Just kidding. This is a one-off post to share some of the travel tips from my experience planning for and embarking on a trip around Great Britain in Spring 2025.

While I may share other travel-related tips in the future, I remain your short story, essay-writing poet.

UK Electronic Travel Authorisation

• The UK started requiring a travel authorisation in 2025, which is very easy to get.
• Use the phone app instead of the desktop version because it streamlines scanning your passport and getting the RFID information from it.
• Be prepared to take a passport-style selfie headshot
• My ETA was approved in a matter of seconds, but the site recommends getting it a couple weeks prior to your trip in case of delays.
• You can delete the app after you complete the application. You don’t need to show any documentation for the UK ETA when you go through British Customs.

Public Transit

• You can use tap-to-pay credit cards and systems like Apple Pay to swipe in and out on buses and the Underground in London. Make sure to use a different card for each person as this is how the system tracks your entry and exit points for billing.
• It’s up to you whether loading money onto an Oyster card for the Tube is worth potential cost savings, but our group chose to pay directly by credit card as we swiped in and out of the station, which is what one of the Tube staff members recommended.
• For National Rail Service, I recommend purchasing tickets in advance and choosing an option that allows you to take any train on a given day (in case you miss the train you’re planning to be on). If traveling with others, consider getting a special rail pass that will get you discounts (like the “Two Together” pass). There are also a lot of discounts for youth, so make sure to check those out before buying rail passes in England and Scotland if you’re traveling with kids.
• If a train on the Underground is full and there’s another one coming in two minutes, it’s worth the wait. Usually, the train that comes right after is almost empty. After cramming on with a crowd of strangers a couple times, we learned our lesson.

Cash & Credit Cards

• Make sure you have a credit card with no foreign transaction fees (like the Capital One Quicksilver card) before you start booking tours or tickets in advance.
• Check with your bank about getting foreign currency ahead of time, but the fees may be cheaper if you wait and get cash at the airport ATM, as was the case for me. If you decide to get cash from your bank, make sure to allow more than two weeks for it to come in.
• Make sure your debit card is working before you leave so you can use it at the ATM. If you haven’t used it in a while, your bank may have deactivated it.
• The UK was almost completely cashless, and we never had to tip in cash. There were a few small restaurants in London that were cash-only, but £200 was more than enough for my two-week stay, and I probably would have been fine with only half of that.

Packing for Weather

• Bring a light rain jacket with a hood. Check the weather forecast daily, and bring the jacket if there’s even a slight chance of rain.
• Pack a small umbrella or cap on particularly rainy days as your hood may blow back during windy weather.
• Invest in waterproof luggage, including backpacks and handbags. This helps if you don’t want the hassle of an umbrella since you won’t have to shield your bags from the rain.
• Wear waterproof shoes or socks and shoes that will dry quickly. You can also use sprays to give your shoes a water-resistant coating, although this will eventually wear off.
• I went in late May and early June, and there were a few cool days where I was glad I packed a lightweight jacket and a scarf to layer up.

Shopping & Eating Out

• Bring reusable grocery totes if you don’t want to have to pay for bags when you get groceries. Two to three bags is probably plenty.
• Eggs aren’t refrigerated, so you’ll probably find them on a shelf near the cereal.
• Sainsbury’s Local and Tesco Express were about the size of an American convenience store. While they didn’t have huge selections of groceries, they provided enough options for basic meals and home essentials. A full-size Tesco would provide more, but all we ever found were the smaller ones.
• If you really want to eat at a specific restaurant (at least in London and Edinburgh), book a table a few days in advance. Also, be aware of the football schedule as any pub with a TV will be a crowded on game nights. The Tube will be a zoo too.

Housing

• We used AirBNB for all our stays, including London, Liverpool, and Edinburgh, and had a great experience with all of them. I determined what we wanted to see in each city and looked for AirBNBs within a reasonable radius of those points (ex. no more than 30-minute Tube ride from most of the destinations).
• We also planned our days so that we wouldn’t have to go back and forth to our lodgings to minimize travel time.
• One reason we chose AirBNBs is because that gave us an easy way to wash laundry and keep our packing light since we were essentially backpacking (no suitcases).
• Staying at AirBNBs had the side benefit of giving us a less touristy experience of each city. Our London stay was particularly nice as it was in a residential neighborhood not far from a Tube station and a small strip of grocery stores and restaurants.

Sightseeing Tours & Tickets

• Almost all the tours I booked required advance booking and timed tickets. In theory, you could buy tickets at the door to most historic places, but you would have to wait in line and might not be able to get in if they were already booked for the day. The couple times we were later than our timed window, we didn’t have any issues getting in, though. The ticket staff were mostly just checking to make sure you had the right day on your ticket.
• I saved PDFs of all our tour tickets in a Google Drive folder and shared it with our group. I made sure to download the folder to my phone so I could use it even if I was offline. This system worked really well and meant we all had access to the tickets and weren’t juggling a bunch of papers.
• Buying tickets in advance also meant we didn’t have to spend as much with cash or credit card during the trip, which was more secure.

International Phone Plan

• I used Mint Mobile’s Minternational Pass. I had good service and was able to text and call (including a call to the United States from the Dover Cliffs), as well as use data for Google Maps and other essentials. When I experienced any disruptions to my service, toggling airplane mode on and off got it working again. There are probably cheaper plans, but if you have Mint and want a seamless phone plan transition, the Minternational Pass worked really well. I combined a ten-day pass and a three-day pass to get me through my trip, and I never had issues activating anything. If you have the Mint app and prepurchase the passes, then you can just activate them when you arrive (Mint will prompt you through the steps).

That’s all I can think of. Ta ta for now!