A couple of months ago, I was contacted by Megabus who asked if I would like to take part in a blogger city exchange. The idea was to take one blogger from Birmingham and one from London and then send them to each city for the weekend so that the local blogger could show them around. I do love a trip to London and I’m quite proud of being from Birmingham, so I thought that this was a great idea and I couldn’t wait to find out who I was going to be paired with although I was a bit nervous.

It turns out that I had no reason whatsoever to be nervous as I was paired with Kariss. If you didn’t already know, Kariss and I met through Amy and we went to Disneyland Paris together last October and have a trip to Walt Disney World Florida planned for this October, so this was a great chance for us to catch up and have a bit of a planning session!

My day started off at 7:55am when I boarded the Megabus on Hill Street, Birmingham. The bus turned up ten minutes early, so I had plenty of time to get myself settled down and ready for the journey. It took just over three hours for us to arrive at London Victoria Coach station and the journey went smoothly with us arriving right on schedule.

When I got to Victoria Coach station, I made my way over to Victoria underground station to catch the tube over to London Bridge where I was meeting Kariss. It was quite an overcast day, however it wasn’t raining so we took the opportunity to take a few photos of Tower Bridge and the Thames before having a wander around Borough Market and then going to Slug and Lettuce for a spot of lunch.

The next part of our day was really exciting – Kariss had planned for us to take a walking Harry Potter tour around London as we are both massive Harry Potter fans. The Muggle Tour met by London Bridge underground station and was led by a lady called Steph who was so enthusiastic about the subject – anything that she doesn’t know about Harry Potter simply isn’t worth knowing! The tour lasted for 2.5 hours and included a short trip on the underground to Westminster. We got to see some of the filming locations from the Harry Potter films and also some of the places that were inspirations for the books. My favourite part of the tour was the two alleys which inspired Knockturn Alley and Diagon Alley. Once the tour was over, we went over to the Palace Theatre where Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is being performed as I wanted to see the outside. I have tickets to see both parts of the play, however I have to wait until next April which seems like forever!

We then had a wander towards Covent Garden where we had a look around a few shops and chilled out in Starbucks for a bit. While we were there, we came across Victoria from InTheFrow‘s pop up shop in association with British Heart Foundation. We spent quite a while in there looking at the clothes, some of which Victoria had donated herself and I ended up coming away with a lovely neon pink jumper and a Victorian style blouse from Oasis for the bargain price of £13.49 for the two items!

Our final plan for the day was one that I was really looking forward to – we had tickets to see Charlie and The Chocolate Factory. I love going to the theatre and have really been bitten by the theatre bug recently, this was my fourth musical this year so far! The show wasn’t really what I was expecting as the music is a lot different to the music in the (original) film but I really enjoyed it and I thought that the set was amazing! I would definitely recommend this to anyone who is a fan of musicals, especially if you have children.

After the show had finished, we went to Five Guys to get ourselves a burger and some fries and then we both went our seperate ways. I ended the night sat on my Premier Inn bed eating my greasy but delicious burger before I passed out in the comfiest bed I’ve ever slept in!

Everything was paid for by Megabus, however all opinions are my own

Tags : 24 Hours, Harry Potter, London, Megabus, travel