There’s something weirdly addictive about London once you’ve done it once. The first visit is panic. You’re glued to Google Maps, accidentally walking into cycle lanes and paying £9 for a sandwich because you’ve got no idea where anything is. But trip two? Different game entirely. Suddenly you’re striding through King’s Cross like you personally designed the bloody transport network. Smug. Confident. Still horrendously northern, obviously, but confident. So, with another long weekend, another Premier Inn booking and another irresponsible amount of walking ahead of us, we headed back to the capital for three days of museums, royalty, cheese and mild public rage.
Day 1: First Class to the Front Line
Day 1 on trip 2 began exactly as day 1 on trip 1 did. Yeeting Zac out of Steve’s car, into breakfast club and saying our goodbyes. Once again, he was absolutely buzzing at the prospect of a full weekend with the grandparents. Mostly because the grandparents spoil him absolutely rotten.
I’m fairly certain he’d already mentally scheduled a McDonald’s tea, a trip to B&M, several crafting sessions and enough snacks to put a Labrador into cardiac arrest. Oh, and his football club awards evening at Fulneck Golf Club. Truth be told, we were a bit gutted to be missing that one, but London had been booked long before trophies and sausage rolls entered the equation.
Cya kid. 👋
Anyway, off we went. Once again pretending to be posh by travelling via LNER first class. Naturally, that meant another visit to the first class lounge. Crisps, biscuits and water acquired like two middle-aged rats looting a vending machine during the apocalypse, it was time to board the London Express.
So what was on the itinerary this time?
War museums, Windsor Castle and Harry Potter.
Quite different from trip one, but we were buzzing for it. Thankfully there was no Princess Kate or any other other annoying shitbags sat in first class with us this time. Just us, several people clearly heading to work… sucks to be you… and a handful of tourists staring out the windows like they’d never seen Doncaster before.
Breakfast was once again the LNER bacon roll which, for reasons unknown to modern science, is ridiculously good. Hayley had a currant tea cake which remains one of the least exciting breakfast decisions ever made by a human being.
We arrived at King’s Cross bang on time, walked the five minutes to the Premier Inn St Pancras and checked in. This time there was no tourist panic, no Google Maps spinning round like a pissed sat nav possessed by Satan himself. We actually knew where we were going. Growth.
Check-in complete, it was go time.
First stop? The Imperial War Museum London.
Now then. If you’re into WW1 and WW2 history, it’s seriously impressive. We spent ages wandering around the exhibits, but make no mistake, parts of it are grim as hell. This isn’t one of those museums where you wander round going “ooh interesting” before buying a magnet shaped like a Spitfire.
One exhibit was a Reuters vehicle hit by a missile in Palestine. Another was the twisted remains of a car destroyed by a suicide bomber in Iraq. Then there’s the Holocaust Galleries which are exactly as difficult to walk around as you’d expect.
Clothing. Photos. Belongings. Letters. Tiny fragments of ordinary lives swallowed by probably the darkest period in human history.
As somebody massively interested in military history, I genuinely think places like this are crucial. Not just for remembering the horrors, but for understanding how frighteningly easy humans can descend into absolute madness when hatred and propaganda take hold. Honestly, I think schools should be funded to bring kids here because seeing this stuff in person hits completely differently to reading two paragraphs in a textbook while Darren at the back tries to set fire to a pritt stick because “Miss said it was flammable”.
Not content with one war museum, we then headed to Westminster for the Churchill War Rooms.
Now this one was interesting… but also slightly frustrating.
When you enter, they make it very clear that the audio guide is basically mandatory. Even if you don’t want headphones, you’re expected to carry the thing around with you like you’re on some sort of middle-aged spy mission.
Problem is, I’m pretty much deaf in my left ear and traditional headphones are a nightmare for me. At home I can tweak audio balance, use AirPods with hearing assistance stuff or even alter settings on gaming headsets. Here? Absolutely nowt.
So I thought “fair enough, I’ll just read the information boards.”
Wrong.
Until you get deeper into the Churchill museum section, there really aren’t many. So while it was fascinating seeing the actual rooms preserved as they were in the 1940s, I definitely felt like I missed chunks of context. Hopefully the guidebook I bought fills in the gaps because otherwise I basically wandered round looking at old telephones thinking “bloody hell imagine ringing Hull from this”.
Now though, onto the real rant.
Audio guide wankers.
Honestly, I understand the purpose of them, but to those of us NOT using them, people with audio guides immediately become spatially unaware fucking livestock. It reintroduces my favourite London game: Dodge The Dickhead. Except this time it’s in tiny underground corridors.
People stopping dead in front of you. Suddenly changing direction. Turning around like meerkats that have just heard somebody shout “FREE PROSECCO”. It’s like being trapped at a party sober while everybody else is fifteen pints deep and trying to explain cryptocurrency to a lampshade.
Absolute chaos.
One thing I will say about the Churchill War Rooms is that, despite my moaning, the place does feel incredibly authentic. Apparently after the war the bunker was basically sealed up and left untouched until the 1980s, which gives the whole place a weirdly eerie atmosphere. You’re wandering through these narrow underground corridors looking at original maps, dusty old telephones and tiny little offices where blokes sat deciding the future of civilisation while probably surviving entirely on cigarettes, stress and whatever beige slop Britain considered food in 1942.
And honestly, it does hit you at times.
There are moments where you stop and think:
“Bloody hell, Churchill actually stood here.”
Then that thought is immediately interrupted by an American tourist dressed like he’s about to invade Fallujah loudly asking where the gift shop is.
What slightly shattered the illusion for me though was learning that loads of the staff working down there during the war didn’t actually sleep in the bunker because they found it too claustrophobic and depressing. Instead, many chose to leave and risk travelling home during the Blitz.
Which honestly tells you everything about what it must’ve been like underground.
Imagine preferring being turned in to crimson mist over another night sleeping beside Barry from telecommunications farting in a concrete tube while somebody nearby boils cabbage into a paste.
And to be fair, I get it.
Because even as a tourist spending an hour or so down there, you can already feel yourself slowly turning into a mole person. By the end I was ready to emerge blinking into daylight like Gollum looking for Greggs.
The issue is the atmosphere constantly gets broken by modern tourists and those fucking audio guides.
You’d be having a genuinely fascinating moment imagining wartime Britain holding itself together during humanity’s darkest hour… then suddenly Brenda from Ohio stops dead in front of you because her headset’s just told her there’s a table nearby.
Meanwhile another family barges through the corridor at Formula 1 speeds like they’re trying to complete Churchill War Rooms in under twelve minutes for a YouTube speedrun.
Honestly, I enjoyed it. I really did.
But if you don’t use the audio guide yourself, you basically spend the entire experience trapped in an underground game of Dodge The Dickhead while listening to distant snippets of overlapping history facts leaking out of people’s headphones like a haunted podcast.
After our visit to the Churchill War Rooms we decided it was time to rest our trotters for a bit. By this point we’d done that proper London tourist walking where your feet slowly stop feeling like part of your body and instead become two hot bags of gravel strapped to your ankles.
We ended up finding a bench beside a rather lovely memorial near the HM Treasury building and just sat people watching for a while as the city rattled around us.
By now it was around teatime, so there was a steady flow of suited-up civil servant types leaving the building looking like they’d spent the day being shouted at by spreadsheets.
One bloke in particular caught our attention.
Mainly because neither of us actually saw him emerge from the building. One second he simply existed beside the railings like a stressed-out NPC that had loaded in late. Suit on. Thousand-yard stare. Cigarette dangling out of his mouth while he sighed every thirty seconds like a man who’d just been informed Britain had run out of tea and biscuits.
Honestly, the bloke looked absolutely fucking miserable.
I turned to Hayley and said:
“He definitely works for the government.”
Now, this was the exact same day as the local elections. Which, if you saw the results, went about as well for Labour as a fart in a spacesuit.
So suddenly this poor bastard became unintentionally hilarious to us because we started imagining he’d spent the entire afternoon trapped in meetings listening to increasingly panicked conversations about vote shares, angry pensioners and whether Wes Streeting could somehow fix all of this by appearing on breakfast television looking concerned.
Meanwhile there’s us sat on a bench eating snacks and judging him like two middle-aged pigeons.
London really does have everything. Royal palaces. Historic landmarks. World-class museums.
And exhausted men in government buildings smoking cigarettes like extras from The Thick Of It.
After the mild enjoyment it was time to board our tube to Kings Cross St Pancras as tea was approaching.
Tea was a bit uninspired but still really enjoyable as we ended up at PizzaExpress. Service was flawless, food was great and it was only a few minutes back to the hotel afterwards.
Honestly, after a full day of walking around London with feet screaming like a pensioner trying to use self-checkout, that’s all you really want.
Day 2: Royals, Rifles and Ridiculous Amounts of Cheese
Day 2 was another royally good day… huehuehue… as we boarded a GWR train and escaped central London for a trip to Windsor Castle.
We started the morning with a Premier Inn breakfast.
Solid. Reliable. Salty enough to preserve a Victorian corpse.
The downside was having to be downstairs for 7:30am so we could catch our 9:08 train to Windsor. So naturally we inhaled breakfast at warp speed, legged it back upstairs to grab our stuff and headed out.
And honestly, London transport continues to boil my piss purely because of how good it is.
King’s Cross to Paddington. Paddington to Windsor via Slough. Simple. Everything just… works. Trains arriving every few minutes. Signs everywhere. Staff who actually know what’s going on.
Meanwhile back home in Leeds you need two buses, a prayer and the blessing of an ancient woodland spirit just to get to Birstall.
We arrived in Windsor to glorious weather. Blue skies, warm sunshine and one of those mornings where everybody suddenly walks slower because they’re pretending to be in a holiday advert.
And Windsor itself is beautiful.
Honestly, if York and Harrogate had a posh little royal baby together, it’d be Windsor. Historic, ridiculously clean and full of buildings that look like they charge £14 for a sandwich but somehow get away with it.
You step out of the station and immediately get slapped in the face by the sheer size of Windsor Castle.
Bugger me, those royals know how to live don’t they?
No wonder Lizzie loved the place. It’s absolutely stunning.
We headed inside around 10:10 despite our ticket saying 10:30-11:00 entry. Thankfully nobody cared. We wanted to get in early and grab a decent spot for the Changing of the Guard.
As somebody who enjoys military history, I was genuinely excited for this.
Sadly my feet disagreed. But bollocks to anatomy. That’s tomorrow’s problem.
We managed to bag ourselves a front-row spot against the railings and waited for things to begin. It started slowly as the old guard emerged first before the new guard and band marched through Windsor itself.
Then the band started playing Born To Run by Bruce Springsteen.
Honestly? Incredible musicians. Properly impressive.
From what we could tell there was a mix of Welsh Guards, Irish Guards and Household Cavalry involved and every movement was ridiculously professional.
The piss boiler here though was the people sniggering through it all like it’s some sort of comedy sketch. I genuinely think some people believe it’s just theatre.
Mate. Those rifles aren’t props. One bloke near us was giggling through the whole thing like he thought he was at Butlin’s. Mate, that fella would fold you into a rucksack with one hand, whilst consuming a Greggs Steak Bake with the other. Pipe down.
Genuinely though, a quick jab with the pointy end would probably sort the attitude problem out immediately. Educational and entertaining for the rest of us.
After the guard change we headed further into the castle and stopped at the Undercroft Café for a scone and a drink. Turns out the Undercroft used to be Edward III’s wine and beer cellar where he entertained guests.
Interesting fact that.
Although I strongly suspect my scone was considerably better than whatever medieval sludge Edward was serving down there in 1350 while everybody died of plague and smelled faintly of onions.
We then headed into the State Apartments which, while not quite as jaw-dropping as Buckingham Palace, were still ridiculously impressive.
Oddly though, I think I was most fascinated by the parts rebuilt after the 1992 fire. Walking through St George’s Hall and into the Lantern Lobby, seeing the stone marking where the fire began, really brought home the scale of the restoration.
The craftsmanship involved is unbelievable. Blending new construction into a building that old without it looking ridiculous must’ve taken some serious skill.
And about £36.5 million.
Around £100 million in today’s money.
Of which Lizzie herself contributed £2 million.
The rest came from the public visiting Buckingham Palace.
Absolute peak royal behaviour that. “Terribly sorry the castle caught fire everybody, if you could all kindly buy a tea towel and queue respectfully that’d be marvellous.”
As with Buckingham Palace, we weren't allowed to take photos... so here's a drawing of St George's Hall. You're welcome.
Sadly this also marked the return of Dodge The Dickhead.
Specifically: audio guide walkers.
I am absolutely convinced those devices occasionally whisper “KING CHARLES IS BEHIND YOU” because people randomly stop and spin round directly into your path every six bastard seconds.
Honestly just lock them all in a conference room with headphones and let them emerge when they’ve finished their little history podcast. Save the rest of us from walking round Windsor Castle like we’re avoiding pensioners in a supermarket car park.
After wandering around the State Apartments we headed into Queen Mary’s Dolls’ House.
Again: impressive.
But also absolutely ridiculous.
I’m sorry, but that dolls’ house is pure royal nonsense. It’s bigger than some Leeds flats. What person needs a dolls’ house with functioning electricity and tiny wine bottles?
Nobody.
Not one person on Earth has ever gone “you know what this dolls’ house needs? Indoor plumbing.”
Unbelievable levels of wealth. Like if Hamleys and Downton Abbey had a nervous breakdown together.
Here's a drawing of that too.
Once we’d finished, it was time to exit via the gift shop, buy a magnet and bugger off back to the station because we had a cheese-themed tea looming on the horizon.
Back in Paddington, we obviously had to find the Paddington Bear statue for some photos because Zac loves Paddington. And honestly, fair enough. Charming little bloke. Polite, well dressed and obsessed with marmalade sandwiches. Basically the ideal British citizen.
While Hayley embarked on toilet stop number fourteen of the day, I discovered there was an actual Paddington shop inside the station. Which obviously meant we now had to buy Zac a Paddington teddy from Paddington Station itself.
That’s just parenting law.
We then killed some time sitting by the canal with drinks before heading for tea aboard the The Cheese Barge.
Right.
This place is entirely BeardMeatsFood’s fault.
He featured it on one of his videos and it looked so outrageously good that we booked it almost immediately.
And honestly? It absolutely delivered.
Cheese curds. Brie. Jalapeño cheese bites. Garlic potatoes. Bread. Enough salt to preserve me for archaeological study.
I genuinely left there sweating dairy.
Outstanding.
Day 3 - Harry Potter and the Flattened Arse Cheeks
Day three began with another Premier Inn breakfast. Again, solid. Again, salty enough to preserve a medieval corpse in a bog for future archaeologists to discover clutching a hash brown.
Exactly what I needed to prepare my body for consuming roughly three gallons of liquid throughout the day.
Today was intentionally slower paced. No sprinting across London. No war museums. No royal marching bands. Just one mission.
Go see Harry Potter and his absolutely miserable little goblin of a child.
Now, if you don’t know, the Harry Potter play at the Palace Theatre is split into two parts. One showing at 1pm, another later on in the evening. Which essentially means you spend an entire day emotionally held hostage in a theatre seat while wizards scream at each other and teleport through furniture.
Naturally, we loved the idea.
Before all that though, we headed over to Covent Garden because we had a couple of hours to kill and fancied a wander round the shops.
Now, Covent Garden itself is lovely. Very London. Street performers everywhere. Tourists wandering around staring upwards like Victorian peasants seeing electricity for the first time. Somebody inevitably playing an acoustic guitar somewhere they absolutely shouldn’t be. Oh… and a marching band, because the why the hell not?
But honestly, we felt far more at home once we ended up inside the Jubilee Market.
That’s more our territory.
Creative little stalls. Handmade stuff. Random bits of tat. Things you absolutely don’t need but suddenly convince yourself are essential to your future happiness.
Now THAT’S a market.
Not whatever the other half of Covent Garden has become.
What sort of “market” contains a Dolce & Gabbana?
I’m from Pudsey. Our version would be “Dolche & Bananas” with a bloke called Kev selling handbags out the back of a Transit van while eating a sausage roll.
Completely different atmosphere.
After a wander around, thirst began to strike and Hayley announced she needed another wee. Shocking development. So we headed to what we basically consider a posh food shop: Pret A Manger.
Now then. Ordered drinks. Sat down. Lovely.
Except the toilets were locked behind one of those keypad systems where you need the code from your receipt.
A receipt they hadn’t bloody given us.
Brilliant.
So there we sat while Hayley essentially turned into a Victorian pickpocket waiting to ambush the next unsuspecting customer entering the toilet corridor.
Honestly the tension in Pret was unbelievable. Felt like we were planning a small bank robbery. Felt like Ocean’s Eleven but everybody involved desperately needed a piss.
Eventually mission successful, drinks consumed and bladder emptied, it was finally time to head to the Palace Theatre.
Arrival was surprisingly smooth. Quick bag check, metal detector, scan the tickets and boom, inside. None of the usual chaos where somebody ahead of you suddenly discovers they’ve brought an entire camping rucksack and three bottles of Evian into a theatre.
We found our seats which, to be fair, were properly comfy. Then spent the next thirty minutes engaging in one of Yorkshire’s favourite hobbies:
Quietly judging late people.
Honestly there’s something about a theatre that brings it out in everybody. Every time the doors opened after 12:55 there’d be another bloke waddling in with snacks looking stressed while the entire audience silently thought “you absolute weapon”. Every theatre audience collectively transforms into an angry parish council the second the lights dim.
One woman arrived carrying enough shopping bags to survive winter in the Arctic.
At 1pm sharp though, things kicked off.
So, what did we think of part one?
It started a little slow, admittedly. There’s a fair bit of scene-setting and Albus Potter spends most of the opening act behaving like the moodiest teenager in recorded human history.
Honestly, Harry Potter defeated Voldemort and saved wizard civilisation only for his son to grow up acting like he’s been asked to stack shelves in B&M on a bank holiday.
Show your dad some respect lad.
Honestly if Harry Potter was my dad I’d be unbearable. That lad acts like he’s been denied WiFi for twenty minutes.
But as the first half progressed, it really found its feet. The special effects were genuinely brilliant too. Stuff appearing out of nowhere, people vanishing, dementors flying over the audience. At one point I genuinely spent several minutes trying to figure out how they’d done something instead of actually following the plot.
Which is basically me watching any magic trick.
By the end of part one we were properly invested.
During the interval we practically speed-walked across the road back to Oorja, the Indian fusion place we discovered during our last London trip before going to see Stranger Things.
Honestly, those cheesy onion bhajis should be illegal.
Absolutely outrageous food.
If somebody rolled me down the Thames in one like a giant spicy scotch egg, I probably wouldn’t even complain.
Suitably refuelled, it was back into the theatre for part two.
And this is where it really ramps up.
Darker story. Bigger stakes. More effects. More chaos. The pacing massively improves and suddenly you’re completely locked in watching time travel destroy everybody’s lives for several hours straight.
The effects genuinely carry the thing at times too. Without spoiling anything, some of the transitions and illusions are absolutely ridiculous live. One minute somebody’s there, next minute they’re gone like a dad spotting an opportunity to avoid paying for parking.
Would I still say Stranger Things was the better theatre experience overall?
Honestly… yes.
I think Stranger Things just edges it for pure spectacle and pacing. But Harry Potter was still seriously impressive and well worth doing.
That said, if you’re doing both parts in one day like we did, prepare your arse cheeks accordingly because by the end of it your body feels like you’ve flown economy to Australia inside a shoebox.
By the time we left the theatre we were absolutely knackered.
One final FaceTime call to Zac, who was presumably being fed chocolate buttons and unlimited fizzy pop by the grandparents, and it was back to the hotel room for an hour of doom-scrolling before sleep.
Tomorrow: home. Back north. Back to reality.
Back to roads with potholes big enough to hide a Vauxhall Corsa in.
Day 4 - King’s Cross and the return to reality
Not much to report from day four really. Mostly because day four of any holiday is just a slow, depressing march towards reality.
One final Premier Inn London St Pancras breakfast before heading home and honestly, once again, it delivered. I know some people turn their noses up at hotel breakfasts but I genuinely rate Premier Inn’s. Plenty of choice, decent quality and enough salt in the sausages to preserve a pirate ship.
It’s also one of the few places where you can watch somebody confidently eat baked beans at 7:45am while their child quietly constructs a pancake tower that looks like a structural engineering experiment.
We finished up, waddled back upstairs and began the deeply miserable process of repacking the suitcase. There’s something uniquely depressing about holiday repacking. Everything somehow weighs more than when you arrived. Clothes no longer fold properly. Random receipts appear from nowhere. You suddenly discover you’ve acquired three bottles of water, fourteen ticket stubs and enough crumbs to feed pigeons for a fortnight.
Before long it was time to head back over to King’s Cross Station.
We had a quick wander through WHSmith, mainly because every British train journey legally requires at least one pointless WHSmith visit where you stare at £6 bottles of water and books nobody has ever willingly purchased plus a Toblerone the size of a canoe for £19.
Then of course we passed that queue.
The Platform 9¾ photo queue.
Honestly, fair play to them, but I still can’t help glaring at it every time like a bitter old man. There they all were, queueing patiently to pretend to run through a wall while a member of staff launches a scarf dramatically into the air for the exact same photo that fifteen thousand other people took earlier that week.
Meanwhile I’m stood there clutching a Meal Deal looking like I’ve just come to fix the boilers.
Eventually though, it was time to board the train and leave London feeling slightly glum.
So then… how was London visit number two?
Honestly? Really good.
The weather massively helped again. Friday was mild with about three minutes of rain, Saturday in Windsor was absolutely glorious with blue skies and proper heat, Sunday didn’t matter because we were indoors watching wizards scream at each other for five hours and Monday… well, who cares, we were going home.
Would we come back again?
Oh absolutely.
We actually said several times during the trip how easy it’d be to keep returning and still find new stuff to do. One weekend you’re wandering round royal castles, next weekend you’re at museums, then theatres, markets, rooftop bars, weird little shops selling candles that smell like “forest rain” and £19 brownies.
London gets a bad reputation sometimes, and don’t get me wrong, parts of it are still absolute chaos. But both times we’ve visited now, we’ve genuinely had a brilliant time.
That said… there is always a strange moment when the train starts heading north again and your brain slowly remembers what awaits you back home.
Work.
Washing.
Bins.
Council emails.
People doing 14mph in a 30 while staring into the middle distance like confused livestock.
Reality.
Sigh.
