Last November I went to the UK on kind of a whim – it has been something that I have wanted to do for a while, but decided to go when I realized that I was fast approaching having to restrain my travel to school breaks. Having no one in my life who would be able to go with and not wanting to go alone I decided to book a Contiki Tour (I think that solo travel is really cool, I was just already way out of my comfort zone traveling off of the continent).
So I booked my tour and within 12 days I was at LAX waiting to take my first international flight alone. I was so excited and 10 and a half hours later I was in London! I got to my hotel and met some of the people that I would be on the tour with before heading up to my room. Later that night we went on a walking tour of London. It was kind of like a preview of London, our guide gave us a bit of history as we walked along and places that we should visit while we were there.
The next day we drove out of London at 6am, and I was so close to being the girl who missed the bus. The departure time stated 6am and I woke up at 6:10am. That was a moment of pure panic for me. I grabbed my suitcase (that luckily I had packed the night before) and ran to the parking lot to see if they were still there. Thankfully there were still people lined up to get onto the bus, and I did not have to find my way to Liverpool on my own. I did however learn to double check my alarms since I did not want a repeat of that.
We drove out of London and our tour guide pointed out some cool landmarks as we drove by like the Buckingham Palace and the London Eye.I will say that my one mistake I made this trip was not scheduling more time in London. The tour starts and stops there, but does not spend any time exploring London except for that night walking tour and a bit of a bus tour as we were leaving. I will definitely return to London one day with more time to explore.
This trip was 17 days long and visited England, Ireland, Northern Ireland and Scotland (with a pitstop in Wales). There were so many highlights that I will write about with the next coming weeks: The Cliffs of Moher, going to the Guinness Brewery, learning the history of Derry, and Edinburgh just to name a few! I cannot wait to share all these memories with you!
Divinely Rylie 
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