London sits at the centre of an excellent rail network and within an hour or two of some of England's most rewarding destinations. A week in London might reasonably include one or two day trips.
Hampton Court Palace is the most accessible: 35 minutes from Waterloo, and one of the great Tudor palaces. Windsor Castle, 30 minutes from Paddington or Waterloo, is the largest occupied castle in the world and still a working royal residence.
Oxford is an hour from Paddington and well worth a full day for its medieval university colleges, the Ashmolean Museum, and the Bodleian Library. Bath is 90 minutes from Paddington — an intact Georgian city built around Roman remains, with one of the most complete Roman bathing complexes in Europe.
For the coast, Brighton is 50 minutes from Victoria, with a pebbly beach, a Victorian pleasure pier, the extravagant Royal Pavilion, and a good restaurant scene. Canterbury, an hour from St Pancras, has the cathedral where Becket was murdered in 1170 and a remarkably preserved medieval centre.
