An American Astray

Around Christmas time last year, I compiled my first England-centric Travel Wish List. I posted the first part of it on my blog, and talked with my friends about the places I wanted to visit. “That would be nice to do…someday,” most of them said. I would nod and smile, but I had a secret. I’d been covertly planning on moving to England since August, and I was determined to make my wish list a reality. My cousin Kendra and I had been trying to figure out how to become expats without having to have a job-sponsored visa, when the answer suddenly became clear—school-sponsored visa!

To make a long story short: a few months after I posted the Travel Wish List, I woke up to an email from City University London. Wiping the sleep from my groggy eyes, I read it once, twice, three times just to make sure I wasn’t imagining things. I had been accepted into their Creative Writing and Publishing program! But the first thing that came to my caffeine-deprived mind was that I would finally be able to turn my wish list into a to-do list. All the places that I had only dreamed of seeing would soon be within my globe-trotting reach.

I have an entire year to visit all the places on this list (and this is only part 1!), so I’ll be keeping track of each location I get to experience first-hand. I plan to take full advantage of this opportunity, and use this year to learn all I can about travel writing as well.

1.) Westminster Abbey

2.) Houses of Parliament (Palace of Westminster)

3.) Trafalgar Square

4.) National Gallery

5.) Buckingham Palace

6.) British Museum

7.) British Library

8.) Abbey Road

9.) Sherlock Holmes Museum

10.) St. Paul’s Cathedral

11.) Tower of London

12.) The Roman Wall

13.) London Eye

14.) Shakespeare’s Globe

15.) Victoria and Albert Museum

16.) Kensington Palace

17.) Hampton Court Palace

18.) WB Studio Tour: The Making of Harry Potter

19.) Harrods

20.) Windsor Castle

21.) Highclere Castle

22.) King’s College Chapel at Cambridge

23.) Roman and Medieval Baths

24.) Bath’s Fashion Museum

25.) Jane Austen Centre

26.) Glastonbury Abbey

27.) Wells Cathedral

28.) Avebury Stone Circle

29.) Stonehenge

30.) Salisbury Cathedral

31.) Wilton House

32.) Corfe Castle

33.) St. Fagan’s National History Museum

34.) The Doctor Who Experience

35.) Chatsworth

If you have visited any of these places and have suggestions or tips, please let me know in the comments. I love hearing other people’s travel stories as much as I love telling my own. You can also check out my travel board on Pinterest to see photos of other places I would love to see.

Cheers!