling to the UK (any stories you’d like to share about your travel experiences), I’d be most grateful. I’m hoping to book a tour of some sort that will take me to places like Stonehenge and Bath, and into Scotland for the second half of my stay. But if I can’t make a tour work around the Python concert, then I may just head over there and wing it.
Well, that’s it for now. Lots of planning to do. Look out, England, here I come!
Michael Rappa 
Very happy that you’re going to London. I was first there for a week in the summer of 1979. Our group spent a week there before getting on a plane and flying into Moscow for a a six week study tour, three weeks in Moscow and three weeks in Leningrad. I have two friends there, a former student and his wife and family, and a young woman in my group when I studied at Moscow State University. She’s quite the scholar and is a teaching fellow at Cambridge, her first post-doc job. London is an easy city to get around in, and, of course, there are tons of things to do. More later on.
Thanks! I’m very excited. I’ve always wanted to go to England. And I don’t have to study a new language this time. 🙂
Chunnel to Paris (day trip), Tower of London, Buckingham Palace open certain times of the year, Windsor Castle (bus ride to get to), lots of plays,
Thanks, Sue! It would be awesome to add Paris to the agenda, though I don’t know if I’ll have enough time to fit everything in.