Now that the wedding and honeymoon are officially over and married life is just starting, I feel like I can finally sit down and recap it all. The wedding was the best day of my entire life, and I don’t think I will ever forget one moment of it. Following our wedding, our London honeymoon was literally incredible.
So until our wedding photos come back, I have our itinerary and all our pictures from the honeymoon to share. We are working on putting together a video of the honeymoon, and you can watch for that on my Instagram, @classicallygrace !
How to Find Cheap Flights for London Honeymoon
I want to share a few details about our honeymoon before we jump into it. Preston and I aren’t huge fans of the beach or anything tropical, hot, etc. We know it’s weird, we have been told several hundred times, but at least we found each other, right? So when it came time to start searching locations for our December-January honeymoon, we mainly looked at places to celebrate winter. For a brief time we thought about Disney World or a cruise (we liked the idea of just showing up somewhere and not driving, worrying, etc), but neither of those really felt right for this important of a trip. I looked at flights to different locations almost everyday, but we really had our hearts set on London or somewhere in Europe.
Every time I would look, these flights were around $2,000 a person, for an economy seat! It was insane. We looked at New York City, Seattle, Canada, L.A. and several other cities, but we still held out hope for Europe. On my birthday in May, I was doing my usual internet searching for flights, and I think I searched cheapest flights in January. One website said Sweden, so I looked and sure enough, it was 1/3 of the other European flights I had seen. What really stuck out to me on this flight, was the layover in LONDON! I quickly typed in London as the destination for the same dates as the Sweden flight, and there they were! We booked them in less than thirty minutes after seeing the price, just in case it was some type of glitch.
We also used Scott’s Cheap Flights and all the usual flight searching apps to keep our eye on them, but nonstop Google flight searching was our best bet.
I am going to split this post into two, before we went to Scotland and then Scotland and our last day in London!
Day 1 // Flight to our London Honeymoon
We flew out of Nashville (2.5 hour drive from us in Knoxville) because it was a little bit cheaper from there. Looking back now, after we paid for parking (someone could have dropped off/picked us up in Knoxville), a hotel, dinner out the night before, the drive time, I think it would have been the same price to fly out of Knoxville, but now we know for next time!
After a short layover in Detroit, we embarked on the seven hour flight to London-Heathrow! We flew Delta.
Day 2 // Sleep-deprived but giddy
We landed around 7 a.m., bought our Oyster cards (public transportation system), and made our way toward our hotel, Hilton Hyde Park. We checked our luggage here, and I changed into something a little bit more stylish (more on how I packed my bags for ultimate efficiency later). Check in wasn’t until 2 p.m., so we ventured out to explore a little bit.
We took the tube to the Notting Hill area and ate lunch at the Churchill Arms. This place was interesting, the food wasn’t what we expected- they actually serve Thai food instead of traditional pub food. It was good, but I wouldn’t go out of my way just for the food. However, I would definitely put this on your list because of the exterior! If we hadn’t been about to fall asleep, we would have explored Notting Hill more! There are so many good picture spots in this area.
We made it back to the hotel and took a really quick power nap. Neither one of us are nappers, seriously, the only time I ever nap is when I am really sick, but as soon as we got to the hotel and turned the lights off, we were out. We set alarms for an hour, and I woke up so refreshed. We got all dressed up and set out for dinner and the main attraction we had planned that day.
I have wanted to see Harry Potter and the Cursed Child since it came out several years ago. The tickets were SO expensive when we were going to NYC, and the play taking up two nights made it undoable. Since we had quite a while in London and the tickets were much more affordable, we decided to go for it! We dressed up for the first night, but London show going culture must be different than NYC, because everyone else was very casual! I am still glad we dressed up because it made it a little more fun and exciting than it already was.
We ate at the Poppie’s Fish and Chips location that is closest to the show. It was really good and just the type of food I wanted for my first meal in London.
We went straight back to our hotel after the play, which got out around 10:15 by the way, and crashed even faster than we did earlier in the day.
Day 3 // Explore
PRET is one of my favorite places to eat whenever I am in a big city. I know it’s a chain, but it’s seriously so good and easy. They have this tomato, ham croissant, and I think I had one too many while we were there. We stopped in there for a little bit of breakfast and some water, and then we were off for the day.
Our first stop was Westminster Abbey. We hadn’t originally planned on going for the tour, but exploring the duomos of Italy was one of my favorite past times when I studied abroad last summer, so we decided to do it. Keep in mind, they have a pretty good student discount here, so make sure to bring your student ID if you have one! The church was so, so beautiful. You can’t take any pictures inside, so take my word for it, We paid 5 pounds each for an extra part of the tour that had just opened up a little while ago, and we both really enjoyed this less crowded area. We could have spent an entire day here, but we have come to terms with scratching the surface of the places we visit, because there is just no way to see and do everything fully.
We finally pulled ourselves away from Westminster to attend our reservation at St. Ermin’s for afternoon tea. No London honeymoon is complete with out afternoon tea service, and it was in a great location for our stops this day, and it was so good!! I have loved every experience I have had with afternoon tea, and Preston loved his first time experiencing it. Keep in mind, afternoon tea takes anywhere from 1.5-2 hours unless you are rushing it, which I would never recommend.
St. Ermin’s was in the perfect location to walk to Buckingham Palace and take in all of it’s glory. We took a few photos and videos and then walked around St. James’ Park for a little while.
After this, we ventured over to St. Paul’s cathedral and walked across the “wobbly bridge,” which is the bridge blown up in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. From there, we got on a water taxi that was part of the tube system- I highly recommend doing this. It was the cheapest way to see the city from the Thames.
We ran out of time for a sit-down dinner, so we went to Shake Shack. Like I said, I don’t like eating at chains while traveling, but I make an exception for shake shack because there are none close to us. It was so good, as always! We then went to the second and final night of Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, which we loved by the way!
We weren’t ready for the night to end, so we went to Gelupo Gelato for a little treat. The great thing about a London honeymoon- you can literally explore from sunrise to well past midnight if you wanted to!
Day 4 //
I wanted a traditional English Breakfast at some point on the trip, and we found The Breakfast Club! There are multiple locations, so if you get to one, and it’s packed. look up the next nearest location and try there. It was really yummy, and the service was easy and fast.
We then tubed over to the Victoria and Albert museum! This is a really great, FREE museum, but if you don’t have time to go here, don’t worry! It’s not a “must-see,” but I really enjoyed the British fashion exhibit.
After speeding through the mass of amazing exhibits at V&A, we tubed back toward the Tower Bridge and the London Tower. We took the tour of the Tower, and it was amazing! I am so glad we went, even though it was one of the most expensive tours we did. Make sure you have a while to spend there, because I couldn’t have skipped the Crown Jewels, Armory, Royal Quarters, or really any of the exhibits.
I knew I wanted to explore the Covent Garden area, so we wandered over there and stumbled upon a really popular restaurant completely by accident. We ate outside at the Ivy market Grille, but I wish we had made reservations so we could have eaten inside. It was so good!
After this we went to Sky Garden, try to make reservations here if you can! It’s free to go up there, and it’s one of the best views in the city. If you aren’t interested in the drinks, you could always buy a small snack or soft drink.
For the sake of time, I am going to end this London honeymoon post here and pick back up on Day 5 when we leave for Scotland! I hope you all have enjoyed this post as much as I did reliving this fun trip. Traveling with Preston is something I have been dreaming of for more than seven years, so this is a pretty special post for me.
Make sure to check out Part 2 of this London honeymoon and see where we went next in our U.K. trip!
