Bath & Oxford

My friend Rachel and I visited London for a few days in April. We wanted to get out of London for a day and see more of England! I had heard great things about Bath and Oxford. Since they were both west of London, we decided to do both.

TRANSPORATION

We took the train from Paddington, which was about an hour and 20 minutes. Make sure you buy your ticket before boarding the train. Apple Pay does not work for the Great Western Railway, so we ended up paying more than we should have. We took a 1 way trip to Oxford from Bath and a 1 way trip back to Paddington.

BATH

The Roman Baths open at 9AM. We arrived just before 10 and it wasn't too busy. The walk from the train station was about 10 minutes. All of the main things to see are close together! I had read that the morning was the best time to visit the Spa, so we planned our day around starting there to tour the Roman Baths. I am not a big museum person, but it was a really cool exhibit and very interactive. They gave us an audio set, The Bath Abbey Church is next to the Roman Baths. We looked inside, but we did not pay to do the tour. We walked around and explored shops! We saw the Abbey Deli, which is the Modiste, Madame Delacroix's dress shop in Bridgerton. We also saw a few other spots we recognized from the show. We spent just under 3 hours here. It was definitely worth the trip! Bath was a beautiful city and this was one of my favorite parts of our trip.

OXFORD

The train from Bath to Oxford was about an hour. We walked a lot in Oxford! We toured Christ Church where we got to see the the Great Hall from Harry Potter.

We were sad to find out that the main library tour is was booked, but we did see the Divinity School at Bodleian Libraries. The architecture is incredible! Whether you are a Harry Potter fan or not, I would recommend visiting. We did not make, but Blenheim Palace is also close to Oxford.

If you are looking for a day outside of London, I would highly recommend visiting these cities. It is certainly possible to do both in a day and we had a great experience, but if you want to explore more I would recommend sticking to one city per day.