Travel: London and Stonehenge

In September 2022 my husband and I traveled to England, Scotland, Ireland, and Iceland. I’ve already written about our experience in Iceland (which was amazing) and you can read about that HERE.

This trip actually came about because I’m a huge Foo Fighters fan and after the death of their drummer, Taylor Hawkins in March 2022, they planned two tribute concerts, one in London at Wembley Stadium and one in Los Angeles. I thought going to London would be more fun than Los Angeles so we built the trip around that. We spent 6 days in London and took a day trip to Stonehenge.

This was my second time there…my first was in 2005 and was one of the craziest days of travel I have ever had in my life…I was 24 and there by myself during a terrorist attack…the July 7th bombings on the tube and double decker bus. I had to get from my hotel to a train station to catch an overnight train to Florence Italy for a study abroad class, and it was honestly one of the craziest days of my whole life.

London

We spent about 6 days in London. The first time I was there was only for 2 days and I didn’t do a ton except for a few really touristy things. So I had a bunch of things I wanted to do. Museums, Camden Town, Abbey Road, Portobello Market…and some touristy things to see for my husband because he had never been. I also wanted to go to the neighborhood of Richmond because I love the show Ted Lasso and that’s where it takes place. And obviously we had the Taylor Hawkins Tribute show at Wembley to go to.

Taylor Hawkins Tribute Show At Wembley Stadium

Our seats were pretty bad…but I didn’t even care. Being at Wembley was super cool…and the concert itself was pretty amazing. It was emotional for sure…I cried, Dave Grohl cried, the girl next to me cried. There were so many great musicians that performed…some I never thought I would ever see. Just to name a few…Paul McCartney, Brian May and Roger Taylor from Queen, Brian Johnson from AC/DC (this was a surprise and I was so excited because I love AC/DC!), Chrissie Hynde, Liam Gallagher, Josh Homme, Travis Barker, Lars Ulrich, Chris Chaney, Justin Hawkins, Violet Grohl, Mark Ronson, Josh Freese, Chevy Metal, and more. The show lasted around 6 hours!

Some of these people were friends, some family, some were musical inspirations to Taylor. In addition to all the music played by those musicians, at the end the Foo Fighters played some of their songs with rotating drummers.

I’m not an arena concert person…I prefer small shows. But this was one of the coolest concerts I have ever seen, big or small. It was really cool to have been a part of that special show.

Richmond

Have you seen Ted Lasso? Personally, I love it…and I recommend it to everyone to because it’s become one of my favorite shows. We took a train out to Richmond…I think it was about 40 minutes if I remember correctly. We walked about 10 minutes from the train station to the area in the show where Ted lives and the bar they hang out at. We walked down the little street and took photos and then actually went to the bar…in the show it’s called Crown and Anchor, but in reality it’s called The Prince’s Head. They don’t film inside the actual bar, they recreated it as a set, but it looks exactly the same as on the show…you feel like you’re actually in there. We had a few ciders there and it was pretty cool!

Camden Town

Camden Town has lots of markets, indoors and outdoor…and a wide variety of people and cultures. It’s also known for it’s ties to the punk rock scene back in the 70’s and 80’s. I wanted to check out the markets, but I’m also a big Clash fan and wanted to see the famous spot they took a photo for the cover of their self titled album. We spent a good amount of time looking for that spot…it was hard to find. It was not very impressive, but still cool to see. We shopped for band t-shirts and stopped for food in this area. Also walked through a big antique/vintage market building…I bought a vintage Kodak Brownie Camera. I enjoyed taking photos here too…so much street activity to capture.

Portobello Market

I took the train out to Notting Hill on my own to explore Portobello Market. Portobello Market is a stretch of road with vendor stalls where you can browse antiques, food, vintage/new clothes, household goods, and collectables. On weekends it’s supposed to be super busy with the street packed full of people shopping, eating, and haggling. I went on a Tuesday afternoon so it wasn’t very busy. There also weren’t a lot of stalls set up in the street and there weren’t many people… the weekend is definitely the better time to go. But I browsed vintage clothing and antiques, ate a really good gluten free falafel sandwich from a street food stand, and walked through Notting Hill where I saw the famous rainbow colored houses. It was a cute neighborhood, and I liked Portobello Market, but I kind of wish I had experienced the market on a weekend. Next time!

The National Gallery

I was torn between the Tate Modern and National Gallery, but ended up going with the National Gallery. The National Gallery is one of the big art museums in London and can be found in Trafalgar Square. It wasn’t as big as I thought it would be, but I saw lots of great art…some Van Gogh, Picasso, Monet, Rembrandt, Vermeer, and a lot of great Renaissance work. Of all the art museums in the world I’ve been too it’s lower on my list (I have high standards being that I have the Art Institute right at home in Chicago!) but I definitely recommend checking it out.

Abbey Road

If you’re a Beatles fan and in London you have to check out Abbey Road, right? Yes…we took photos walking across the street. Almost got hit a couple times. But it was pretty cool getting to see that spot. Pretty uneventful though, the area is very quiet. Abbey Road studio is right there…I don’t think you can go in, but you can go in to the gift shop. In my opinion it was a lot of overpriced Beatles stuff, we were in and out pretty quick. We heard from a man selling Beatles stuff on the street that Paul McCartney’s first house he owned (and still does) was not far, so he gave us directions and we walked over a couple blocks to see it. It had a big gate and was hard to see fully, but looked fairly small and modest.

Walking Tour

We did our own walking tour. We spent an afternoon walking around London…we saw the London Eye, Big Ben, Parliament, Westminster Abbey, and walked around Piccadilly Circus, China Town, and Trafalgar Square. We stopped for some ciders on a stationary boat bar near the London Eye and took in the sights from there. Sometimes walking tours with a guide are nice for the info, but doing your own is fun because you can go at your own pace and stop for drinks whenever you want!

London Food

Mayfair Chippy

Being gluten free, it can be hard to find stuff when I go out to eat. But London made it really easy. I did not think I would get to have fish and chips in London but I did! The Mayfair Chippy is a super cute little neighborhood restaurant in Mayfair. We waited for about 15 minutes to sit on a small patio outside. The gluten free fish and chips and tarter sauce were SO GOOD. I was so pleasantly surprised at how great the gluten free batter was. And they fry their fries in a separate fryer for people with gluten allergies. AND they had a tasty gluten free beer. Win win win.

Honest Burger

This burger place is a chain but I read that they had good gluten free burgers and fries. And they really did. I actually loved Honest Burger so much that we went twice. We went to their South Kensington location on our second day in London, and then met a friend that also happened to be in London later in the week at their Bank location. Second one was better but both were great. Highly recommend if you’re looking for a quick burger.

Stonehenge

On our last full day in London we took a day trip to Stonehenge. We used Evans Evans Tours as they came highly recommended by Rick Steves (my favorite travel guide). We did the Stonehenge Express which was 65£ each. We left on a bus from their office at 9:30am and were dropped off at Victoria Station at 3:30pm.

Stonehenge is a prehistoric monument and a Unesco World Heritage site. It’s a ring of standing stones weighing somewhere around 25 tons each. It’s believed that Stonehenge was built between 3000-2000BC. The people who built it left no written records behind so there are many myths surrounding the actual purpose of the stones, and how the stones were put into place. It is thought that Stonehenge was originally a burial ground. There is also speculation that it was a ceremonial site and a religious pilgrimage destination.

We did a self guided tour with headphones…it was really interesting. If you go to Stonehenge I highly recommend a tour of some kind so you know what you’re looking at.

A little excitement while we were there…at one point we saw a guy jump over the rope and run through the stones…security grabbed him, made his wife delete the photos as they watched, and then escorted them out! Pretty crazy.

After Stonehenge we got back to London and walked through the park behind Buckingham Palace and then went over to the Palace so my husband could see it (I had seen it on my last trip). There were not many people around…we hung out for a bit and then went back to our hotel. Little did we know less than 12 hours later that area would be absolutely mobbed with people…because the Queen died. Yep, the morning we left London for Edinburgh the Queen passed away. It didn’t affect our London trip, but it did affect our Edinburgh trip. More about that in my Scotland blog post, coming soon!