I’m planning on 7 days in London. $250 per day After paying for hotel. My tastes are not expensive. Museums, historic sites etc. At the same time, I don’t want to eat fast food the entire time. Breakfast and lunch is fine to go cheap, but i’d like 1 or 2 decent meals out. Maybe a few stops to pubs during my week. And i’ll need to pay for transportation. I’ve been told to get an Oyster card and take the subway.
Is $250 per day gonna let me enjoy myself without spending my week panicking about money? I know I could do fine in New York on $250 per day, but i’m a little more familiar with NY. When it’s your first time in a foreign city it’s easy to make mistakes that cost you money.
I’m spending my 7 days with a Brit, but they are not from London and won’t know their way around any better than I do.
You will be fine on that budget. London is not that much more expensive than New York. Actually, except for the exchange rate, I don’t know if it’s any more expensive than New York at all.
Sounds fine to me. You’ll probably spend less on some days, more on others but it should all balance out. Definitely grab an Oyster card, make sure you swipe in and out of every station - some are more obvious than others, but just follow the general crowd and you’ll be fine.
The big museums and art galleries are still free to enter, I believe. Lots of the smaller attractions aren’t, though. I think you’ll be fine on that budget, but yes - definitely get an Oyster card - it guarantees that you will never pay more than you absolutely need to for transport.
Breakfast: £5-£12 depending on where you choose, eating in or out etc.
Lunch: Allow £5 (sandwich from somewhere like Pret a Manger) to £15 (Pub meals - 1 course plus drink) maybe up to £20.
Dinner: Anywhere from £20 (low end, pizza/ethnic/pub etc) - £60 (high end). Depends how much you like to drink, of course. A pint of beer is about £3.60, bottle of wine in a pub £12-£25, more in a restaurant (£20 and upwards).
Oyster card: You will pay a £3 deposit for the card. Then you should ask for a 1 week travelcard for zones 1-2 to be loaded onto it (costs just under £29). This will cover all public transport, inc. tube and bus, for most places you’ll want to visit - zones 1-2 covers all central London.
Many of the major museums and galleries are free. For paid attractions, allow about £10-15 per attraction for admission.
I was hoping so. Last year I took a trip to a city without decent public transit. I had given myself a budget of $100 per day after paying for hotel. That would have worked fine if on day one I hadn’t needed to spend $60 on cab fare alone. I spent the remainder of the trip in near panic. Since London has a good subway, I can’t forsee that happening to me again. But it’s why i’m asking the question.
The first thing to buy after your Oystercard is the London TimeOut. It’s a great way to find out the best restaurant bargains, shows to see, what exhibition to visit, etc, etc…
Yep, no problems here, the public transport network is vast and comprehensive – not just the Tube, but also buses, DLR, overground train services, even river ferries. You can grab a taxi if you want to experience taking a black cab if you like, or if you’re out very late (the tube doesn’t run beyond about 12.30am), but otherwise, your oyster will take you everywhere.
As a benchmark, myself, wife and two small children spent three days in london between Christmas and new year. Including all travel, food and entertainment AND HOTEL we spent appx £470 (between four of us).
Our secret? stopping in the Travelodge in Docklands, getting a travelcards and making use of the myriad free museums and galleries. Great fun.
You will definitely be fine on your budget. I’d even suggest that you could entertain yourself wonderfully everyday and yet still retain enough money to take advantage of a fixed-price early dinner every night at some of the finest restaurants (together with superb wine). Just google something along those lines and you’ll get all the info you need.
$250 is a fortune in London. it is only as expensive as you choose to make it.
As an example for previous post, you can do a £50 three course lunch with wine and coffee at the Alan Ducasse restaurant at the Dorchester Hotel. see here
A good deal (and many others are available, as someone else said Time Out is your friend)
Another question, if any brits are reading this. I’ve considered extending my stay to 9 days. If I do that, I wanted to do 5 in London, 4 in Bath.Or something like that. This will mean postponing my trip for 1 month to get the extra $$, but that’s fine.
What are my transportation options between cities in the UK? I don’t want to rent a car. Is there a train to take me there? Really, thats the only way I would do this, is if there is an easy inexpensive train to Bath from London. Is there?
You can search for trains on the National Rail page (not sure if there’s anywhere else you could look for stuff).
But from that, it looks like there are trains from London Paddington to Bath Spa stations, taking about an hour and a half; checking fares for trains today it says either £28 or £34, but not sure how much variation there is in the fares, so see if it lets you check fares for your dates.
Not yet made it across to Bath, so couldn’t say whether or not 4 days is a good amount of time to spend there, or whether you could do it in 2-3.
I reckon 4 days in Bath is a bit much, you could probably do it in two and then spend another 2 days somewhere else. Other locations I would recommend that wouldn’t be too hard to get to from Bath are York, Manchester, Winchester and Cardiff.
I’d agree. You could spend those 4 days making a quick round trip to some really nice places.
Or even take a train up to Edinburgh (stop off at York, Durham or Newcastle) or across to Paris.
My advice would be to decide soon and book the rail travel early. It works on the airline pricing model and just walking up and buying a ticket will cost you a bomb.
And I’ve just realised that my previous message makes it sound like Edinburgh, York, Durham, Newcastle and Paris are not nice places.
Obviously not the case.