I’m back at it, y’all! Back at what? you might ask. A lot of things: blogging and traveling for sure.
This summer I spent four days in London, five days in Southampton, one day in Winchester, and two days in Lyme Regis. One reason for my trip: a conference to commemorate the 250th anniversary of Austen’s birth. The other reason for my trip: to take my niece, Kensington, to visit her palace. This has been on my bucket list since she was born.
Here’s a breakdown of my summer 2025 trip in terms of where we stayed:
- July 6-9: London
- July 9-14: Southampton
- July 14-16: Lyme Regis
- July 16: London
In this first blog post I’ll talk about the first day of our trip.
July 6: London
Every seasoned traveler knows that when you fly from the US to the UK and arrive in London at 6:30 a.m. you must stay awake the entire day or else find yourself out of sorts for days. As my niece, sister, and I arrived at that time, I planned a day for us that included a lot of standing, walking, and sight-seeing.
I can’t believe I never knew this before, but there are places in the UK where you can pay £5 per bag to store your luggage for 24 hours. We stored our two suitcases at a convenience store near the Underground station closest to the sites we planned to visit. It was awesome. We dropped off our luggage and walked around for an hour or so before heading over to the Victoria & Albert (V&A) Museum.
We wanted to have a bite to eat in the café, which I had read about online as one of the hidden gems of London. Indeed, it is. I had been to the V&A before and missed this one. If you get a chance to go to the V&A, you must visit “the world’s first museum café.” It’s gorgeous and the food and drink is good, too! Check out the three rooms, for they have different aesthetics.
At the V&A I had one mission: to find that 18th-century machine I recently learned about in a talk. This object is called Tippoo’s Tiger. You gotta click on that link to learn about this automaton that shows a tiger mauling a British solider. I wish I could have seen it in action, but alas it’s in a glass box and stationary. Apparently you get to see and hear the man being attacked. Wowza!
I was also surprised to see some plaster cast reconstructions of famous statues and architecture from the past in the museum. I was shocked to see Michelangelo’s David standing before me. I also enjoyed entering some of the architectural casts.
Of course, I went to see the Renaissance and 18th-century collections again. It’s funny how small they seemed this time. I guess it’s different the second time around.
After a few hours at the V&A, we walked across the street to the Natural History Museum. What do you think we went see there? Dinosaurs and Jurassic fossils, of course! We were eager to see the fossils Mary Anning unearthed in the mid-19th century. We are obsessed with Mary Anning, and if you aren’t, it’s because you don’t know who she is. Note: this was all in preparation for our trip to Lyme Regis (situated on the Jurassic Coast).
Once it was time to head to our flat across town, we picked up our luggage, made a quick stop at Pret A Manger, and got on the Tube and headed out of the Kensington area towards Whitechapel. We booked this flat on AirBnB because we wanted a place with a kitchen and washing machine. While at first we were concerned about the neighborhood, we soon settled in and found it to be just fine. However, we weren’t excited about our view out of bedroom one, which overlooks a garbage dump. We weren’t sure about all of the graffiti everywhere on the streets, but we realized that that’s London. The hosts were really responsive to our needs and it was easy to get to a bus and the Tube, but we probably wouldn’t stay there again.
All in all, we had a great day. We went to bed at the proper time and avoided jet lag!
In my next post, I’ll share with you the joys of day 2 in London: Kensington Palace!
Misty Krueger 
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