This little trip was supposed to be to Seville, Spain. I had an unexpected and quite-harsh project in October-November and I decided to spend part of the income rewarding myself for going through it. Thus, I traced a good plan, I swear. Three-day trip, placed right after the Spanish December long weekend, destination accessible by public transport, not so cold… It was a perfect plan. And then I went on Ryanair page and saw that my early-morning flight to London-Stansted was back on the rooster. And furthermore… it was comparably cheap.

But I stuck to the plan. Until I saw that the Oxford University Museum of Natural History was running an exhibition and had pulled out some of its heavy-weight artefacts… But what really sealed the deal was that I found a flights + hotels combination that was actually cheaper than trains + hotel in Seville. It really seemed like the universe was coming together to tell me I could and should take this trip. Yes, it was quite close to the Prague trip, but I was quite literally facing four months of downtime afterwards due to a long project coming up.

So the plan became landing in London, heading to Oxford. Once there, I would see the four museums belonging to the University of Oxford. The next day, I would go back to London, because, in the end, it is one of my favourite cities. Spoiler alert though – I did not get to see much Christmas stuff there. Weird.

For London, I booked a time slot at the Natural History Museum, bought a ticket for Wicked and signed up for a tour with the London Museum of Transport. In Oxford, the museums are free, and I did not know how long I would take, so I would improvise after that.

Something that I have been wanting to do for a while was the Afternoon Tea at the Natural History Museum. You get to see the Mary Anning rooms, usually reserved for members, and there are dinosaur-print macarons. Unfortunately, when I tried to book that, it turned out it was for minimum two people, and since they charged up front, I could not trick the system – though I honestly considered booking it and just bring a take-out container and live off the second afternoon tea for the following day. Temptation, but in the end it was way too expensive for just a whim. Fate would give me a hand with that, too, even if the start of the trip was somewhat… bumpy.

One of the things I had to do to travel to the UK was getting an ETA (Electronic Travel Authorisation). I am pretty sure I don’t need one, because I have the right to work in the UK, but I decided to go through the process because it felt easier than drawing up all the paperwork and taking it along to prove it at entrance. On the 20th of November, I downloaded the app and followed the instructions – first, I got a security code on my email to start the application. I had to take a photo of my passport, then scan the chip (I did not even know my phone could do that!). Next, the system asked me to “scan my face”, I guess similarly to what the machines do when you enter the UK border, and I had to take a picture with a white background and no shadows – finding that background was the most difficult part. The last step was, obviously, paying for it, and of course the bank app and the ETA one had to be open at the same time on the phone and switching from one to the other was stressful because my banking app sucks.

After payment, the application was sent, and I received an email that it would be checked. This was 16:09. When I came out from work, I had a valid ETA – the email had arrived at 16:18. Yay, I’m not suspicious. The authorisation is valid for two years, and allows for multiple entries. I will have to make good use of that.

Plane tickets, hotel bookings, train schedules and ETA in hand, I was ready for a three-day getaway in England.