London on Stage
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Welcome to GoLearn's London on Stage

You have signed up for a 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. Tim and Jane will provide a detailed calendar of the trip and its 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 this magnificent city with you in October 2023.

Daily Itinerary

• The design of London on Stage 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 London on Stage 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.
• NOTE: Look under Know Before You Go on the TOUR HOME tab for fuller descriptions of all our plays, art exhibitions, and other excursions.

Thursday, October 5: Many Meetings ( 😀 )

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 go on a walking tour of Westminster and pay homage to Westminster Palace and Abbey, Buckingham Palace, and St. James's Park—capped by a delicious Welcome Dinner at San Pietro Restaurant. Early to bed will help us beat jetlag.

Hotel: The Rockwell
Meal: D

Friday, October 6: Is There a Doctor in the House?

This is our medical day. In the morning we’ll go on a specially arranged private Historical Health Walk, departing from the Old Operating Theatre, that will fill us in on what public health and medicine was like in the 18th and 19th Centuries. Lunch will be at fabulous foodie haven, Borough Market. And then back to The Rockwell for our first Theatre Chat to get us ready for a world premiere play, Dr. Semmelweis, co-written and starring Mark Rylance.
Before the play, we’ll have dinner together at scrumptious Nopi Restaurant.

Hotel: The Rockwell
Meals: B, L, D

Saturday, October 7: Guys and Dolls and Chocolate

We start this adventurous day at Melt, one of the few bean-to-bar chocolatiers in London, where we’ll learn to craft our own chocolate bars. Then free time until we gather at 3 pm for a Theatre & Culture Chat at The Rockwell. Dinner will be at one of London’s premier Indian restaurants, LaLit, which also happens to be in a breathtaking setting. Then it’s on to one of London’s most exciting new theatres, The Bridge, for the award-winning revival of Guys and Dolls, the musical that puts the fun back into New York organized crime.

Hotel: The Rockwell
Meals: B, D

Sunday, October 8: A Towering Private Tour, Plus God

In the morning we’ll head to the Tower of London for a private Morning Jewel House Tour—the best way to experience its treasures and history without the crowds. We’ll follow that with a matins service at St. Peter ad Vincula, a Chapel Royal in the Inner Ward of the Tower featuring a truly world-class church choir. Lunch will be at nearby Spitalfields Market with lots of great choices. (I know “Spitalfields” doesn’t sound like a very salubrious place to sample food. Does it help that it’s a contraction of the 12th Century “Hospital Fields”? No?) Spitalfields is also noted for its arts and crafts stalls, so lots to consider here.
Free evening.

Hotel: The Rockwell
Meals: B, L

Monday, October 9: Close Encounters of a Historical Kind

After a Theatre & Art Chat in the upstairs room of the King’s Head Pub around the corner from The Rockwell, Kent Christensen, our amazing art specialist, will take us to the newly re-opened National Portrait Gallery to view some beautiful paintings related to our plays. But wait, there’s more: for the re-opening, the NPG commissioned a large mural of famous women in British history—INCLUDING ONE BY KENT!! So, we’ll get to hear from the artist about his new work!
After a free afternoon, we’ll go to Dishoom Restaurant for dinner (exceedingly hard to get into, but we have reservations—whew). And then we’ll make our way to the West End to see the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Hamnet at the Garrick Theatre.

Hotel: The Rockwell
Meals: B, D

Tuesday, October 10: A Day with the Bard

It’s all about Shakespeare today. We’ll start in the morning with a privately arranged visit to Middle Temple Hall, an Elizabethan masterpiece where William S himself performed in his play Twelfth Night on February 2nd, 1601. It’s a great way to experience the architecture that inspired gallery theatres (and Harry Potter). We’ve arranged for a downright luxurious room off the Hall for our Theatre Chat. Then we’ll head to the other side of the Thames for lunch at the Swan Restaurant, the perfect prandial preparation for our matinee of Macbeth at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre (since they’re in the same complex).
Free evening.

Hotel: The Rockwell
Meals: B, L

Wednesday, October 11: Couture, Culture, and Scones

Bet you’ve never done anything quite like this before. After our Art & Theatre Chat at the pub, we’re going to Kensington Palace to see a new exhibition called Crown to Couture: the Fashion Show of the Century. It spans the frocks of Queen Charlotte to Beyoncé. And since we’re at the Palace, why not have Afternoon Tea on the grounds? Right, we couldn’t think of a good reason, either, so we will.
That night we go to the Old Vic Theatre to see Pygmalion, one of GB Shaw’s sharpest and funniest plays about a young Eastender rendered into a high society lady simply by changing her dialect. (Sound familiar? It was musicalized as My Fair Lady.)

Hotel: The Rockwell
Meals: B, L

Thursday, October 12: The World Comes to London

An intoxicating thing about London is that it is the world’s most cosmopolitan city, where world cultures mix and enrich. (We see you, NYC: get in line.) Today is about that. We start in Holland. After our Art & Culture Chat we’ll go to the National Gallery to see an exhibition of the work of Dutch painter, Frans Hals—led by Kent.
Free afternoon for you to contemplate Brexit, and then we’ll assemble at the National Theatre’s wonderful Lasdun Restaurant. It can be a leisurely dinner since we just have to stroll upstairs to see The Father and the Assassin, a new play set in Queen Victoria’s Jewel in the Crown, India, about Mahatma Gandhi’s struggle to liberate his nation, and about the fanatic who tried to stop him.

Hotel: The Rockwell
Meals: B, D

Friday, October 13: Royal Gardens, Singular Russians

No trip to London is complete without heading southwest on the Tube to World Heritage Site Royal Botanic Gardens Kew. There are trees there that pre-date the American Revolution. There is the tropical Palm House, the carnivorous plants at the Princess of Wales Conservatory, the largest-in-the-world Temperate House, two art galleries and two casual eateries, a lake with swans, and on and on: 300 acres of highly oxygenated bliss. Spend as much or as little time as you’d like; the rest of the day is free.
Our final play in the evening is Vanya at the Duke of York’s Theatre in the West End. Incredible actor Andrew Scott decided that the best way to follow up his definitive Hamlet would be to play all the roles in Anton Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya. We found it irresistible and hope you will, too.

Hotel: The Rockwell
Meal: B

Saturday, October 14: Many Partings ( 😢 )

Ok, but keep your London Transport Card because, as King George III says in Hamilton, “you’ll be back!” We’ll arrange cars to Heathrow Airport and anticipate our reunion in Salt Lake City.

Meal: B

Photos courtesy Christoph Dressler, Tim Slover/Jane England