All this at a cost of $7,000+ USD/5303 BPS. Another reason we aren't as well-traveled as Europeans.
Yet another reason that we Americans are less well-traveled than Europeans is that we're timid about planning our own itineraries and traveling without a guide. On my first trip to London, I was terrified, but highly motivated to see Patrick Stewart's one-man show
A Christmas Carol at the Old Vic and to attend the fan club brunch the next morning, followed by a Q&A with Patrick. This was back when the internet consisted of Compuserve and typing commands at the command prompt. I had to buy my airline ticket through AAA, and had to stay a week to get a reasonable fare, but I found a very inexpensive B&B through an online agency, and arrived with a spare passport photo to use when I bought a London Transport pass. I got over the terror very quickly, thoroughly enjoyed the trip, and I've never looked back.
Now I know why I don't do the British Telly Club kind of travel! I spend a bit less than the quoted price for two fairly long trips to the UK per year. I thought I was paying too much when I added up the cost of my imminent 2-week holiday in London and Ypres for cancellation insurance purposes and it totaled a bit over $2000. Airfare @ $1101.83 for a round trip to London is more than I'd usually pay, but that fare happens to coincide with the University of London's spring vacation, so my favorite dorm in Bloomsbury will be operating as a B&B @ $592.05 for a week in a single en suite room. That includes a full English breakfast. I'll be sightseeing in central London, using public transport, mostly buses. My Oyster card will ensure that I always pay the lowest fare for each ride. I eat lunch in modest cafes and get takeaway to eat in my room for supper while catching up on email, editing the day's photos and selecting the next day's activities.
This trip's top priority site is the London Mithraeum, now that it has been reconstructed on its original site with advice and assistance from qualified archaeologists (unlike the relocated post-war pastiche that has been passed off as the Mithraeum since the '50s). Second priority is a visit to the Imperial War Museum, as I haven't been there in many years and they've added to the World War I displays. I have a list of more than enough to fill the entire week in London, before departing for a couple of nights in Ypres @ $260.70 for a single room at the Novotel Ieper Centrum to spend some time at the Essex Farm Cemetery and particularly the wound dressing station behind it. The public bus from the town market square stops there, and I will have bought a 3-day bus pass at the bus station on the rail station forecourt when I arrive. That pass will get me from the rail station to within a couple of blocks of the hotel, out to the cemetery the next morning, and back to the rail station on my departure day. I'll also attend the Last Post ceremony at the Menin Gate and tour the Flanders Fields Museum in the market square. I got a reasonable fare on the Eurostar to Brussels, and the Belgian commuter trains don't cost very much. By the way, I don't speak a word of Dutch and the French I sort of learned in high school in 1959-1961 has mostly vanished, so I'll be acting like a deaf-mute.
If course, this style of travel doesn't include all of the transport and guided touring out of town and back each day that comes with the Telly Club tour, but that kind of travel drives me spare, anyway. I want to do what I want when I want, and adjust what/when to fit the weather and my energy level that day. If something proves to be even more interested than I anticipated, I'll have the option to linger or to make a return visit within the next day or two.
BTW, I had a day at Bletchley a few years ago and enjoyed it thoroughly. I need at least another full day there, and fortunately it's a reasonable day trip from Nuneaton, where I visit occasionally to do genealogy research. There isn't much else to do in Nuneaton, so day trips are always welcome.