Hello and welcome to my podcast My Life and Other Funny Stories. My name is Dagmar Tomášková, I am an English tutor and coach, and I created this podcast for English students who want to get better in their oral comprehension. As always, you can find the transcription of this episode and a vocabulary list in the notes of the podcast. 

And we’re back! I took a two-week break from recording, so I hope you didn’t miss me too much! I was busy traveling, and to be honest, I was just tired. Also, I am looking at the episode number, and we are getting close to 100. I haven’t decided yet if it means something or not. Maybe it means a special episode. Maybe it means a final episode, maybe it doesn’t mean anything at all. Let’s all wait and see…

During those two weeks, I also traveled, as I have already mentioned. I flew to London. It was my third time going there, but you can take it as my little travel diary because I will tell you, briefly, what I did and saw in London. I am not a very descriptive person when it comes to trips. My mum always asks me – so tell me about London (or Barcelona or any other city I traveled to) and my answer is – yeah, it was great, you know, we did this and that and that’s about it. But here we go.

We traveled by Ryanair because, of course, we did. It is the cheapest flight ticket to London. By we, I mean my boyfriend and I. The flight was short and sweet, but what surprised me was that I completely forgot that London flights are not from terminal 2 of the Prague Airport. As it is no longer part of the European Union, you fly from terminal 1, which was my first time.

We arrived in London quite early in the day, at around 10:30 am. We had to take a train from the Stansted airport to London, which takes about 45 minutes, and then we walked a bit. It is London, so of course, it was drizzling and we had to take out our umbrellas every 10 minutes and put them back into our backpacks after 2 minutes of rain. 

We still had a few hours before we could check into our accommodation, so we went to a little community café for me to have a cup of coffee and for my boyfriend to have something to eat. The guy running the café was super sweet and talkative. He was asking us where we were from, and he talked about himself as well. 

Finally, it came time to check in, so we said our goodbyes, said that we would come back (which we didn’t, oops), and then headed to our room. The accommodation was… okay. I mean, it could be better, it could be worse. We also had a kitchen there, but to be honest, I was a little creeped out by it. It didn’t feel very clean, and I felt uncomfortable using the kitchen utensils there, so we only ate things we didn’t have to cook. 

After we put down our bags, we went into the city centre to see the Tower of London and Tower Bridge, and then we went to get a cake. The sweetest, most sugary thing I have ever eaten. A good end of the day.

On Friday, we went to Camden. If you have never been to London, Camden is a part of London full of street markets. You can find anything and everything there. For example, rings and bracelets, scarves and clothes, old vinyls and CDs, any food that you can dream of. And on Friday, it was a sunny day, we won the lottery with this one, so there was music everywhere and it was like being at a fair. I  find it very magical. Then we went from Camden through Richmond Park and Baker Street to the House of Minalima. What is that you ask? Minalima is a design studio that designed the majority of the props for Harry Potter. And they have a little shop in the city centre, so of course we had to make a stop there. Then, through Chinatown, we made our way home. 

On Saturday, we went sightseeing more, the classics – the Big Ben, Buckingham Palace, and such. Unfortunately, it was just the celebration of the King’s birthday, so it was extremely overcrowded, the main roads around Buckingham Palace were closed off, and it took us twice as long to get to the next location. Which was the British Science Museum. A lot of London’s museums are free, so if you are into that kind of thing, I recommend checking out the Science Museum, the Museum of Natural History and the British Museum. I mean, the British Museum, where we went after visiting the Science Museum, was the most boring, personally, for us, but if you have never seen it, it might be worth checking out what the Brits stole all over the globe. And they stole a lot, so there is a lot to see. 

Anyway, by Saturday, I was starting to get a little whiny. That means that you complain about any stupid little thing. What do I mean by that? It was my idea to walk literally anywhere and walk as much as we could, but by Saturday evening, my feet were hurting, for some reason even my knee, and I was super tired. The next day, we were supposed to go to the Harry Potter studios, and because our entrance time was 5:30 pm and we knew we would probably come back very late, we decided to start our Sunday later and just rest in our room until noon. After that, we went to see the British Museum and finally headed to the star event of our trip. The Harry Potter studios are amazing if you are a fan. Of course, it is not cheap and it takes a lot of time and effort to get there- you need to get to Euston which is a London underground station, there you need to take the subway to the outskirts of London and from there, finally, get on the shuttle bus which will take you straight to the studios. 

It was the second time there for me, but since my first time was around 4 years ago, I had already forgotten how amazing it was. Honestly, I felt like a kid there, getting excited about the smallest things, such as finding the Golden Snitch on the ceiling. I really think any Harry Potter fan should visit it, as you get so much information about how the movies were shot. For example, did you know that they had two models of Hagrid’s hut? One that was slightly bigger, and then one that was slightly smaller than it was supposed to be, because the actor who was playing Hagrid would always shoot in the smaller one so that he would appear bigger, while the kids always shot in the bigger one so that everything would be bigger around them. And then they would mash those shots together in post-production. Isn’t that interesting?

I think that’s interesting.

Anyway, we came back home at 11 pm and we were so tired that we just went to sleep. Monday was our last day, so that meant we had to check out by 10 a.m. Which meant, unfortunately for us, that we would have the drag our backpacks the whole day. Or I mean, more unfortunately for me, because I am a little whiny person and after like 2 hours of carrying my backpack, my shoulders were screaming and I needed a break every 10 minutes.

We decided to visit the Natural History Museum, which is awesome as well. Plenty of interesting facts not only about animals but also about our planet, the universe, volcanoes, and natural disasters. I enjoyed it a lot. 

Finally, we headed back to the airport in the afternoon as our flight was at 6:30 pm. I am very happy that nothing went wrong. I mean, I was physically exhausted after this holiday, started working, and immediately got sic,k but you know, that’s life. 

I am glad I could visit London again, I just love the city. I love the buildings, I love the vibes, and I love everything about it. Let me ask you:

Have you ever been to London? Do you like it? 

Thank you so much for listening to this episode and don’t forget that you can find the transcription and vocabulary list in the notes of the podcast. Please give it a five-star rating if you liked it, it always makes my day when I can see a new rating on spotify, thanks to everyone who has given me five stars. It really DOES mean the world to me… and I will see you next time, bye-bye.