SELECT SUMMER 2022

PERFECT DAY IN— LONDON

In June, Queen Elizabeth II and the entire United Kingdom celebrated the monarch’s Platinum Jubilee marking her 70th year as head of state with pomp and circumstance in the form of royal parades, horse races, and street festivals. Here’s how to make the most of a day in London, where a “Superbloom” of 20 million seeds sown in the moat of the Tower of London marks the anniversary all summer.

MORNING

Trust your travel advisor to scare up a few of the much-in-demand tickets to tour Buckingham Palace, a seasonal opportunity only available July 22 to October 2. Of the 775 rooms in the royal residence, tour-goers will be able to see the 19 State Rooms, in which the Queen welcomes foreign dignitaries, and the Throne Room, where official royal wedding photographs are taken. Bonus: Add on a guided tour to the palace gardens while you are chez Windsor.

From the Palace, take a walk around stately Westminster to do some landmark box-ticking. See Charles Dickens and Elizabeth I’s tombs at Westminster Abbey. Take some snap shots of the UK parliament. Don’t forget to salute Big Ben, finally free of scaffolding after a fiveyear refurbishment, its clock tolling every quarter hour.

NOON

Make your way across the Thames to the new Borough Yards, a shopping and dining district that revives the area’s original medieval street pattern, blending contemporary and traditional architecture. Pull up a stool at the marble bar of Barrafina Borough Yards to watch the chefs prepare your tapas.

The Victoria & Albert Museum is stuffed with the kinds of collections you’d imagine in the most curious of attics — wallpaper, hats, manuscripts, ceramics — a permanent collection of 2.27 million objects covering 5,000 years of human creativity. Among Britain’s most beloved contributions, “Beatrix Potter: Drawn to Nature” explores the much loved author’s illustrations as a scientist, farmer, and creator of characters including Peter Rabbit, plus more than 200 personal objects including coded diaries, letters, and landscape sketches.

NIGHT

Have your travel advisor reserve a table at the trendy Sessions Arts Club, located in the former judge’s dining room of a Clerkenwell courthouse. Despite its history, there’s nothing starched about its new incarnation, a clubby, art-filled and artfully crumbling – for effect – interior with soaring ceilings; a dramatic set for chef Florence Knight’s seasonal dishes. Described as “decadent and sexy” this club is part artists’ commune, part chic hotel.

While the West End offers tantalizing productions aplenty (including an acclaimed revival of Cabaret), put your advisor in charge of tracking down tickets to the immersive show experience, The Burnt City in outlying Woolwich. Punchdrunk theatre company is known for its deconstructed approach — in its breakthrough version of Macbeth called Sleep No More, audiences wandered among rooms at will to see different scenes. The Burnt City, its latest offering, focuses on the fall of Troy, with performances lasting up to three hours, and six entry times per day (through December).

Toast your day with a sundowner at Lyaness, a hotspot from mixologist Ryan Chetiyawardana, known as Mr. Lyan, which opened just pre-pandemic and is already on the World’s 50 Best Bars list. Five seasonally rotating ingredients — perhaps grass with malt or oyster honey — star in original cocktails. Leave it to your advisor to secure a coveted reservation at the sophisticated bar overlooking the Thames from Southbank.