Melanie Tucker 6099230304 Travel Designer [email protected] Rare Finds Travel Design http://www.rarefindstravel.com Escape the Ordinary...on a Long London Weekend (with Harry Potter Bonus!) Page 2 of 20 Trip Summary Day 1 Welcome to London! How to get into the city Lodging choice #1: The Bloomsbury Hotel - The Bloomsbury Hotel Lodging Option #2: 40 Winks (if you want something REALLY special) Lodging choice #3: The Morgan Hotel (where I stay!) Lodging Option #4: One Fine Stay (if you've got a big group) Get oriented with a Free On Foot Tour Trace your American roots at the Ben Franklin House & Mayflower Pub Meet Tom Machett, your London Ambassador for a custom pub crawl tonight A novel dinner idea... Dine in the Dark at Dans Le Noir! Day 2 Morning Scavenger Hunt of British Museum with THATMuse - PDF British Museum map.pdf Afternoon Tea Bus Tour The Big Sites (map below so you can get your bearings) Dinner choice #1: Butler-ed picnic in the park for lunch! Dinner choice #2: Wahacka Dinner choice #3: Bailey's Fish & Chips Want to see a Broadway show in the West End? Day 3 HIGHLY RECOMMENDED Lunchtime East End Food Walk Afternoon Bike tour with Fat Tire London Time to go home BONUS Harry Potter DAY! Warner Bros Studio Tour with double-decker red Harry Potter bus! Harry Potter themed London Walks tour ESCAPE ROOM, Harry Potter style! Sleep in a Harry Potter Suite in the Georgian Hotel Or go all-out and sleep in an Oxford dorm with breakfast in a true Hogwartz-esque dining room! Page 3 of 20 Day 1 Welcome to London! You can arrive by either Heathrow or Gatwick International Airports - or by train from Europe. Welcome! London is famous for its Royals and tea time, the Eye Ferris wheel and the Globe theater, its pubs and history (including the Ben Franklin House and Mayflower Pub!) If you remember one this, make it this: LOOK LEFT! (because they drive on the opposite side of the road from us, so cars will be coming from your LEFT as you cross the street) How to get into the city Option 1: Hire a driver (the simplest) Airport transfer provide can be provided by Barcellos They meet you in the terminal, holding a sign with your name on it, and you'll find them as soon as you exit Immigration and Customs. Contact info: The Travel In Group Their office # is: +44 203 823 9739 FYI: if you're trying to call them in-country, you drop the country code and add a "0" like this: 0203 823 9739 Option 2: Take the train (the fastest) The Heathrow Express train gets you from airport to city in 15 minutes. Rate: £25 one way, £37 roundtrip Get tickets here: https://www.heathrowexpress.com Option 3: Take the tube, or subway (the cheapest) The Picadilly line runs out of Heathrow about every 10-15 minutes, takes under an hour, and drops you at Picadilly station from where you can walk, taxi, or Uber to your hotel. The station for Heathrow Terminals 2 and 3 is between the terminals, which are a few minutes' walk away via pedestrian subway. The station for Heathrow Terminal 4 and Heathrow Terminal 5 is underground, in the basements of the terminal buildings. Page 4 of 20 Get an Oyster card to cover this transfer and all your tube rides around the city. Oyster pay-as-you-go fares are £5.10 (Mon - Fri, 06:30 - 09:30) and £3.10 (all other times). For details see oyster.tfl.gov.uk – or a contactless payment card. NOTE: trains run about 5am until about midnight so if your flight lands in the middle of the night, get a driver. Lodging choice #1: The Bloomsbury Hotel 16-22 Great Russell Street in London +44 20 7347 1000 The Bloomsbury, a 1928 Sir Edwin Lutyens, Grade-II listed building on Great Russell Street in London, has been recently completed. It's a timeless hidden London gem, and was recently voted #3 Hotel in all of London by Conde Nast! And is characterized by its elegant garden squares and streets lined with an eclectic selection of shops and boutiques. The Bloomsbury hotel is just a stone’s throw from Theatreland, Soho and Covent Garden, 5 minutes’ walk from Tottenham Court Road Tube Station and Crossrail, due to be launched later this year, offering direct access from Heathrow. Rates: around $350/night All rates are Bed and Breakfast, available 7 days, rate inclusive of Full English Breakfast, inclusive of VAT. Website: https://the-bloomsbury-hotel-london.hotel-ds.com/en/ To book, email Michael at [email protected] Dining/bar options in the hotel: Dalloway Terrace – a beautiful space that quickly became one of London’s most sought after alfresco dining hotspots, serving brunch, lunch, dinner and afternoon tea. The quintessentially English space, named after the eponymous character created by Virginia Woolf, is an indoor/outdoor restaurant, fully heated in winter, offering the peace and charm of a secluded garden. It is also one of the most instagrammed restaurants in London. The Bloomsbury Club Bar - launched in the summer of 2016, brings old school romance and the magic of bygone era of glamour to the hotel. The bar has a members’ club feel and is furnished with plush leather armchairs, atmospheric lighting and rich mahogany panelling, taking inspiration from the lives of the famously hedonistic Bloomsbury Set - Virginia Woolf, John Maynard Keynes, E.M. Forster and Lytton Strachey, who all lived, worked or studied together in Bloomsbury and were united by an abiding belief in the importance of the arts. Page 5 of 20 The bar leads on to an enchanting outdoor space; a twinkling grotto perfect for long summer evenings, while the drinks menu takes influence from the 1920s and 1930s, with a selection of original cocktails named after the area’s literary icons and their libertine lifestyle. The Bloomsbury Hotel 16-22 Great Russell St, London, GREATER LONDON, GB, WC1B 3NN 020 7347 1000 Lodging Option #2: 40 Winks (if you want something REALLY special) 109 Mile End Rd, Bethnal Green, London Phone: +44 20 7790 0259 German Vogue called it "the most stylish small hotel in the world" 40 Winks is based in hip and trendy East London (closer to the great food tour! That's a plus) - a unique micro B&B is about as stylish as you're going to get. The house has a very glamorous history. For more than a decade, it was one of London's most popular fashion and celebrity locations, playing host to hundreds of major advertising campaigns and high profile editorial shoots. So many photographers, stylists and models kept asking if they could stay here that we came up with the idea of '40 Winks'. We opened our doors in 2009, somewhat cheekily describing ourselves as the world’s first ‘micro boutique hotel’ (we only have two guest rooms). Despite our bijou size, however, we have achieved an almost mythical status over the last ten years, attracting thousands of pages of press and making a lot of people very happy. Rate: £185 for the large room and £280 for the 2 rooms. Reserve early because there's only 2 rooms: http://www.40winks.org Lodging choice #3: The Morgan Hotel (where I stay!) 24 Bloomsbury St, Bloomsbury Phone: +44 20 7636 3735 Located in same neighborhood, but at different price point, rooms are small but location is awesome and staff is just great - served us breakfast way early before our departure flight. I can personally recommend this place! Morgan Hotel is only a few minutes walk from the British Museum, Holborn Station & Russell Square, London’s most happening place the West End of London which is famous for its fantastic range of theatres, restaurants & tourist attractions is near by. Rooms start at £125/night. Here's the website: http://www.morganhotel.co.uk Page 6 of 20 Lodging Option #4: One Fine Stay (if you've got a big group) Sort of the AirBnB of mansions, this company is wonderful to deal with and offers unique properties - some chic penthouses to accommodate a couple, some large homes to accommodate a family (or 2). Here's their website: https://www.onefinestay.com Get oriented with a Free On Foot Tour They're not really free. They are gratuity-only tours so you pay the guide at the end of the tour whatever amount you feel the tour was worth (typically about £10pp) They've got free walks - different neighborhood to align with your flight/arrival times. They've got self-guided walks - if your timing just doesn't dovetail nicely with their pre-scheduled tours. And they've got themed walks like Royal London and Harry Potter - if you've been to London before and want a different angle. Here's the website to pick your tour: https://freetoursbyfoot.com/london-tours/ Trace your American roots at the Ben Franklin House & Mayflower Pub 36 Craven St, Charing Cross, London Open til 5pm Phone: +44 20 7925 1405 Benjamin Franklin House is a museum in a terraced Georgian house at 36 Craven Street, London, close to Trafalgar Square. It is the only surviving former residence of Benjamin Franklin, one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. The house dates from c. 1730, and Franklin lived and worked there for sixteen years. Visit the House The only way the see the House is through one of our guided visits. Advance booking is highly recommended.