Having found a cheap (under CAD$500) fare to London via Icelandair, we’ve decided to take the kids over March break next year.
My wife and I were in London last year, staying at the Montcalm at the Brewery near Barbican. Since we’re bring our 11 and 8 year old girls, we are thinking of an Airbnb or VRBO rental but are unsure of a good location and the rental sites are overwhelming without narrowing it down first. We will be arriving/departing from either Gatwick or Heathrow and plan on travelling mostly by foot or transit. The kids are good walkers, adventurous eaters, enjoy museums, art galleries, and playgrounds.
So what do you thinks, London or well-travelled Dopers?
More specifically, what is your budget? As you will have seen with the Montcalm, hotels can be scary expensive but if you are happy to stop a little further out from the centre you can save a ton of cash and still be just a 20 minute tube ride into the city.
And what do you want your hotel to be? If you are happy with simple clean rooms then Holiday Inn express, travelodges, comfort inns and Premier Inns are perfectly fine. If you want the hotel to be a destination in itself then you’ll have to be willing to spend pretty big.
I stay in London regularly for work and leisure and on several occasions have stayed out near Docklands with a quick trip into town on the morning via the Docklands Light Railway or the Jubilee line. Not necessarily picturesque but easily a third of the price of a central hotel.
Ideally, I’d like to pay under £150/night, but I’ve not set a hard budget. Note that I’m looking for an apartment rental, so I’m hoping for a neighbourhood suggestion rather than a specific property.
London’s rail and tube system is divided into concentric zones to calculate fares, and this can be a useful rough guide to how convenient a hotel’s location is. The centre where most of the attractions are is Zone 1 and likely to be the most expensive but also most convenient. Zone 2 would require a short tube or bus journey and even Zone 3 would be doable. Anything further out may become a bit of a chore.
£150 a night should be easily do-able in pretty much any business style hotel. Try the Ibis on Commercial Street in Aldgate East. It’s one stop up the tube from the Tower of London.
To clarify, I am not looking for a hotel recommendation. With a 7 day stay and two kids I’m planning on booking an Airbnb or similar.
What I am looking for is an area to stay in. I have read recommendations like “anywhere near a tube station”, but it’s overwhelming when looking at the possibilities. I just want to narrow my selection process.
We loved staying in Camden Town (in a hotel). Good youthful energy, some good restaurants (mainly ethic) and shops, our 5-year-old enjoyed walking along the Regent’s Canal and up through Primrose Hill Park, and easy tube (or double-decker bus) connections to “downtown.”
I think your perception is right here, it is overwhelming. The fact is that London is such a well connected city that you can find so many suitable areas that are within easy travelling to the main tourism spots (and there are so, so many tourist spots spread across the city). Like I said, I travel to London regularly and even I would be hard pushed to make a definite area recommendation.
If I were you, I’d look for a suitable apartment first that is relatively central, within budget and near a tube.
Then come back here and ask for opinions on that particular area.
I often use “homeaway” for apartment rentals worldwide and they have always been competitive and reasonable in cost.
Here’s one example that I’ve found for you. It gives you a feeling for what is possible and this one is near Earls court and Kensington. In this case you have one bedroom and a sofa bed but if your two are any like mine (they are the same ages) then they’ll not mind sleeping together on the sofa bed.
I concur with previous posters that it’s really hard to recommend a specific area. London isn’t a ghettoised city, so practically all areas have their nice parts and their less, um, nice parts. Respectable hotels tend to be in the nicer parts of each area, but when it comes to Airbnb and similar rentals they could be anywhere, so read descriptions and reviews carefully.
As someone said above, the London transport network is divided into concentric zones from the centre outwards and the higher the zone the further from central London you will be, and if you purchase a season ticket (or travelcard as we would call it) these are priced based on which zones you want to travel through.
Here’s the current London tube map. Anywhere in Zone 2 is going to be more reasonably priced than central London and still very accessible.
I live in north London. Someone else has already recommended Camden, which can be a nice area but depending on your mileage you might find parts of it a little skeevy at times (though less so now after recent sanitising redevelopments around the lock market). Islington might be a good bet (the northern part, around Highbury & Islington station is just in zone 2), or a little further out, the areas around Hampstead are a little more salubrious but with good transport links.
I’d suggest it’s worth placing yourself in relation to a map that shows parks, as well as the tube map, so as to find somewhere reasonably child-friendly. (Commercial Street is a busy road in the middle of a vibrant area for shops, markets and arty/alternative atmospheres, but there’s precious little room for children to have a run-around, and plenty of eye-catching opportunities to spend your money on gew-gaws).
The trouble is, a lot of places within reach of the main central London parks might well be out of your price range (I don’t know - Citadines apartment-hotels? They have a site on Goswell Road on the edge of the Barbican, but it’s also very urban), so you might have to look further out. And bear in mind that the primary commuting route for a lot of people south of the river would be the suburban services of the national rail companies, rather than the tube, which might open up some more areas for consideration.
And how much commuting time could you all tolerate? Could you bear to be as far out as, say, Dulwich, Putney, Clapham Common, Battersea, Hampstead/Golders Hill, or Gunnersbury/Chiswick?
One further thing - don’t trust advertisers’ descriptions in terms of neighbourhood names. These can be very elastic. Get a post code and check it on Google Maps.
We usually stay in the Belsize Park area of London. It’s in zone two and it has a nice village feel. You’ve got a couple of supermarkets/grocer stores, coffee chains like Costa Coffee, Starbucks as well as some bakeries, family-friendly chain restaurants like Gourmet Burger Kitchen, Giraffe, Pizza Express as well as the lovely Chez Bob for a nicer dinner.
You’ve got Belsize Park Station on the Northern Line to get into the city.
You can take a number 268 bus towards Golders Green from Belsize Avenue and get off at North End Road Golders Hill to visit a lovely corner of Hampstead Heath, which is a huge park. It even has a tiny zoo if that’s the sort of thing you and the family enjoy.
On the way back, you can get off a few stops earlier and browse around the Hampstead Shops then walk back to Belsize Park.
You can take a number 168 bus towards from Haverstock Hill and get to Camden Town which is a funky area with quirky markets and shops.
How much do all-day or all-week Tube passes cost? Would it be cheaper if you spent a day without the Tube and walked everywhere for that day? Since I’ve only used the tube twice, costing five pounds plus per single ride, I assume day passes are at least 10 pounds a person. If you can do several days without, then multiply that by the number of people, then it might mean that some zone-1 places are actually slightly cheaper than they appear, if they’re within walking distance of lots of stuff you’d like to see.
For an adult I suggest you get an Oystercard. This is by far the cheapest way to travel. A single journey is in the region of £2.40 for a zone 1-2 trip but the best thing is that, if you make multiple trips during the day and you end up spending more than an equivalent day travelcard (£6.50 for an adult off-peak) then your spend will be automatically “capped” i.e. on an oystercard you’ll never be charged more than the equivalent day travelcard rate.
Here’s the advice for kids.
For the 8-year old travel is free and you don’t need a seperate card (just go through the wide access barriers as a pair) and the 11 year-old can get a discount applied to an ordinary oystercard to give them child-rate travel. (which is about 85p for a Z1-2 trip and £1.50 for a day travel card)
Using an oyster card, at worst your daily travel costs will be £13.00 for the two adults per day, £1.50 for the 11 year-old, and zero for the 8 year old. It may well be less if you only do a couple of journeys.
If I could only give one bit of advice to London visitors It would be to get an Oystercard.
Spending a day walking in London is really not feasible, unless you’re staying right in the centre which OP has already stated he/she does not intend to do. Even then, you’d be pushing it to see much just on walking.
Holland Park, Kensington/South Kensington, Chelsea, are all nice neighborhoods but might be a bit above your price range. I’ve had success booking houses through tripadvisor.com.
Quartz, with 2 kids I would much rather have more than 1 room and a kitchen for at least breakfast in. Also my wife tends to go to sleep later than the rest of us, I’m up before everyone else.
Thanks Novelty Bubble. My kids are the same! I’ll flip this one to my wife and see what she thinks.
PatrickInLondon, I’d rather pay a bit more and have a shorter commute. Thanks for the tip on the post codes! I will be sure to check.
Sandra_nz/Ludovic, I was looking at the weekly capping with contactless @ GPB32 for the adults, a 1/2 price Oystercard for the 11 year old, and free for the little one. Thanks for the tip about going together through the gate, was not sure how the mechanics of it worked.
JKellyMap, we took the tube to Camden, went to the Lock Market, and wandered the canal down to King’s Cross That may be a great idea.
Thanks peedin, Oswald Bastable, and Ticker for the suggestions too.
The advert calls it central London. I wouldn’t consider it central, but then again, London isn’t that big and is easy to navigate with The Tube and the bus. The questions are: do you like the flat, and do you like the decor?
Whilst it’s true that London is really minimally ghetto-ized I’d offer the following suggestions as a starting point:
N/NW of the center is a good choice for being slightly cheaper but still close, a few tube stops from almost anywhere:
Camden & Islington are vibrant and might be my own first choice; Belsize Park quieter and pleasant.
Due West can be a little trickier: Kensington and Holland Park are highly desirable and extremely expensive; but just beyond, Shepherd’s Bush & White City are slightly dubious areas, transitioning into harmless boring suburbs a little further out in Acton & Chiswick.
Areas just south of the river are fine (Battersea etc), but the tube network is more limited, so make sure you’re are near a tube line.