Christmastime in England: A Very English Christmas
Go Learn
December 12-21, 2023
Double Occupancy: $5500 per person
Single Occupancy: $6000 per person
Airfare is not included.
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Welcome To Go Learn's Christmastime in England
You have signed up for a special holiday treat that starts even before you board an airplane! Travel with Go Learn means you’ll receive pre-journey support and information and a tour reunion when your travels are over.
Before your tour, Go Learn will be in touch with information about London; its theatre, arts, and culture scenes; packing lists, and detailed transit instructions from Heathrow Airport right to our hotel’s doorstep. At predeparture, Tim and Jane will provide a detailed calendars of the trip and its yuletide activities so that you can plan your free time accordingly.
Feel free to contact us with questions. We’re happy to point you to a travel agent who help you find a flight or put you in touch with Tim and Jane in case you need the trip leaders’ expert opinions. At Go Learn we want you to hit the ground running, and we will provide you with the right information to do just that!
Our faculty trip leaders, Tim and Jane, have been taking travelers to London for fifteen years—and can’t wait to share our first Go Learn English Christmas season with you.
Daily Itinerary
- The design of Christmastime in England includes a planned event most days, a production of a play most evenings, and free time to discover or re-visit your London favorites.
- Each day of our trip begins with complimentary breakfast at Christmastime in England headquarters, The Rockwell Hotel
- On most mornings we pop around the corner to a private upstairs room at the King’s Head Pub for our Theatre, Art, and/or Culture Chats. That’s where we prepare for plays and events and, even better, talk together about them afterwards.
Daily Itinerary
Tuesday, December 12: Arrivals in Christmas Town
We'll arrange your transportation from Heathrow Airport to The Rockwell, our charming boutique hotel in South Kensington—where complimentary breakfast is served every morning. After you're settled in, we'll bundle up and board a special open-top double-decker Christmas Lights Bus to see the thousands of lights along Regent Street and in Trafalgar Square. (Don’t worry: if there’s Weather, we’ll just head downstairs to the protected part of the bus.) We’ll cap the evening with a delicious Welcome Dinner. Early to bed will help us beat jetlag.
Meal: D
Wednesday, December 13: A Dickens of a Season
Today is all about Mr. Christmas himself: Charles Dickens. After a Theatre & Art Chat in a private upstairs room at the King’s Head Pub, just around the corner from The Rockwell, we’ll visit the Dickens house museum at 48 Doughty Street and learn about the life and work of the author of Great Expectations, David Copperfield, and Oliver Twist. On the way to a delicious dinner at the wonderful Lasdun Restaurant, there will be time to browse at the Southbank Christmas Market. Tonight we go to our first play, a new and enthralling adaptation of Dickens’s A Christmas Carol at the Old Vic Theatre. Our fabulous seats are in the “snow zone.”
Meals: B, D
Thursday, December 14: “A Sad Tale’s Best for Winter.”
We’ll start the day with a private tour of “Holbein Tudors,” a new exhibition at the Queen’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace, featuring portraits by Henry VIII’s great court painter, Hans Holbein. Then, by special arrangement, we’ll visit Middle Temple Hall, an Elizabethan masterpiece where Shakespeare himself performed in his play Twelfth Night on February 2nd, 1601. Our Theatre Chat will take place in a stunning room next door. Afterwards we’ll hie ourselves to The George, a marvelous pub established in 1723—it’s right around the corner on the Strand—for a toothsome lunch. And then it’s on to a matinee of Hamnet, a riveting new play commissioned by the Royal Shakespeare Company about William and Anne Shakespeare and their family. In the dusk following the play, we’ll stroll along Jermyn Street to see the Christmas lights and visit elegant “grocery store,” Fortnum & Mason.
Meals: B, L
Friday, December 15: The Best of Britain
David Hockney is England’s most beloved living painter, and his new exhibition, “Hockney Portraits,” is a must-see event. So after an Art & Theatre Chat at the King’s Head, we’ll head to the National Portrait Gallery to take it in. Free afternoon—the Trafalgar Square Christmas Market is right next door—and then dinner at Kahani—because nothing says “Best of Britain” like fabulous Indian food. (Did you know chicken tikka masala was invented by an Indian chef in Glasgow?) And to round out this “Best of” day, we’re going to Cadogan Hall in the evening to hear England’s premier acapella choir, The Sixteen, perform a program of Renaissance Christmas music. Sigh. A day of bliss.
Meals: B, D
Saturday, December 16: Guys and Dolls and Chocolate
Ok, we spent yesterday in the heights, so now it’s time to get our hands…chocolatey! We start our day at Melt, a bean-to-bar chocolatier, where we’ll learn to craft our own seasonal chocolate bars—perfect stocking stuffers! Then free time—eclectic Portobello Road market is just around the corner—until we gather in the afternoon for a Theatre & Culture Chat at The Rockwell. A delicious dinner together at Orjowan, an outstanding Lebanese restaurant in our ‘hood of South Kensington, and then it’s on to one of London’s most exciting new theatres, The Bridge, for an award-winning revival of Guys and Dolls, the musical that puts the fun back into New York organized crime.
Meals: B, D
Sunday, December 17: By Invitation Only
It’s good to know people. The Reverend Canon Roger Hall, Deputy Priest in Ordinary to HM The King—and Friend of Go Learn—has invited us to attend the annual Tower of London Christmas State Parade Service, featuring beautiful choral music, Christmas homily, and Yeoman Warders dressed in their scarlet finery. Next, we have made arrangements to visit one of the oddest—er, most distinctive—venues in London: the gloriously eccentric Dennis Severs House. It’s like stepping back into the 18th Century—and now all decked out for Christmas. Then it’s on to Spitalfields Market—known for its good food and crafts offerings, now with a Christmas theme. Free evening.
Meals: B, L
Monday, December 18: Traditions Old and New
No traditional English Yuletide is complete without a Lessons and Carols service, first devised in Cornwall in 1880. After our morning Theatre Chat, we’ll attend a special one at St. Michael Cornhill, a beautiful Christopher Wren parish church in the heart of London’s financial district. On the way we’ll stop off to gawk at the most über-Christmas of all the markets: Leadenhall. The Twenty-First Century London tradition is definitely cosmopolitan internationalism, so, after a free afternoon, we’ll celebrate that heady cultural mix by attending a stunning new theatricalization of Hayao Miyazaki’s beloved Studio Ghibli film My Neighbor Totoro. East meets west in this “tender and remarkably beautiful show” (Financial Times).
Meal: B
Tuesday, December 19: Hobbits, Christmas Crackers, and Botanic Magic
After a morning Theatre & Culture chat at our pub, we’ll make our way to the British Library to explore “Fantasy: Realms of Imagination,” a new exhibition at the British Library that focuses on literature and art of the fantastic. Neil Gaiman is one of the curators, so you know we’re getting the good stuff. Free afternoon, and then, as dusk falls, we’ll enter the magical world of “Christmas at Kew” together. With thousands of twinkling lights, fire garden, light projections, and glass houses of exotic plants dressed for Christmas, this 300-acre World Heritage Site botanic garden is considered an essential Christmas event for many Londoners. Plus there will be many delicious casual food options as you hit the light trail.
Meals: B, D
Wednesday, December 20: Christmas Monarchs and Theatre Legends
Theatre Chat in the morning, and then we’ll gather together for lunch at The Britannia. We’ve booked the private Willow Room upstairs, where we’ll dine on traditional English seasonal fare (you have to at least try Christmas pudding), pop our Christmas crackers, and don our paper crowns—aaand there may also be a (pleasant) surprise or two. Free afternoon. In the evening we’ll stroll through Covent Garden and Seven Dials to see the Christmas lights on the way to our final (sigh) production, The Motive and the Cue, a scintillating new play about the clash of titanic artistic wills as Sir John Gielgud tries to direct Richard Burton in Hamlet—and Elizabeth Taylor tries to help. What could go wrong? “A witty, deft, touching evocation of a fascinating, fraught encounter” (The Telegraph).
Meals: B, L
Thursday, December 21: Now Dash Away All
We sincerely hope that by now, as you depart for your own Christmas trees, you will have had a truly memorable, one-of-a-kind Go Learn experience. We’ll arrange cars to Heathrow Airport and anticipate our reunion in Salt Lake City.