*POST UPDATED OCTOBER 2026
Hello friends! Happy Sunday! I hope this post finds you well. I am here this morning to share a quick travel post with you: A Return to London, England. See, a few months back, Husband and I flew to the city for a very speedy two-day trip to attend a friend’s wedding. Due to our last-minute planning and the way the flights worked out, we had around 50-ish hours to soak up as much of the city as we could — but we ended up having the loveliest time! We based ourselves in our favourite little corner of town, revisited some of our most treasured old haunts, and generally filled the trip with as much joy as possible.
Listed below is everything we got up to during our brief time in town. I’ve decided to share it in a day by day format, rather than the usual breakdown of where we ate / where we tourist-ed etc., to give a more realistic feel of how little time we actually had.
Enjoy!
getting there
Here’s how we made the journey from Dublin:
we flew direct from Dublin airport to London Stansted with Ryanair. The flight took roughly 1-hour, and was wildly unexciting.
generally speaking, the last few times we’ve flown into London we’ve opted for Stansted over Gatwick or Heathrow. The reason for this is three-fold: 1) Stansted is waaay less busy, 2) the flights in/out of there are always the best value, and 3) the transport routes into the city from Stansted are cheaper than the other two. Overall, would recommend!
from Stansted, we took the National Express A8 bus all the way into London’s Liverpool Street Station, which took about 1-hour and 15-minutes. The journey was pleasant, there were plugs and Wi-Fi onboard, and the seats were spacious + comfortable. We purchased return tickets online before our trip on their website, and they cost about £23 each.
from Liverpool Street Station, we were heading to lunch reservations in central London, so we took the Central Line tube from there to Tottenham Court Road; depending on where you’re heading, you can basically connect to any line and go anywhere.
in the train stations, you no longer need to purchase tickets and instead just tap your card/phone directly on your way in/out of the turnstiles. Warning: in theory, this system is great — but Irish AIB cards do not work with the system! If you, like me, didn’t think to bring another card, then you’ll need to buy a ticket to get through, which is a major RIP OFF compared to just tapping, about £7 vs £1.10 ish. You have been warned.
where we stayed
The wedding we were heading to was in Kentish Town - an area neither of us were familiar with - but when we consulted the map, we were pleased to see that it was only about a 25-ish minute walk from our favourite area of London: Hampstead / Belsize Park! After scouring the internet looking for a suitable place that didn’t cost an arm and a leg, here’s where we settled on: