The biggest attraction for us has to be the theater district. New York is great, but there is something special about London. Walking through historical buildings on narrow roads through crowded public squares intensifies the excitement of going to see a musical.
London is expensive so it might not be the best city to live long term, however short visits are always fantastic. Since London is the major airline hub of Europe, it is a great stopover before going to a primary destination.
The train system is very easy to navigate and reasonably priced, especially if you buy the day tickets. There are readily available subway maps everywhere and the color coded subway lines are very intuitive.
Besides the cost of living, the only negative thing I can say about London is that food quality is not particularly good unless you pay a fortune. My wife and I haven’t had much luck finding decent restaurants, with the exception of Jamie Oliver’s new Jamie’s Italian. Service, atmosphere and food were all perfect. It is difficult to find restaurants that have mastered all the ingredients to create an exceptional experience.
We are looking forward to visiting London again later in the year. It would be great to catch some live music if anyone has some advice on good venues?
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London Travel Advice
Buy daily train passes. They are good after 9:30 AM and are cheaper than one return fare.
Getting to and from Heathrow Airport is easy and cheap. If you are going to use the discount airlines like EasyJet, it is probably better if you stick to Heathrow because bus fares to Gatwick and Stansted are more expensive.
Fly through London, not directly to London. Plan your trip to another European city and then you do a free stopover in London. That way you can avoid some transportation costs getting around Europe and not have to pay the extra luggage charges for the discount airlines.
The discount airlines seem to be much cheaper than trains. In my view, it doesn’t make sense to travel by train across Europe anymore.
It is possible and likely even cheaper to ship your own car from overseas to Europe to drive around. We saw Canadian and US license plates in Europe. We almost brought our car but changed our minds at the last minute. It would be a different experience driving across Europe.
Great pictures! I haven’t been to London yet, but can’t wait to make it there. How long would it take to ship your car to Europe from the US?
Hi John,
Actually I don’t remember the exact shipping times, but I seemed to recall that it was about two weeks. (Also, I researched shipping from Japan. )
The problem that prevented me from shipping the car is that we weren’t going to Europe directly so we would have had to store the car at the docks when it arrived for a couple of months and that would have been a little expensive.
Beautiful! But isn’t London kind of dangerous? I’ve overheard rumors that it’s one of the most dangerous of civilized cities of the world…
.-= Slava´s last blog ..The Alpsee Lake in Germany =-.
Hi Slava,
Thanks for the comment! I don’t think London is particularly dangerous. My wife and I walk around everywhere, even late at night. We stick to the more popular areas in the center but I haven’t really seen anything close to dangerous. Also, there seem to be police everywhere so I felt reasonably safe.
I would say that the scariest situation was standing next to a guy getting high off of an aerosal can of some sort. However, nothing happened. I just didn’t expect to see that on a public bus. We have also come across many homeless screaming to themselves but they didn’t seem to physically bother anyone. A few years ago someone through a rock at the train we were taking and a window was broken, but again no one was hurt.
Overall, I wouldn’t say that London is dangerous. Those types of things happen in every major city of the world.
Thanks John. That actually seems like a reasonable amount of time and worth considering for a future trip. I always like the idea of traveling by car when visiting places, it gives you a great amount of flexibility where you can make your own schedule as you go along. When I visited Rhodes I rented a car and traveled across the island and visited many places off the beaten path – a completely different experience!
It has been 20 years last time I was in London and it is not far away from Jerusaelm… I miss some traveling. thanks for the very good pics…!
Reminds of of my trip back in 2006.. Unfortunately I had only 10 hours to see London while I was waiting for my next flight however I did have time to visit some of these attractions quickly before heading back to the airport. I just might need to go back after seeing these pictures.
Love the photos of London! I spent a semester there in college wandering down so many of the streets & sites you featured above. The fish & chips absolutely made me drool! Thanks for the nostalgic trip! 🙂
I am glad you liked the photos Bessie! London is a fantastic city.
WOW! I could do with a English Brekkie now…. best place to get a massive plate is at any Cafe and they are cheap as well, they don’t look great but it does the trick.
Nice collection of photos of London, I should get off my @ss and take more photos of this amazing city!