London Budget Is Falling Down
Travel Tips for London
Most major museums in London are free, but you still need to reserve a free timed entry ticket online or pick one up at the door. Book it online to save an hour of waiting in line at the door.
Arrive at least an hour early for the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace. There will be at least thousands of people watching.
You can pay per ride on the tube by tapping a credit card as you enter the station. This can be cheaper per day than buying a metro pass if you only plan for a single daily round trip ride.
London is only expensive to visit from the States thanks to flight and hotel costs. If you can use points, coupons, or a deal on either then you may save nearly half the cost of your travel to London.
Eat as much Indian food as possible! It’s the best food to have :)
Our Travels In London
Croatia was supposed to be our next stop from Venice. Then thunderstorms became forecast for the entire length of what would have been our visit. Most of our Croatian plans were only possible in good weather so a new plan was needed fast. Read as, in a day we had no idea where we were going in Europe! All of Europe was going to be soaked by rain that week so we chose to visit somewhere that knows how to have fun in the rain – London.
London was never part of our original travel plans. We saw it as too expensive, we didn’t like it’s weather, and it’s also incredibly easy to reach from the States. It wouldn’t be hard to visit if we ever wanted to later on. However, we found a $60 flight from Milan to London and a Hyatt where I could use my Chase Ultimate Reward points to book a week long stay for free! Credit cards aren’t always the devil Mr. Ramsey! It saved hundreds of dollars in travel costs making London appear as cheap as Croatia. How could anybody say no to that?! Still, we had to get to our flight in Milan from Venice. Our three hour train ride across Italy to reach Milan’s airport is still our longest ever airport commute.
The flight was smooth, but at the London airport border guards questioned my one way ticket. I was either “randomly checked” or their scanner flagged my one way only ticket. Thankfully it was no trouble. I was free to go after a short chat about my plans in the UK, future travel to Austria, and why I only bought a one way ticket. Chandni wasn’t flagged so it’s their loss that they didn’t get to meet her. London’s Stansted Airport is about an hour outside the main city. That meant we arrived to our hotel around 1 am after our bus dropped us off at a Whitechapel bus stop. Walking through the bustling London night felt like arriving in Munich all over again except we could understand all the rambles and ruckus. That was a really understated benefit of London.
It had been so long since we could read everything around us! We could finally count on all the museums to be featured in English. The majority of larger London museums are totally free! The only catch is that you must reserve a timed ticket online or pick one up at the door if available. Reserving those tickets online before arriving in London saved us so much time!
Hundreds (if not thousands) of people were in line waiting for tickets at the British Museum, National Gallery, Natural History Museum, and other museums we visited. Each was like a Chick-fil-A drive thru at lunch. Sometimes you can’t plan ahead, but if you can, reserving free online museum tickets saves hours in London. It also saves face for England just a wee bit. Many treasures exhibited in British museums arrived from conquest across the planet rather than being purchased or donated - though many fine pieces are. We felt it was appropriate that they don’t charge for entry to view other nation’s cultural heritages. That’s especially true for the British Museum. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a world class museum, but you know many of those priceless artifacts weren’t charitable donations.
Still, you should prioritize a visit to the British Museum or the Natural History Museum. Both museums make you feel like you’re experiencing half a dozen museums all at once in the best way possible! We complained about that problem in Milan, but everything was perfectly engaging in London’s museums.
The museums were top notch, but let’s talk about the REAL reason we went to London: Chandni’s Harry Potter love! Sure, Croatian rain, a free hotel, and free museums drew us in, but Harry Potter filming locations accio-ed us there. Originally we were planning to visit Harry Potter World at Universal Orlando as part of our USA road trip. The park became less attractive once we saw the jaw dropping price, but actual filming locations were only a $60 flight away! We chose to visit them instead. London has filming locations for every movie so we visited as many as possible. When we got to a location we’d pull up the scene from the movie to take a photo with both. It was like a scavenger hunt where nostalgia is the prize!
There are even some pro tips we discovered along the way that weren’t mentioned in any blog helping us hunt down the location. The actual platform 9 ¾ location is inside King’s Cross Station but only accessible with a train ticket or day pass. Nobody else was there. Everyone else was in the hour line waiting for a posed photo with a trolley half way through a wall. It’s a cute and fun tourist trap, but the real filming location being empty only a few hundred yards away was surprising.
The Gringots bank interior is inside the Australian Embassy. That’s well known, but what’s not well known is that they’ll let you in to see it so long as you don’t take a photo. The staff even told us that the interior was so perfect that the film crew pretty much only added cobwebs!
You might be wondering why we didn’t just go to the Harry Potter studio tour instead. Well reader, I’ll have you know that we tried and it was absolutely sold out! And that was quite the bummer. But what wasn’t sold out (because it’s also free) was a visit to the Mina Lima studio museum! Mina Lima is named after Miraphora Mina and Eduardo Lima who created all the set pieces and world details in the Harry Potter films. They created everything from Hogwarts textbook covers, to Daily Prophet articles, to wand details. They’re the reason the movies look so wonderfully magical, and their studio is open to the public! We were like kids in the candy store. Ever gone to a store where you wanted to buy everything? That was us in Mina Lima.
I promise our London time was more than Harry Potter time despite my happy rambles. It’s just such an enormous city that condensing everything is near impossible. So here are a few select stories from our visit.
We bought two sets of tickets for shows at Royal Albert Hall. Not just any shows, the music of John Williams! I was finally going to hear music made for a galaxy far far away right in front of me! We bought standing tickets but the nose bleed ushers upgraded us to nearly floor seats thanks to the show not selling out. This galaxy has never sounded so good. Our second show was an orchestra performing the music of Jurassic Park live while the movie played in the background. They were so clean that we forgot an orchestra was playing and not a speaker! It was even a family matinee night so all tickets cost $5. ALL tickets cost $5. Hello box suite! Check tickets for Royal Albert Hall when you’re in London because they’re cheap. Those shows combined only cost $40.
One major attraction that we couldn’t visit was Big Bend. Tickets were sold out except for a single entry, and neither of us wanted to go alone that badly. So we did the next best thing – we told British Parliament security that we wanted to watch the House of Commons assembly! Parliament security won’t let you in without a tour. However, if you say that you want to spectate a live assembly then you’re given immediate entry! That’s how we got in. Granted there was a ton of waiting after entering because you have to wait to be called into the chamber thanks to limited seating room. Between all the waiting in lines, on benches, and in queues we saw lots of the parliament building’s interior. We stood where Churchill, Queen Elizabeth, and other major figures were laid in state. We got to watch the House of Commons debate inside the chamber. We even got to see the Prime Minister speak! We’ve probably never even been in the same city as Biden, but we were a hundred feet away from Rishi Sunak giving a speech. Maybe that doesn’t sound all that cool to most, but it was very special to get that far into active British government.
Since our flight was cheaper than dirt and our hotel and museum visits were free, the only thing we really paid for was food and drink. And let me tell you what, we drank very stinkin’ well! Two of the world’s ten best bars are in London. Both were kind enough to pour us beverages.
The first was Connaught Bar. In short, it’s easily the best bar we’ve ever visited! Every drink would have been the best drink at any other bar, and we had that experience three, four, five drinks in row. It was a perfect experience from flavor to floor service. My taste buds will return the moment my wallet is ready! The second was Tayer + Elementary which was an incredible disappointment. All their cocktails are pre-made and bottled in a fridge behind the counter. They also specifically told me I couldn’t order any classic or any off menu cocktails because they don’t stock spirits except to make their pre-mixed cocktails. Hot pre-made garbage! Ever had a bar tell you they can’t make you ANY drink? It was almost comical! They should be removed from the best bar list because (among many other things) customers don’t even know if the bartenders can make a drink.
I could go on for hours, but then I’d need that drink they can’t seem to make me.
London was like New York. Millions of people are running about with little time for one another. We didn’t look or feel out of place at all. There is something for everyone except for affordable housing. It’s a perfect city for a traditional vacation minus the weather. We’re not on one of those, but travel in London was the only time it felt like we could have been. Being there and keeping our costs down also validated our efforts as budget travelers. If we could make a week in London as cheap as a week in Croatia then there’s no city too expensive for us to visit.
