England

Country Description

If you’re an early riser, you could watch the sun come up over Stonehenge, catch a train to London to see a play at Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre in the early evening, and still have time for dinner at a famous restaurant in the West End. If royalty is more your thing, take the underground down to the Tower of London and walk the same ground that William the Conqueror and Henry VIII walked—or step into one of the prison towers to see what it was like for their enemies, and view the city at night from the new London Eye Walkthrough London’s Hyde Park and get an earful at Speaker’s Corner.  Step down into Liverpool’s Cavern Club and find yourself in the room that launched the Beatles to their worldwide fame, or visit Manchester’s Old Trafford to see the home of the world’s most famous football club. But don’t forget to come back to London, because there will always be something to see there. Samuel Johnson once wrote, “When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life.” Spend one day in the city and you’ll know what he meant. You’ll also immediately have two questions: “How long do I get to stay?” and “When do I get to come back?”

England is one of the world’s leading financial centers and is home to the influential London Stock Exchange. Imagine bringing your MBA students on a tour here, and educating them about global finance! It serves as the home base for corporations such as BP, HSBC, and Unilever, as well as providing satellite offices for many of the world’s most important companies. The failure of the Scottish Independence referendum in 2014 provides England (and the rest of the United Kingdom) with a degree of political stability, and it looks like London will be one of the dominant players on the European stage for a long time to come.