Looking for the real Straight Dope for a vacation in England.

In My Humble Opinion
1

Background: Mrs. Hometownboy and I are planning to visit England this fall, sometime in October, for a two-week stay. While she has traveled extensively in Europe and once lived in England for a year, that was back in the 1970s, so her knowledge is sound, but way out of date. I have never been out of North America.

Right now we’re to the point of picking travel dates and starting to whittle down an enormous list of activities to a reasonable number.

Our thought is to spend somewhere between half and two-thirds of our time in London, and the rest in other parts of the country. York and Canterbury are both on our lists (she was an accomplished stained glass artist in a previous life and remains a big cathedral fan) and we’d like to poke around a bit in Reigate, where she lived way back in the day.

Naturally, we’d also like to buy a few pints for UK Dopers while telling tall tales and exchanging wry jests…

Thanks to a number of threads on the subject, I’ve picked up some very useful hints and suggestions, but I’m hoping to find the answers to some key questions in our planning:

  1. When does the tourist season end, and the lower-priced off season begin? We can vary travel times from late September to mid-October, and would like to miss the higher room rates.

  2. What are we going to be looking at in terms of rates? We’re willing to give up luxury for merely serviceable accomodations and will probably plan most of the trip around bed and breakfasts, but will need a hotel room or two.

  3. [Must resist the urge to say “Hi, Opal!”] Any suggestions of which airlines to fly. or which airport to choose if we have a choice?

  4. When and where should we convert our currency?

  5. Visa platinum cards - how widely accepted vs. traveler’s checks?

  6. What are we going to :smack: ourselves about when we get there because we weren’t smart enough to ask the right questions?
    Thanks for helping this middle-aged Yank,

Hometownboy

2

Hi, Hometown boy,

I’m not sure there is a very noticable high-low season price difference in London, though I guess summer is the busiest time, so late September or October would be fine.

Location can drive up the price, so even pretty basic accomodation can be expensive. On the other hand you can find some (relative) bargains, especially at weekends. If I stay in a London hotel, I tend to look for places that aren’t in touristy areas but are near a tube station. I’d also go for room only deals, hotel breakfasts aren’t much of a bargain. The distinction between hotel and b&b can be pretty hazy in London, I think. I’d look at a few internet sites to get a feel for prices. I’ve used various sites and couldn’t really say one was better than another. I’d do plenty of cross checking.

How do you plan to divide your time? Hotel proces in London tend to drop a lot at weekends so I’d aim to make trips out during weekdays. You’ll probably find tourist attractions less busy in the week, too.

Visa is accepted pretty much everywhere, apart from small cafes and such like, so I wouldn’t bother bringing travellers’ cheques.

Best airports for London are Heathrow and Gatwick. I would guess you get more choice with Heathrow. You can save on transfers by taking the tube into central London from there, whereas with Gatwick it’s train or bus.

I guess the other issue you may want to consider is getting around in the UK. York and Canterbury are both easily accessible by train, if you want to travel independently. I think Reigate is in the commuter belt, so you’ll get trains but they may get crowded in peak hours and there is often congestion around London in peak hours.

Umm what else? There’s a lot going on for free in London. The major museums and art galleries are free. There are a lot of churches notable for their architecture and stained glass.

I’m sure the London based dopers could offer advice on locations and can certainly recommend pubs and places to eat.

3

I’m pretty certain that we don’t really have an “off” period here in London - although prices are obviously higher around key weekends like Christmas and Bank Holidays.

4

What the others said - London’s always expensive, but elsewhere, you’ll be in the off-peak season. York is an excellent idea - but make sure you do the extra few miles to Durham as well, which IMO is easily as impressive a place, and the cathedral isn’t a honeypot of tourists. Canterbury is day-trippable from London, and Reigate between Gatwick and London. If it’s cathedrals you’re looking for, then Ripon, Ely and Lincoln are fabulous ones that are vaguley somewhere between London and York. (None of the towns has anything else to hang about for, though :wink: ) Ely also is home to the Stained Glass Museum.

Forget about travellers cheques, and you don’t really need to change cash either - pay with Visa and use ATMs (note that they’re never called that here, but ‘cash machines’) - even with bank charges, the more favourable exchange rate will mean it costs you about the same.

No particular suggestions about airlines, other than that the European ones (particularly BA and Virgin) seem to have managed to maintain a better service compared to the constant scrimp-and-save that AA, Delta etc have been going through. If you get a free choice, go for Gatwick rather than Heathrow. Although depending where you’re coming from, a connection via Amsterdam or similar into London City might be an option, which is much closer to central London (ie an affordable taxi fare!).

5

Did you ever finish or start your pub guide, Garius? It was you that was thinking about doing one wasn’t it?

As to airlines, I couldn’t say one was significantly so much better than the others, in recent times, anyway. Where are you travelling from? I guess that will restrict your choice.

6

One thing that bothered me on my London trip last march was that so many touristy things close at 5 PM. You will definately want to check hours of operation on your destinations.

7

I’ll recommend the hotel we stayed in when we went to London last year- Travel Inn County Hall. Definitely not fancy, but conveniently located (near the London Eye and several tube stops), sufficiently soundproofed, reasonably priced, and definitely sufficient for our needs. There were also a number of inexpensive places to eat nearby, IIRC. We didn’t have a car, though (I am not confident in my ability to learn to drive on the left), so I don’t know anything about parking there.

Oh, and both times we’ve been to London, we made a side trip to Cambridge. I loved Kings College Chapel, which you might also like if you are into stained glass. I think Cambridge is on the rail line to Ely, as well.

Assuming you’re taking a train and not driving, you’ll probably do better going direct from York to London and then going out from London than trying to stop on the way from York. There are high-speed trains from York to London that take about 2 hours.

We didn’t do traveler’s checks- they’re mostly civilized there, and take credit cards :wink: I don’t remember anywhere having a problem with taking my Visa platinum card or Mastercard. My ATM card (Bank of America) worked there, too. Supposedly, you get better rates if you use credit/ATM cards rather than exchanging currency. Since I pay for everything on my credit card here, it was easiest to keep doing what I usually do. On the subject of ATM cards, I have heard that ATMs there don’t have letters on the number pads, so you will need to memorize your PIN as a number, not as a word. I’ve also heard that ATM cards with PINs that aren’t four digits can be trouble. I don’t know either of the latter two firsthand.

If you’re going to be going around London by tube a lot, a tube pass (I don’t remember what they’re called) is a good idea. I think you’ll need an extra passport photo for it, though.

Something you should know- their bottled water isn’t like ours. Theirs tends to be mineral water, which can give you a bit of a shock if you take a drink and are expecting American bottled water. The default if you ask for water in a restaurant seems to be mineral water- ask for tap water if you want something like you’d get at home.

8

You’re going to get jet lag, especially coming from the west coast. Here’s how I deal with it:

Set your watch to British time (8 hours ahead of Pacific, barring differences in when Daylight Saving Time ends) as soon as the flight that’s going directly there takes off. I find this helps because it gets me thinking in terms of their time. Try to sleep on the plane on the way over. A window seat is better than an aisle seat for this but not much better, in my experience.

If you take a flight like the ones we have taken, you’ll probably get there mid-morning or so. The key is to stay awake through the day, even though you’ll probably be dead tired by the end of it. Activities that aren’t too mentally demanding but that involve a lot of walking around are good. Try to stay awake till at least 9 PM their time, and don’t take a nap no matter how much you want one.

If I do this the first day there, that first day is hellish, but I don’t have much trouble getting up and going to bed at reasonable times on subsequent days.

9

I just did a great england trip last august so I can share what I know. As to your questions:

  1. high season/low season. Don’t know for sure about low season, but I am sure August was high season (lots of crowds). I know this doesn’t help much

  2. Estimated rates. London is by far the most expensive. And you won’t get what you pay for :wink: We were on the road and did B&Bs all over the country. Prices varied from 37 pounds (for the room - two people) to 70 something pounds (again for the room). So it will depend on where you are and how close you are to a big city or tourist area. We tended to go on the cheap side (no frills). But in places like York, the prices tended to be on the high side.

I would disagree with the comment “The distinction between hotel and b&b can be pretty hazy in London, I think.” I stayed at the worst B&B of the whole trip (for 50 pounds/night - which is really CHEAP for London) in London. It was more like a dorm - just a bed and a sink in this crappy room. Community shower and toilet down the hall. And it wasn’t like it was all that close to a train station. My advice (although it will cost disproportionately more) is to go with a decent, more expensive place in London.
Since you know you’ll be staying in London for some number of days, use something like hotels.com to find and book a place. You might even be able to pay for it in advance, and (for some unknown reason) you can often get a better price if you can pay in $$s.

  1. Access to the city from either Heathrow or Gatwick is pretty straightforward. So I would go with whichever airport you can get the best flight into. It seems most american carriers fly into Heathrow. And British Air uses Gatwick for a lot of their US flights.

  2. When and where to convert currency. Simple answer: where-ever and whenever you need to. That is, we never “converted” currency and simply used ATMs (that doll out pounds) all over the country. Much less hassle than converting traveller’s checks, and we were never at a loss for finding an ATM (okay, maybe while hiking along Hadrian’s Wall :wink: Also, I’ve heard that since the ATM goes through Visa, they negotiate an exchange rate better than if you were to convert cash. May be just a myth, though.

  3. Visa and Mastercard were accepted all over the place. At some of the more out of the way B&Bs we had to use cash. But for most everything else, plastic worked fine. Combined with the easy access to ATMs, I saw no need for traveller’s checks.

  4. What have you overlooked. Others on this board will disagree, but I think if you prepare yourself that everything is going to be really expensive, you’ll do okay. You kind of get numb to it once you start handling the local currency, and not continually thinking in terms of “dollars”. But just be prepared to pay a lot for about anything you can think of (although the underground and the trains seem like a real bargain compared to things like a diet coke), and just be surprized when you come upon stuff that is cheap.
    You didn’t mention whether you were going to drive over there. It is doable, but it does taking getting used to. Especially those damn round-abouts. Just ease into it (don’t even think about driving in London), and you can survive.
    I don’t know if it is just a summer phenomenon, but since you’ll be spending a good amount of time in London, I thought I’d mention it. The tube/underground will be your best friend. But I found that some of the stations were really uncomfortably warm. It felt like you couldn’t breath in some of them. Hopefully this isn’t so bad in the fall, but just be aware of it. And consider taking clothes that you can easily layer.
    The “full” english breakfast (which you get at a lot of B&Bs) is a lot of food. Which you can use to your advantage, given how expensive things are. We fell into a two-meal a day routine pretty easily: full breakfast and dinner. We might snack a bit for lunch, but we certainly didn’t need a full on lunch.

Hope this helps.

10

One money saving tip. You don’t tip people who work in pubs.

11

If you’re going to be spendign time in London, invest in a travelcard, which gives you unlimited travel on the tube and busses throughout London. If you plan to do sightseeing, a Londonpass saves money and hassle.

If you’re thinking about hiring a car after you’ve finished with London, , don’t forget to drive on the wrong side of the road :wink:

12

I can’t remember what place it was, but we stayed in a very charming weekly rate flat (they catered to students and the like) for a hundred bucks a night. Look off the beaten path and you may find something reasonable.

Budget lots of money. The exchange rate sucks, and London is very expensive to begin with. Everything will cost much much more than you expect it to. Plan on ten to fifteen dollars for breakfast or a cheap lunch. A nothing-special dinner will run you twenty apiece, without extras. Things like pre-packaged sandwiches or a small salad are around seven dollars. Make sure to pack what you need because you don’t want to get stuck buying a five dollar toothbrush or a forty buck sweatshirt if it gets cold.

Shop around for your airline tickets. A ticket can cost a thousand bucks, or it can cost two hundred (thats how much I paid). It all depends on how hard you look. I’ve had better luck calling the airlines directly than on the Internet. Tell the agent if you are flexible on what dates and what airports you are willing to use. Search as many day/airport/airline combos as you have patience for. Airline ticket prices are pretty much arbitrary and it always pays to look around.

13

What an incredible response! Thank you all so much. :smiley: All suggestions are seriously appreciated.

I like the thought of traveling out during the week. (Thanks, Sir Doris ) I might have guessed that hotel rates would be cheaper on weekends because that’s more likely to be personal rather than business travel.

Gorilla Man, your suggestion about the Stained Glass Musum was pure gold and has definitely been added to our itinerary. Apparently, that’s new since my wife was last there.

It’s good to know that Visa is accepted and that ATMs are as available. Thanks,
Anne Neville for that and other travel hints

Driving? Nope Though I enjoy driving here and have been told that I’m a good driver (OK, it was my wife, but she said it with such conviction…) but I’d rather not risk middle-aged reflexes long wired for the other side of the road. And I’m really looking forward to a place where public transportation is so much more advanced. In answer to Cormac262, yes, it helps immensely.
Tapioca Dextrin said:

:eek:
That’s going to be hard to unlearn. But after the sticker shock of prices, maybe a bit easier. Thanks also for the links to the travelpass and Londonpass. We will definitely take advantage.

And even sven , I have to say that “The exchange rate sucks” would be a great name for an album (Sorry, CD - I’m dating myself again.)

As far as nailing down our tickets, we are going to cash in a huge fistful of “travel award” points for using a certain credit card for the past four years. Enough to pay for one of our tickets, which will help considerably. Probably some time next week we will hope to have our flights set, and start to firm up our itinerary. Invitations to join us for a pint will follow.

Yr humble Hometownboy

14

We had a great trip last September. We stayed in London for 10 days and took a few day trips (Salisbury/Stonehenge, Oxford). 10 days is NOT even enough time to spend in London.

I would recommend setting your budget beforehand and being realistic, budgeting a little extra. My experience is that going into a restaurant you would find prices about the same as the US, except they were pounds, not dollars. So prices were about twice as high. After 10 days in London, I found myself taking a business trip in the US and, noticing prices in the airport shops, found myself thinking “wow, the prices are really good here!” Not what I usually think of airport shop prices…

We really enjoyed the double decker bus ride which included a ticket for a Thames cruise. Yeah, it’s touristy, but it was a great way to get oriented to everything. It was also something we could do the day we arrived when we were still fairly jet lagged.

The Tube is a great way to get around London. I don’t think we ever waited more than 5 minutes for a train. You can buy Tube tickets with credit cards from machines in the station. Remember to hold onto your ticket, you need it to get out of the station.

We carried out a lot of our meals from Marks & Spencer Simply Food. These are all over and they have superb gourmet carryout sandwiches, salads and more. Unless money is really no object, I don’t think “dining” in London was an especially good investment. Better food is probably available for less at home.

15

Get the tavelcard, they sell them in 3,4&7 days. If you buy it over the internet here, they’ll ship it to you about a week before you leave. it’ll have about 40 coupons, some of which you may use. Or you can buy it there in the Tube station.
There’s some construction right now with the tube Terminal 4(?) & Heathrow, not sure if it will be done or not then. Check the lonelyplanet.com website for specifics, and tons more info.

And when you’re looking for the Tube, look for ‘The Underground’, that’s what it’s called. I was looking around for a sign that said ‘The Tube’ and there is none.

On a sunny day, take the Thames river cruise if you’re up to that. I enjoyed that a lot. It ends in Greenwich which was a real nice relaxing place compared to the hustle and bustle of London. The museum where the prime meridian is was a surprising treat, a bit of a surprisingly nasty walk up though.

Everything costs more than you think. And last but not least, Mind The Gap!

16

While you’re on the Underground, don’t look for an Exit sign: they say “WAY OUT” instead.

And, please: wherever you are, if you are carting a suitcase on wheels with you, don’t come to a dead stop at the top or bottom of a staircase or escalator to retract or take out the handle. Remember there are 5,728 people immediately behind you, who aren’t looking where they are going, who may topple like dominoes in your wake.

17

In respect of parking, don’t even think about it. But there is a car hire place literally across the road that you could use for any trips out of London.

18

Jesus, London is expensive but not THAT expensive. Where were you shopping, Harrods? Find a nice little supermarket and you won’t pay even half those prices.

19

Yep, Usrams right. The prices even sven quotes are ridiculous. Sandwiches are around £1.20 - £2.50, depending on what you buy - even in the centre of London theres plenty of supermarkets like Tesco, Somerfield etc that are cheap - some gourmet places in Kensington or other posh places may charge that much, but not the smaller independent places.

Theres no such thing as a 3 or 4 day travelcard. Its 1 day, 7 day or monthly. They used to do weekend ones, but as of 2nd January, they ‘abolished’ them, according to the sign I saw. Aside from that, the above is good advice. Give us fair warning, theres a massive team of powerboozer dopers that’ll show you a fucking great time in London. We’re the people what know the right places to drink, as many other USA dopers have found.

20

I’m a walking pub guide - is that not enough for you people?! :wink: