My Weekend Away in London, England, UK

A small get-away weekend trip with a whole lot of memories.

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Photo by Katie McCoy, St. Pancras International Train Station, Kings Cross, London, England, UK

This trip to London was probably one of the most spontaneous things I've ever done, if I must say - It all started when my good friend had asked me the day before to come along with her to her dance competition in Luton, England. One thing led to another, and the next thing I know I'm booking Ryan Air flights to go to Lonon the next day. A very last-minute trip, but so much fun and so worth it.

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Limerick to London

I must say that living over in Ireland does have its travel perks - the flight from Limerick to London is only an hour and fifteen minutes at the most. I have found that once you are over in Ireland and Europe, traveling is so cheap and easy! That's what made my last-minute trip to London so nice.

To start our journey out, we took the Dublin Coach bus from the University to Dublin Airport, which took about three hours. Unfortunately, there were no flight to London out of Shannon Airport at the time, which would have been so much quicker. Once we got to the airport, we did all the usual tasks like going through security, getting our boarding passes, and finding our gate. Our flight was short, and we landed in London Luton Airport in no time.

Photo by Margaret Nalley, Buckingham Palace, London, England, UK

London City Centre

I have traveled a great deal ever since I was young, so I have been to plenty of major cities around the world - Dublin, New York, Glasgow, and Reykjavík to name a few - but I can confidently say that London City has become one of my favorite cities I've been able to visit.

We only had about four hours to spend in the city centre before we had to catch our flight back to Dublin, but we were able to see a whole lot by ourselves in that short amount of time. We were scheduled to fly out of Luton around 12 noon that day, so we caught a train from Luton to London St. Pancras and Kings Cross Station at around 6:30 in the morning. It was only a forty-five minute train ride straight into London City Centre. Once we arrived at the station, we took an Uber straight to Buckingham Palace. At the palace, we were able to see the Queen's guards, the Queen Victoria Memorial Statue, and the Princess Diana Memorial walk through the palace gardens. Everything was so surreal and all so stunning.

We did most of the walking by ourselves because we didn't want to spend hundreds of pounds on any guided tours around the city, and we'd rather do everything on our own time anyways. We did a lot of walking up random streets and alley ways just to see what we would come across, and to give us that thrill of exploring in a new city. We ended up over towards the London Eye, and yes it was as massive in person as it seems on TV. After more walking and exploring different parts of the city, we ended up finding a small quaint cafe where we took a moment to rest and to recollect ourselves.

Later, it was time for us to head back to the train station, catch our train, head back to the hotel and to catch our flight out of Luton back to Dublin.

Photo by Katie McCoy, London City Centre, England, UK

Final Thoughts

I would love to go back and spend more time in London - I thought that the whole city was so beautiful and so welcoming and so full of wonderful history. There was always something to do and always something to see, even if we were just simply walking around random streets.

Overall, London is as amazing as everyone says it is, and I must say that one of the biggest highlights of the whole weekend trip was getting to see the iconic red telephone booths.