March 2026 Travel Adventures: London's West End, Oxford and More!

March 2026 took us to a variety of places, ranging from picturesque villages to educational museums, and even the bright lights of London's West End. Here are our highlights! 

The Science Museum and the West End, London

We both took a day off one Wednesday in March to enjoy some time in London without the weekend crowds.

This was a day in which we both got to explore some of our biggest passions in life.

We started off at the Science Museum in Kensington, one of London's many free museums. As a city, London is generally super expensive, so it's great to make the most of free attractions like this. Claudio really loved this museum, especially the parts about cars (obviously!) and engineering. Though he studied and works in business/finance (which is considered more prestigious than engineering in Chile), he's always loved taking things apart to see how they work and putting them back together again, as well as tinkering around with cars, so he really enjoyed the exhibits about how different machines work.

Afterwards, we took the bus over to the West End. Taking the bus in London often feels like a tourist attraction in and of itself; we always enjoy looking out of the window at the different streets and landmarks.

We stopped for a coffee and cinnamon roll at Ole & Steen on Haymarket Street - the first place Claudio ever went for coffee in London, back in 2020!

It was then time for an activity involving one of my biggest passions in life - musical theatre! My parents had given me a theatre token for my birthday in October, and we finally used it to go and see the Phantom of the Opera in the West End. Going to see shows is one of my favourite things in life, and I really enjoyed seeing this classic. It's a spectacular musical, and we loved the bit with the falling chandelier!

Afterwards, we got some food at LEON, which is one of our favourite chains in London, as it's reasonably affordable and healthy. We sat in the window, enjoying views of two West End theatres in front of us.

We finished off our day in London by walking over the Thames and across to Westminster Bridge to take a look at the Big Ben and Palace of Westminster, before getting a bus back to near Paddington. The bus was another nice tour through the city, this time by night.

Overall, it felt like a real treat to get to visit the city on a weekday - it definitely gave us more of an experience of being a local, rather than a tourist. We'll absolutely do something like this again in the future.

Oxford

We always enjoy visiting Oxford, and realised recently that neither of us had been there in a while. As it's only a short train journey away, we decided to go there one weekend for a walk around some of its lesser-known sights, such as St John's College (where my sister used to work) and the University Parks. There are always a lot of hidden gems to discover in this elegant city.

We then spent a nice hour or two at the Ashmolean Museum, which is free to enter (always a plus point!). I'd visited it briefly several years ago, so it was nice to go around it again. There are far too many exhibits to look at everything in detail, but I especially liked the rooms with the ancient Greek and Egyptian statues and artefacts. We also went up on the roof of the building, which had great views.

Ure Museum of Greek Archaeology

Speaking of museums, I also recently visited the Ure Museum of Greek Archaeology at the University of Reading. It's quite a small room of Greek and Egyptian artefacts, but definitely worth popping in and seeing if you happen to be walking around the university.

Henley-on-Thames

A couple of weeks ago, we returned to Henley-on-Thames to see some of the town's sights that we'd missed on our first visit. We had a nice walk in the sunshine and enjoyed crossing the wooden bridge over the river and watching the water in the lock being raised and lowered.

Goring

Our final outing of March was to the village of Goring, on the train line between Reading and Didcot. This picturesque village is known for being where the singer George Michael lived. We visited his house, where fans had left tributes, and also enjoyed walking by the river and along the village's scenic streets.

I expected that April would bring some very exciting travel adventures to write about on this blog, but unfortunately, at the end of March, we had to cancel a big international trip we had planned. Of course, it's disappointing to not be abroad right now, but we've been taking some fun day trips to make up for it. I'll be writing all about those very soon!

Summer Travel Adventures in England (Outside London)

Having just written about our summer travel adventures in London, it's now time to cover all the places we visited outside of the capital...

Mercedes Benz World

It was Claudio's birthday in June, and given that his big passion in life is cars, I decided to surprise him with a trip to Mercedes Benz World. As we don't currently have a car, the journey there took us over 90 minutes and involved three trains and a walk through a fairly deserted area. I was hoping that the destination would be worth the hassle, and thankfully, it was!

The museum is free to visit (though there are extra activities you can pay for) and it kept us entertained for a good few hours. Attractions included a cinema showing a film about the history of Mercedes Benz, cars from different eras to look at, modern cars that we could go inside, and a race track where we saw a driving demonstration. Definitely a very fun experience for any car lover!

Bournemouth

During one of the heatwaves over the summer, we decided to spend a day at Bournemouth Beach, which can be reached directly by train from Reading. 

With its long stretch of golden sand, this is definitely one of the UK's most beautiful beaches. I'd been twice in recent years (once in 2019 and once in 2021) and wanted to show it to Claudio.

Unfortunately, there was some kind of big cheerleading event going on, which meant that the town was a lot busier than it otherwise would have been. The weather also turned very cold around lunchtime, which put paid to our plans for a swim in the sea, as we knew that the train back would be heavily air-conditioned and we wouldn't be able to warm up until we got back home. 

So we chose to spend a large part of the afternoon walking through the Town Gardens, a park that I hadn't fully explored before. The Upper Gardens is supposedly inspired by three continents: Europe, Asia and North America. To be honest, I'm no expert on plants, so it was hard to tell which parts were inspired by which continent, except for the Japanese-style bridges. But it was a nice, tranquil place to explore away from the chaos of the town centre.

Maidenhead

Living on the Elizabeth Line, Maidenhead was an obvious place for us to go and visit. We'd passed it many times when going into London, and thought it looked really nice, so took a trip there one weekend.

The town centre was actually not as nice as we were expecting, though it gets better the further you go from the station.

The part next to the river, however, is super picturesque, and we really enjoyed our walk there. 

Oxford

I have been feeling very burnt out this year from a long job search and from a job that isn't aligned with my career aspirations. This was especially tough during the summer, and so I decided to take a few days off one week to give myself a bit of a reset. I used one of those days to take a trip to Oxford, one of my favourite cities in the UK, to spend a day walking around the sights, and enjoying its cafés and shops.

One place I really loved visiting was Blackwell's bookshop - it's a beautiful shop with so many books. I could spend hours there!

Eton and Windsor

Claudio really wanted to visit Windsor Castle, and we had no excuse not to go, as it's very close by. We didn't go inside, as it's so expensive (and the Windsor family get enough of our money as it is!), but we had a nice time walking around the picturesque town. We also crossed over the river to the town of Eton, where you can find the infamous school (another institution I don't approve of!). This was another pretty (and surprisingly peaceful) area to visit, and we were lucky enough to see Dave the Eton Dachshund in his window!

Reading

Over the summer months, we've also got to know our current town better. One place I liked checking out was the museum housed in the town hall, which is completely free to visit. Highlights included a copy of the Bayeux Tapestry, Roman mosaics, and a collection of vintage biscuit tins!

We also spent an interesting evening exploring the university campus (this actually inspired us to take our recent trip to Nottingham!). We really loved the old building next to the lake - it looked like something out of an Agatha Christie adaptation!

Life has been pretty full-on recently, which is why this post about summer travel has ended up being published over halfway through October! But in the coming weeks, I want to try to get back on track posting regularly here, as well as on my Instagram page. I have a lot of interesting things to write about, including a recent trip abroad! So stay tuned for the next installment in my next travel diaries. 😊