Friday Night
Roadtrip to St. Albans! This is about 3.5 hours from Harrogate, so we drove down after work and grabbed dinner en route
Clarion Hotel St. Albans: Basic, but convenient hotel right in the center of St. Albans. St. Albans is the closest city to Harry Potter Studios and was a great spot to catch some zzz's and explore in the morning before our tour. The hotel was very inexpensive, but right across from the cathedral and was perfect for what we needed (60 GBP/night)
Saturday
St. Albans - Gail's Bakery: This is a British chain that has an AMAZING bakery. I highly, highly recommend the cheese + chive scones. It's also hot cross bun season and these looked amazing.
St Albans - Saturday Market: This was one of the larger markets we have seen outside a major city. It sold everything from cheese to meals to antiques. It's worth a ramble on a Saturday morning and if we had time, I totally would've had lunch there!
St Alban Cathedral: Built of Roman brick, this cathedral is truly stunning. We were treated to a concert by a string trio that was stunning and the acoustics...wow. Definitely drop in
Harry Potter Studios: WOW! This was amazing. All of the original sets across two huge warehouses. The tour was very well orchestrated (Disney-like hospitality and efficiency). We loved seeing the Great Hall and then other sets like Dumbledore's Office, the Weasley's Houses, and Griffyndor Common Room.
Important Note: Tickets for this sell out early, you need to buy them online 3-6 months in advance of any trip
From there...we drove to Oxford...it's about an hour from Harry Potter Studios
Oxford Mercure Eastgate: This was another convenient hotel in the heart of Oxford. It was walking distance to all of the major attractions and the modern rooms were perfect for what we needed. Highly recommend (250GBP / night)
Vintage Bus Tour: As we wandered around the city, we ended up on a totally free vintage bus tour of Oxford. We nabbed a seat on the top of the double decker and got a great tour around town. While ours was spontaneous, the website has more details on date + time
Turf Tavern: This is the oldest hotel in Oxford that dates back to the 1300's! The ceiling was so low that P could not stand up, but the drinks were great and reasonably priced. This is also famous as the tavern where Bill Clinton smoked, but did not inhale when he was a student at Oxford
Chang Mai Kitchen: This was a lovely Thai restaurant in the center of Oxford. The ambiance was lovely and the food was pretty good (though I imagine you could find a better spot!)
Sunday
Oxford Botanic Gardens: We had a bit of time before we met up with our friend, so we visited the botanic garden. It had some neat greenhouses, though we were a bit early in the season to truly appreciate the full garden
George Street Social: Our friend booked us a table at this fun, retro spot! We loved the vibe and the food was amazing!!! Cinnamon French Toast was awesome!
College Hopping: Oxford is made up of 40 colleges, each of which have a chapel, library, food hall, and common grounds that are unique. We were lucky that our friend could get us a behind the scenes tour of many of them...including Queen's College, Keble College and Magdalen College. For the most part, these were empty and stunningly beautiful. What's amazing is that most people only want to see the most famous - Christ Church (which inspired Harry Potter). While Christ Church was amazing, these other colleges were in some cases more impressive and allowed you to walk around uninterrupted by the hoards of tourists!
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