London Study Abroad Weekend Trip Suggestions

Wow - what a great list of places to visit, and you're fortunate to have the opportunity. Aside from Paris (which I absolutely love) I would also recommend Edinburgh - I've been a few times and really enjoyed it - Edinburgh Castle, Palace of Holyroodhouse and the beautiful architecture. I was there recently and will definitely go again, and it's an easy weekend from London. In addition to the other UK cities listed, I would also recommend Durham - beautiful cathedral, castle and streetscapes, and it's a university city just like Oxford and Cambridge, with the different colleges spread through the city. You could do a train trip London-York-Durham-Edinburgh and return to London if you have the time.

Another suggestion (I haven't been there, but am booked to go in December) - Tallinn (Estonia). Has a big Christmas market.

My granddaughter spent a semester studying in London and traveled almost every weekend to other cities in Europe. Among her favorites was Lisbon. She and her friends were able to find very inexpensive flights, ridiculously cheap ones.

From London Ryanair, Easyjet and especially Wizz Air have loads of flights at pocket money prices, to most of Europe. Wizz Air seem to do a lot of Eastern Europe.
Or you've got Pegasus for Turkey and connections through Turkey. I think it was on Pegasus that connecting through Istanbul you can apparently get to Dubai for around £300 each way.
Lots of regional flights- Easyjet will get you up to Inverness for as low as £19 sometimes in just over the hour.
Newquay for Cornwall and Devon.
Lots of flights to all points in Ireland (Republic and the North).
Five hours by train will get you to almost anywhere in England, Wales and southern Scotland.

I've just spent about 10 days in Tallinn, and I think it's a good option if you can deal with the short/dark (and probably cold) days in the late fall. The historic core is medieval, then there are later eras surrounding it.

If your interest in architecture extends to the Art Nouveau period, I'd also suggest Riga, with the same weather caveat.

Glasgow has lovely Charles Rennie Mackintosh architecture, and England's late-19th century industrial powerhouses are also rich in cool buildings. I think you'd have a good chance of decent lodging rates in all those places in late fall. (Amsterdam, Edinburgh, Bath and York tend to be more costly, but I don't know about Nov/Dec.)

Be careful about choosing destinations just on the basis of quick, cheap flights without checking lodging rates. Switzerland, Norway, Sweden and Finland can be budge busters. I'd suggest going to booking.com to look at hotel rates (or check for hostel availability) before finalizing any out-of-town plans, because it is all too easy to hit a town during a period with a special event you don't care about that drives up lodging costs.

I recently paid almost 200 euros a night in Tartu, Estonia (of all places) because of a multi-day road rally in the area. I tried shifting the dates of my visit, but I couldn't alter then enough to find a reasonably-priced place to stay.

I think you'll find it takes more than 5 hours to get to the area of the Normandy invasion, and once you're in Bayeux, you'll need to take a small-group tour (over 100 euros) to make the visit worthwhile. If you're an expert on the topic, a rental car will do (if you don't run afoul of a minimum-age requirement).

There's currently a recommendation to be at St. Pancras Station 90 minutes before departure time if you're traveling by Eurostar, and I've heard even that is sometimes not early enough. Be sure to factor that waiting time (and the same for airports) into your calculations of what places make practical destinations for a weekend.

Watch out for budget-airline flights using secondary airports that could make it more difficult to get into the advertised city by public transportation. On the other hand, these three secondary airports used by RyanAir would get you to some nice, smaller destinations so you're seeing more than just mega-cities on the continent: Girona (N of Barcelona), Bergamo (E of Milan) and Treviso (N of Venice). Warning: I don't know anything about the availability of public transportation from those airports to the nearby small cities. Taxis from airports are often painfully expensive.

Thanks accraven, great to hear Tallinn's a good option - the weather in December is going to be a shock for us, but we're looking forward to it.

We recently took the Eurostar to Paris, and 90 minutes was plenty of time. Staff were calling forward passengers for earlier trains, meaning they didn't have to wait long in the queue for security.

Simon - Yeah, it really is an amazing opportunity. Thanks for the Edinburgh recommendations and letting me know about Durham. I'll make a note of it and look into it a little more. You're the second person who suggested Tallinn to me, and I was thinking about possibly doing Tallinn + Riga during the 6 days that I'm free between Dec 15 and Dec 21.

Suki - Sounds like she had an amazing time! Portugal is a country that I've always wanted to visit, which is why it's been so hard figuring out whether I should spend my reading week going to Portugal or Croatia.

isn31c - Thanks for all the information about the airlines and particularly the regional ones. I've heard Cornwall and Devon are both beautiful places, but I'm wondering if you had any cities or towns you'd recommend and how accessible is checking out the region without a car. Also, any Ireland or North Ireland recommendations would be appreciated. I thought the Giant's Causeway in Northern Ireland seemed interesting, but I've heard that it's a bit underwhelming.

acravan - Thanks for all the warnings about pricey countries (I've heard before Scandinavia + Switzerland were particularly bad in that regards but thanks for the confirmation) and the note about budget airlines airports and train station wait times. Given that you're the third person who has recommended Tallinn to me, I'll be sure to take a much closer look at it (and Riga seems like a good pair with it for, perhaps, a longer weekend). Glasgow also seems intriguing, and I'll look into that more. Also, thanks for the heads up about the amount of time it takes to get to Bayeaux and the tour costs. I suppose I hadn't realized that public transport isn't particularly available in that area, so I re-think my plans when it comes to visiting some WWII sites.

There are places in Normandy you can reach via public transportation (Caen, Bayeux, Rouen, Honfleur, Cabourg, Deauville/Trouville and more), but the actual invasion sites are mostly not accessible by public transit. A one-day van tour (most departing from Bayeux) can be combined with a day or more of independent travel in the area. Trains or buses will get you to at least three war-related museums:

• The invasion museum in Bayeux (excellent general-purpose choice) takes about 2 or 3 hours.

• The Caen Memorial (huge, crowded, expensive; suitable for those also interested in the period leadimg up period to the war and the Cold War) takes about a full day.

  • The relatively new museum in Falaise focuses on the civilian experience during the war, including Resistance activities, and takes about 2 to 3 hours.

I don't take a lot of out-of-town tours because they usually don't allow enough time for me at each stop, but I think the cost of one of the D-Day tours is money well spent for most people.

The flights into Newquay are from London Gatwick on Eastern Airways, and from London Stansted on Ryanair.
An hourly bus runs into Newquay and the other way to Padstow- bus connections to all over Cornwall from Newquay, and the airport bus also stops outside Newquay Train Station for connections every 2 hours or so to the main London to Penzance line.
Also a sleeper train runs from London Paddington to Penzance on Sunday to Friday nights, as well as the day trains.
National Express also run a good and cheap network of coach services to Cornwall. As a full time student of any age, or aged 16 to26 you can buy a coachcard for NatEx to save 1/3 off all fares, and a £15 flat fare on Tuesday to Thursday- single or day return.
Cornwall has a very comprehensive bus network- see here for the current Timetable book- https://www.gocornwallbus.co.uk/services
Day Tickets for all operators across the whole county are £7/day or £25/week.
For North Cornwall Newquay I think is a very good base.
For South Cornwall I think Falmouth is a great base- buses and trains
For the far South West I would suggest either Penzance or St Ives.

For Northern Ireland you can fly into Belfast City, Belfast International or Derry/Londonderry.

There are Ireland specialists on here, who will better answer NI/RoI questions, but I haven't heard of the Giant's Causeway being described as underwhelming before- but then everyone is different.

cool architecture (things like interesting buildings or castles), charming old towns, and lots of history and have no particular preference for large, medium, or small cities as long as there's a lot of interesting things to do.

Well that's Poland in a nutshell! I think it ticks all your boxes and should be quite accessible from the UK, there's a lot of Polish immigration to England. Poland is relatively under touristed and affordable compared with other countries of similar size in Europe. Poland does mid-size cities very well, I'd recommend Warsaw, Gdansk, Krakow, and Wroclaw.

Wroclaw is my favorite city in Poland and is particularly popular with students as a weekend break destination. It's home to a sizable local student population too due to its historic University, so has a very youthful and vibrant atmosphere. Probably the most diverse and welcoming city in Poland. Think of it like 1/2 the size of Prague, with 1/4 of the tourist.

acraven - Thanks for the detailed overview about transportation options and activities to do / museums to see when it comes to Normandy. I'll admit that I don't particularly have the most knowledge about WWII when it comes to Europe, mostly because my high school tended to focus more on the Pacific front, which is why I'm interested in learning more about WWII-significant places.

isn31c - Wow, thanks a bunch for this detailed transportation overview and cities to base out of for Cornwall. I've jotted them down and will be looking into them further.

Carlos - Yeah, Poland has been a place that has been interesting me the more I read into it, especially since flights there from London are just so cheap. Wroclaw seems like a lovely city just from a bit of reading that I've done on it, though I'm a bit torn on whether I should visit it or Krakow, which was another city in Poland that was recommended to me. Even though I know I'll be back sometime in the future (how far in the future is to be seen), still got to make some tough decisions.

Whilst in London visit Bletchley Park. Google and see why.

Interesting buildings in London: remember nearly all of London was destroyed by the biltz in WW2. Heroes saved St Pauls Cathedral
https://historicengland.org.uk/whats-new/features/blitz-stories/st-paul-s-cathedral/

Claudia - Thanks for the suggestion about Bletchley Park. While I had known about the codebreakers, I wasn't aware of where they had operated out of, and it seems like an interesting place to visit. Also, I found the article about St. Paul's Cathedral to be quite informative, and I noticed that it's somewhat close to where I'll be staying, so I'll be sure to check out this place since it seems to have quite a bit of historical significance.

Re- The Giant's Causeway- one of the things about it is it's dramatic sea side location, and the surrounding legends about it being Finn McCool's stepping stones on his way to Scotland to fight with the Scottish giant, Benandonner.
But I have just been reading a USGS study on the Columbia River Basalt Group which I was sent last night (an adjunct to a conversation I had with someone last week about a road trip down the Cascadia subduction zone) and when I see things like the cliffs at Latourell Falls, OR- it is in a kind of different league. But in terms of the Geology of the British Isles and Ireland the Causeway is spectacular.

isn31c - Alright, you're definitely convincing me about heading to the Giant's Causeway, especially since there appears to be more things to do than I had anticipated in Northern Ireland (as is the case of all regions of Europe that I had underestimated), and costs of traveling there seem pretty budget friendly. I suppose if I did have concerns, it'd be more about if weather conditions in my timeframe would be conducive to outdoors activities like this. Right now, I've been creating a list of destinations that I want to visit and trying to figure out the best month to slot them into and wondering where Northern Ireland would fit in this puzzle.

two small pieces of advice - take anything Rome 2 Rio with a huge Mt Everest sized lump of salt - they are often spectacularly wrong, and certainly don't depend on them for prices or schedules. Some routes that they suggest are absolute doozies. Because they get a lot of social doesn't mean they are good.

and with all this running around Europe be careful of your Schengen limits - 90 days in any 180 looking back.

and you are interested in "cool architecture". Does that mean modern, or Brutalist, or Art Deco or Art Nouveau, or traditional (which style- Gothic, Romanesque, Palladian, Victorian, Georgian... etc.). I'm very interested in various styles of cool architecture - my father was an architect student until World War II came around and he spent the war blowing things up as a Commando, and after the war it was all Brutalist and he didn't like that.

Nigel - Thanks for the warnings. I've heard R2R can be a bit overly optimistic, which is why I use it more as a resource to gain a general idea and use other resources to look deeper into transportation costs. As for the Schengen limits, I'm near certain that I'll be under the 90 day limit, given that I plan on traveling within the UK, which does not contribute to this as far as I know. In the end, I anticipate that, at most, I'll be around 70 days out of the allocated 90, which should give me a good amount of wiggle-room.

Regarding architecture, I'm not particularly familiar with the specific stylings of architecture so I can't quite comment on the specifics, but I'll say that, in general, I find older / traditional styles of architecture to be the most interesting vs. more modern ones, just because it's something that's different than what I would see on the West Coast.