p Yes, yes, I know London is a hit. I know people say it's like New York... But I'd been to London twice, and I really didn't expect to enjoy it like this. Once at bat mitzvah age and once at 21. I just came back from four days with my husband, and the feeling we left with was simply sublime. It really is like New York. It really is crazy. And yes. I'd be willing to live there, because I left feeling that no matter how many times I go, I'll never get enough of it...
p So why enjoy alone?
p All this and more is in detail in our stories. Why enjoy alone??
p (Come enjoy Madrid, Greece, the Black Forest, the Seychelles or even a desert inn in the south with me too.)
p Who am I to tell you anything new about it, but I'll still write down what we did: go to a concert at the O2. We went to Queen, but it doesn't matter which show. The experience of a concert abroad is priceless; there was electricity in the air. Especially compared to Park HaYarkon :) And there are loads of other amazing venues for concerts there. Everything ran like clockwork. Apart from the fact that the standing spots by the stage were the cheapest (?!), you can get really close, because the English don't like to crowd. Guess who does?
p We bought tickets on Ticketim, a site that brings together all the concerts and lets you build a package. I checked what it would cost us separately: flight, hotel plus concert, and through them it came out cheaper. Recommended!
p We went to Shakespeare's theater, The Globe. It's an exact reconstruction of the original theater where Shakespeare's plays were performed, on the banks of the Thames. A ticket cost just 5 pounds if you stand right by the stage. An experience. I admit I didn't survive to the end (don't tell my dad, it'll break his heart). Not because, heaven forbid, I'm not a Shakespeare kind of girl, and not because I didn't understand a word they said; we just flew during the World Cup, England had a match, and I really wanted the experience of watching an England game in an English pub with loads of drunk English people. Sorry, Dad. That was a once-in-a-lifetime experience too. We found ourselves hugging drunk Englishmen, and those really were moments of pure happiness :) A thorough shower was needed afterward.
p We added some chic to the whole neighborhood and booked a great rooftop called Rumpus Room Roof Top, walking distance from the theater, where we felt peak style and gazed romantically out over London. Note that if you arrive late, the kitchen closes. I think that's my most important tip :)
p Speaking of chic, we also went to a great restaurant called Sketch. When I say great, I mean great-don't-come-hungry great. The rooms there are really special: one room has a fairy atmosphere with lasers, and the bathrooms feel like you're in a sci-fi movie. An experience. You need to book. Check out the bathrooms there.
p Combine it with Carnaby, Regent Street and the area. At Camden Market you can order custom painted shoes. How cool is that?
p As for musicals: I'm a fan of the genre. Not to say thrilled to death by it, so I saw two musicals: The Book of Mormon and Wicked. Both are in the very top league, no question. The people who wrote The Book of Mormon also wrote South Park. We were on the floor laughing. I bought tickets at a great price, 47 pounds, through this site.
p A graffiti tour in Shoreditch. Wow. Who'd have thought a tour could teach us something new at our advanced age? Turns out graffiti is a whole world, and it really made us look at everyday things we never gave any importance to before. Highly recommended!
p I deliberately didn't get a data package! We have 3 kids, and yes, it's important to talk to them, so we got one for my husband, and it was really nice to stay off WhatsApp and be relatively disconnected. As for sightseeing, we saw the obvious. We didn't go into all the attractions. It was a trip about experiencing the city, breathing it in, enjoying wandering freely and just being in the moment.
p Here's roughly how it went: Day 1: a quick tour of the British Museum, Buckingham Palace, Churchill's War Rooms, St James's church, Westminster, Soho, Chinatown and... Primark! (Not exactly in that order.) Day 2: Camden Town, Oxford Street, Carnaby, Regent Street, the Tower of London, London Bridge, Borough Market, the Globe theater and a rooftop. Day 3: Covent Garden and Neal Street, lunch at Assaf Granit's fun restaurant, Barbary, a really cool exhibition at the National Gallery (the portrait part; meanwhile my husband was in the museum itself), Wicked in the afternoon, and a rest before the Queen concert :) Day 4: a graffiti tour in Hebrew in Shoreditch, Brick Lane Market, "lunch" at Sketch, a rest, and The Book of Mormon in the evening.
p We came home with energy for a year and a taste for much more.
p And hey! Back to reality
p I had to add a photo of the day after. It doesn't get more extreme than this. The Shefayim water park.
p The part where a bucket of water fell on me with no warning wasn't caught on camera.
q “Don’t tell me how educated you are, tell me how much you have traveled”
p And come visit my new Instagram and my Facebook group, where you can share your own good times too, because why should you enjoy alone?
