We’re huge fans of rail travel and over the years, I’ve shared so many of our train journeys with you. Last weekend was one of my favourite train journeys yet…
Miss Frugal and I, along with one of her friends, decided to have a bit of a cheeky Christmas shopping day in London to mark the start of December. The men of the house decided that a shopping day in London was definitely not something they wanted to do so they stayed at home and did boy stuff (not sure what but it involved football, gaming and McDonalds).
You might think we were a bit mad braving London on the first weekend in December but we were offered some free rail tickets in exchange for telling you all about how great the Family and Friends Railcard is – something I’ve said many times over the years because we love ours and have bought one for our family every year for about ten years now! Every year, our own Family and Friends Railcard has paid for itself several times over because the savings you get are so great that we’ve often made our money back in just one journey.
This year’s Family and Friends Railcard has saved us a good few hundred pounds as you may already know as I’ve told you about it in a few posts over the last year. We’ve used it to travel to York for a day-trip, Edinburgh where we flew when we went to Milan in May and London when we travelled to Nice and Monaco in October.
Travelling by train is so much less hassle than travelling by car – we don’t have the stress of parking or following the sat nav, we don’t need to stop at every second service station for a wee and we can relax, spread out and spend the journey enjoying each other’s company. I also love that there are power points at every seat and wifi, although not always free, is available so on a three-hour journey to London, the kids can sit and watch YouTube to their hearts content if they want to and I can catch up on so much work, or relax and read a book.
Just look at how comfortable that looks!
Anyway, after a 6 am start, we had three hours to relax on the train and arrived in London just before 10 am feeling refreshed and ready to go…
The whole point of our trip was to do some Christmas shopping so, after a quick stop at M&M World, we headed off to the shops – starting with the American Candy Store which caused more excitement than it probably should have. 😉
I didn’t take many photos to be honest as we were having such an amazing day but I did get a quick snap of the very impressive wall in Anthropologie. Sadly the photo is all I have from there as everything that I loved was super expensive…
We then wandered off down a little side street where we found the Carnaby Christmas Carnival. I love the shops in this area and the girls bounced from shop to shop excitedly as they loved them all! The big highlights for them here were Skinny Dip, Brandy Melville, Too Faced and the Birchbox pop up shop as well as the amazing bright decorations that were everywhere!
We took a detour from Regent Street to cut across to Bond Street where Victoria Secrets were having a hige buy 2 get 1 free deal and although the girls are too young for the Victoria Secrets lingere, they do a young range of fun clothes and underwear aimed at teens and both girls had their eye on some treats from that range
By the time we finally got back to the train we were all absolutely exhausted and ready to kick our shoes off and snuggle under our new Primark Christmas blankets for the journey home!
With a Family and Friends Railcard, you get 1/3 off most adult rail fares and 60% off kids’ fares for rail travel throughout Great Britain for just £30 a year. It’s not just the money you save on rail travel that makes it so great though as you’ll also get discounts on theatre, holidays and Virgin Experience Days and get fantastic discounts on lots of great attractions. Before you travel just go to www.daysoutguide.co.uk pick the attraction, download your voucher and enjoy making memories while saving money.
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