Review: Luxury Family Vacation in England, London, Cornwall, Stratford-upon-Avon, Windsor Castle, Westminster Abbey, Shakespeare

Through Zicasso, we found this agent and she was wonderful!  Our trip was a little more than 2 weeks long starting at the end of June.  We are a family of 5 with three children from ages 14, 12 and 8.  We are complicated travelers. We travel with 10 large bags. It requires large vehicles and someone who can move all the bags and extra baggage check-in on planes.  Sometime during the trip we also have to manage our nanny traveling back to NYC when my husband joins. Our itinerary is varied and structured with also planned breaks. It centers around our children’s educational studies, local arts, local vacation spots, local traditional foods and culture. We prefer privately guided tours.  We also like to have restaurant reservations for every evening of our trip that represent what is special to the locale.  I also requested that we were provided late night entertainment since I like to see the day as well as the night of wherever we visit.

Our agent put together a wonderful itinerary (presented in a very organized, helpful and detailed notebook) that allowed for flexibility at every stage and catered to the different interests of each one of us. Between the education of how people used to live in the rural England in Stratford-upon-Avon, to the development of theater with Shakepeare and the Globe, to exposure to modern street art in Shoreditch, to traditional tea and biscuit making and its history, the history of Windsor Castle, Westminster Abbey, Tower of London, to the Harry Potter highlights, to the art of falconry and to finally be able to hike and surf the incredibly beautiful coast of Cornwall. Here we learned about the knights of the round table and the legend of the Holy Grail.  And this wasn’t even everything we did.  It was amazing!

Our agent was available every step of the way.  I requested that we stay at 4/5 star hotels local to the area and we could not have better accommodations.  In London, our agent was able to book us in a 5* hotel that was elegant, roomy and fully-serviced with a fantastic spa and also a comprehensive East/ West breakfast buffet that was a major hit with our children.  In Cornwall, we stayed at a historic hotel that kept up-to-date with modern conveniences that could not have been better located, steps away from the beach, small gorgeous magical hikes along the coast in either direction to different towns.

We not only partook in the traditional foods of fish and chips, pasties, Indian food, meat pies and fine dining. We learned about the history of all of it and met famous chefs. We drank our selection of ales and hung out in local bars. We toured, we dined and we danced. We shopped too. I have the most amazing hat for my next hat luncheon and the Derby.

And my last note is that our guides were incredible. Most notably, our guide who was in the Chariots of Fire, was informative, personable, flexible, patient, and forward-thinking.  It is a special person who can manage the teenage/tween personalities with aplomb. It was also an additional plus that he is not so bad to look at either.

Thank you to our agent for our incredible experience that we will remember forever.  I am so sorry that it has taken so long for me to write this review.  I am off now to vote in our historic election.  As we were in London for the U.K.’s historic Brexit vote, you can probably understand how much is at stake. Please wish us luck. 

Warmest regards,

Margaret