Lake District

Though it took awhile to get here, I’m so glad I chose to visit the Lake District: an area where the Brits – and truly, people from all over the world! – regularly come to play outdoors. Keswick, my home base for three days, is adorable, as are all of these towns in this region. The houses are a beautiful stone with slate roofs and gorgeous landscaping, chock full of flowers.

The Keswick Hostel is so nice – it doesn’t have that hostel feel at all. It lies directly on the Greta River, with a really nice cafe on-site. In fact, a fair amount of families were staying there. Since the town is a base for outdoor activities, guests go to bed at reasonable times. It made me hopeful that I can, in fact, incorporate hostels into my travels without feeling like I’m crashing a college party.

The landscape is a lot more tame than Colorado, but it has its own beauty – that quintessential English countryside. My hike to Walla Crag perfectly resembled the scenery evoked by Beatrix Potter’s books, which she wrote while living in this area: carpets of ferns and purple heather, moss-covered stones, waterfalls, roaming sheep and delicious forest smells.

This region reminds me a bit of Scotland – which makes perfect sense, as it’s just a bit south of there. The day I hiked around Buttermere Lake in particular could’ve passed for the Scottish Highlands: lush, dramatic green hills and misty weather.

York

Then on to York, which is such a cool city: history is everywhere! I enjoyed walking on the city walls, which were first built by the Romans, with the “new” higher layers added in the Middle Ages.

The York Castle Museum is absolutely amazing. It’s like the Smithsonian, but with truly historical artifacts. I was particularly impressed with their history of fashion exhibit. Imagine me, the history teacher, totally geeking out, taking pictures of literally every single placard and display case of the exhibit. I think I spent 2 hours in that portion of the museum alone.

I also loved wandering around an antique mall, which is so much more impressive than ours. For example, the first room had bronze arrowheads and Roman artifacts, including coins and oil lamps. In contrast, I usually see at least one set of the Smurfs glasses my family had in the ‘80s in the antique malls near my house.

Oxford

After a long day of travel to Oxford, I arrived too late to do much. The most picturesque college (with a lot of Harry Potter set inspiration/filming sites) had closed its access to visitors for the day. Instead, I just wandered around and ate fish and chips at a historic pub (including in its folklore the spot where Bill Clinton didn’t inhale).

London

Elise arrived! My main goal that day was to keep her awake, so we had tea and scones and walked the sites and parks around Buckingham Palace. Fortuitously, my brother-in-law was in town, so he sent us off on our adventures with a memorable meal.

We enjoyed Hyde Park; the Notting Hill Saturday antique market; a great, cheap Indian meal on Brick Lane; a Buckingham Palace Tour of the public rooms; and a City Cruises boat tour.

Then it was off to the Harry Potter Warner Brothers studio tour! We spent the entire day there, and it was fascinating to see the “behind the scenes” details that went into the filming. It also has the sets where much of the filming took place, including the Great Hall and Gringotts. We also gorged on everything butterbeer: drinks, ice cream and mini-butterbeer desserts with our afternoon tea.

It took an entire day to return to London and then take a bus to our next destination – try to guess where that is! To help, the following picture of Elise – aka Carmen Sandiego – provides a clue. Cheers!