London Travel Tips

I've visited London a few times now and really enjoyed it. Here's some of my best tips to visiting London on a budget, as a middle-aged solo traveler, who's interested in museums and historical/cultural things and not so much partying or drinking.

The biggest expenses are accommodation, transit and food.

London has hostels for under £40/night in fairly decent areas. If you've never stayed in a hostel before, it's like a shared room situation where everyone gets their own bunk and locker and you share bathrooms and other common areas with the other guests. Hostels are a great way to meet other travelers, plus if they give you access to a kitchen you can make your own food! And usually you get free coffee or tea, too.

If it's your first time visiting London, ideally you'd stay within Zone 1, which is where the major tourist sites are. It's a little easier getting around if you're in that zone already, especially if you're not used to public transit and get nervous on metros, but it IS more expensive (generally). It's also grungier and noisier.

Another option is to stay one zone away. Last time I visited I stayed in Palmer's Lodge Swiss Cottage, which is in Zone 2 and only about 20-30 minutes from most places in Central London. It's also a great location if you want to visit Hampstead Heath or other places sort of outside the major center area.

If you're a student, you might be able to get a room in a student housing building during the school breaks.

This drove me crazy on my last visit to London: the coffee is super expensive for what you get. Their “regular” sizes are more like American smalls, just fyi, and you're probably paying £5 for it. The cheaper coffees from delis and whatever are just instant coffee powder and still £3 anyway, so not worth it.

Either get your own instant coffee packets from Lidl/Aldi (£2 for 5 or so), bring a drip filter and make your own in your hotel, or resign yourself to going to either Costa or McDonald's. It's still £5 for a coffee, but they're HUGE.

If you're a foodie then you probably already have a list of places to go and how much you'll need to spend to eat there. If you're not a foodie and just want decent food that won't cost you $20/meal, then this is the page for you!

UK convenience/grocery stores all have things called Meal Deals, where you get a main, a side and a drink for a low price. The lowest is usually Tesco's, which is still under £4, but generally it's £5 and under wherever you go. They have things like sandwiches, fancy salads, soups, even breakfast stuff like oatmeal and fruit.

However, I highly recommend HACKING the meal deal! Don't just grab a sandwich and a bag of chips and call it good. You can make those meal deals stretch further if you pick your food more carefully than that.

For instance, don't waste your side slot by getting a bag of chips. You can get either a large bag of chips or a multi-pack of smaller bags from stores like Aldi and Lidl for £1 something. Grab that and use them for lunches instead of getting the small bags from Tesco as your side.

Instead, grab either the hardboiled egg side (2 eggs) or something like hummus– whatever's got more protein and is more filling is the key.

Do NOT grab a water as your drink. What a waste! You can literally pick anything on the drinks shelf, including the more expensive fruit smoothie things. Grab something that has vitamins in it, ffs.

As for mains, personally I prefer the sandwiches as they're easier to carry around, but the only “sandwiches” I actually like (from Tesco's anyway) is the wraps.

So my typical meal deal looks like this: chicken wrap (usually Southern fried), two hardboiled eggs, fruit smoothie thing. It's filling, it's relatively healthy, and it's under £4. Yay!

You don't need an Oyster card or a travel card, really, you probably won't be riding the metros and buses enough anyway to make it worth the cost. Just use contactless payment and if you meet the cap they'll adjust it at the end of the week. I went everywhere and never met the cap but I spent maybe $30 on transit during the 5 days I was there.

From the airport: take the metro as it's the cheapest (£5 or under). If you have a lot of luggage and don't mind paying a bit more, either take a bus into the city or the Heathrow Express (£15-25). There's signs all over and it's very easy to navigate with Google Maps.

If it's your first time in London, just go ahead and see all the major tourist sights. Get that out of the way and then the next time you come back you can focus on other things!

They do have a hop on hop off bus, but I think it's overpriced for what you get. Instead try Rick Steves' free audio tours and book a free walking tour for more. If you're staying at a hostel, see if they do free events or tours, too!

Most museums have either free tours or behind-the-scenes paid tours which can be super worth it. Tate Modern has multiple free tours every day focused on a specific part of the museum, for instance.

A mix of standard tourist stuff and some places you might want to go to on subsequent visits.

1. Hampstead Heath and Kenwood House (free!)
2. Wellcome Collection (see also ), National Gallery, National Portrait Gallery, Tate Modern, Sir John Soane's Museum (all free)
3. If you're at the National Gallery you can walk to Trafalgar Square, which is very crowded but does have some nice things to see and usually has at least three street musicians playing
4. Greenwich – go see the Prime Meridian for free!
5. Shoreditch, especially Brick Lane – amazing street art
6. Go see a West End show – get discounted tickets (and enter lotteries) on TodayTix and/or the show's website, but if you want a specific show then just buy it ahead of time and don't chance it. The tickets are cheaper than US shows! And the souvenir programs are under £20, too.
7. Near Tower Hill station – go see the old Roman city wall pieces nearby!
8. Convent Garden – it IS a cute shopping area, and you can walk to the nearby Victoria Embankment Gardens and see some interesting stolen Egyptian monuments like Cleopatra's Needle
9. St. Paul's Cathedral – at least go to the outside; it IS a huge cathedral but there's many, many huge cathedrals in England and most of them are free
10. British Museum – though I found it to be too crowded in the parts where stuff like the Rosetta Stone is, to the point where I wanted to leave
11. Walk across the Southwark Bridge to see the London Bridge

If you have enough time, then I highly recommend going on a day trip to a nearby place. These can all be DIY'd or if you have more money than time then a day tour with a local company should cost under $100 (not including food you may need to buy).

• Stonehenge (worth it!) and Salisbury Cathedral – if you stay in Salisbury (or nearby) you'll have time to visit Avebury and other places. The Stonehenge Tour Bus is a good deal for transit between sites.
• Canterbury
• Oxford and Cambridge
• Brighton (maybe better during the summer when things are open)
• Arundel Castle

More places to look for travel ideas and inspiration:

• https://en.wikivoyage.org/wiki/London
• https://www.londonforfree.net/
• https://londonist.com/category/things-to-do/free-and-cheap
• https://www.thelondonweekend.com/
• https://acuriousinvitation.com/
• MetaFilter: London for the unassuming traveler