The British Museum
Free, enormous, and better treated as two rooms and a coffee than as a checklist; it runs a late opening one night a week, so check the day before you plan around it.
London in pictures
London
Free national museums, and fares that cap themselves
Destinations › Europe › London
London is expensive to sleep in and unusually cheap to spend the day in: the national museums are free and the transport fares cap themselves once you have travelled enough. It rewards picking two or three neighbourhoods and walking them properly rather than sprinting the postcard list.
Nonstop from Pearson to London Heathrow (LHR) runs year-round on Air Canada, British Airways and Virgin Atlantic, roughly seven hours eastbound and usually flown as an overnight. From LHR the Elizabeth line leaves from all three Heathrow rail stations (Terminals 2 and 3, Terminal 4, and Terminal 5) and runs to Paddington, Bond Street, Tottenham Court Road, Farringdon and Liverpool Street on Oyster or contactless. The Heathrow Express is the separate nonstop to Paddington only, sold on its own ticket, and the Piccadilly line is the slower Tube option that calls at more places. Air Transat is the only airline flying Pearson nonstop to Gatwick (LGW), where the named links are the Gatwick Express to Victoria and Thameslink trains through London Bridge, Farringdon and St Pancras.
Transport for London runs the Tube, the Elizabeth line, the DLR, the trams and the six renamed London Overground lines (Lioness, Mildmay, Windrush, Weaver, Suffragette, Liberty). Pay with a contactless bank card, phone or watch, or with a physical Oyster card. Both get automatic pay-as-you-go capping, daily and again across a Monday-to-Sunday week, so no maths and no ticket queue. Buses and trams take no cash at all and you touch in only, never out; the Hopper fare lets you change buses or trams as often as you like within an hour of your first touch-in, provided every tap is the same card or device.
Free, enormous, and better treated as two rooms and a coffee than as a checklist; it runs a late opening one night a week, so check the day before you plan around it.
Also free, small enough that you can actually finish it, and the refurbished Sainsbury Wing early Renaissance rooms are the quietest hour in central London.
Walk over the Millennium Bridge from St Paul's; the collection is free and the Turbine Hall commission is usually the single most interesting thing on in the city that month.
The DLR is driverless so take the front seat, then it is the Cutty Sark, the Royal Observatory and a hill with the whole Canary Wharf skyline laid out under it.
The easiest first-time base in London. Riverside, flat, and within a walk of Westminster, the Tate Modern, Borough Market and the Southbank Centre, with Waterloo giving you the Jubilee line and trains south. Very good with a stroller or a wheelchair. It is also a bit of a thoroughfare rather than a neighbourhood - you will not find much local life on your own street after dark.
Georgian squares, the British Museum on your doorstep, and King's Cross, St Pancras and Euston a short walk away for onward trains and the Eurostar. Quiet at night in a way that suits older travellers and annoys younger ones. Good value for how central it is, because it is offices and university buildings rather than nightlife.
Markets, street food, and the best concentration of independent places to eat in central London. It is loud on Friday and Saturday nights and it does not pretend otherwise. Skip it if you need early sleep. The stations here are mostly fine, but the buildings are not: a lot of the good eating is up narrow stairs in old premises with no lift.
Not central, and that is the point. Southall is the Punjabi heart of London and it is now on the Elizabeth line, which is step-free from street to platform at every station and gets you into central London quickly. Wembley Park sits on the Jubilee and Metropolitan lines. If you are travelling with family who would rather eat Punjabi or Gujarati food than gastropub food every night, base here or at least plan a day out here. You give up walk-to-the-sights convenience.
Eggs, bacon, sausage, beans, grilled tomato, toast, and a mug of builder's tea, served in a plain cafe rather than anywhere smart. Hotel versions are fine; the ones in ordinary neighbourhood cafes are better and cheaper. Vegetarian versions are standard now and no one blinks.
Brick Lane (E1) is the famous one and is largely coasting on that fame. The real eating is elsewhere: Southall for Punjabi, Tooting for Sri Lankan and South Indian, Wembley and Ealing Road for Gujarati vegetarian, and Green Street in Newham. For a GTA traveller these will feel familiar and also noticeably different - worth the Tube ride.
A covered food market by London Bridge station: cheese, bread, produce, and a lot of hot stalls. It is genuinely good and genuinely mobbed. Go on a weekday morning, not a Saturday lunchtime, unless you enjoy shuffling. Nearby Maltby Street Market in Bermondsey is the smaller, calmer alternative.
A roast with Yorkshire pudding and gravy is a Sunday-only thing, it sells out, and the good pubs take bookings - book it. The rest of the week: fish and chips, pie and mash, a ploughman's. Order and pay at the bar in a traditional pub; nobody will come to your table.
Westminster. Come up out of Westminster station facing Big Ben, walk past the Houses of Parliament to Westminster Abbey, then cut through St James's Park to Buckingham Palace. Flat the whole way, about twenty-five minutes of actual walking, and the park is the nicest part of it.
Continue up the Mall to Trafalgar Square and the National Gallery, whose permanent collection is free to enter. From there walk to Covent Garden and on into Soho - everything in this stretch is within fifteen or twenty minutes on foot, and using the Tube between these stops is slower than walking.
Cross the river on the Golden Jubilee footbridges from Embankment, then turn left and walk east along the South Bank past the National Theatre to the Tate Modern. Stand on the Millennium Bridge looking at St Paul's. Southwark or Blackfriars on the Tube to get home.
The British Museum in Bloomsbury - free, enormous, and best done in a focused two hours rather than a death march. Russell Square (Piccadilly line) or Tottenham Court Road (Central, Northern, Elizabeth) are the closest stations.
Piccadilly line straight from Russell Square to South Kensington for the museum cluster: the V&A, the Natural History Museum and the Science Museum, all free for the permanent collections and all next to each other. There is a pedestrian tunnel from the station to the museums, which is a small mercy in the rain.
East London or Greenwich, pick one. East: Liverpool Street to Spitalfields Market, then Brick Lane, then Columbia Road if it is a Sunday for the flower market - all on foot. Greenwich: take the Uber Boat by Thames Clippers river service from Westminster or Tower Pier for the view, walk up to the Royal Observatory - a genuinely steep hill through Greenwich Park - and come back on the DLR, which is fully step-free.
South Western Railway from Waterloo direct to Windsor and Eton Riverside, or Great Western from Paddington changing at Slough for Windsor and Eton Central. Under an hour either way and both stations are a few minutes from Windsor Castle. The most manageable of the classic day trips - compact, one main sight, easy to be back for dinner.
Great Western Railway from Paddington, roughly an hour. Colleges, the Bodleian, the Ashmolean, and a town centre small enough to walk end to end. Note that individual colleges set their own visiting arrangements and close to visitors during exams, so do not build the day around getting into one specific one.
Southern from Victoria or Thameslink from London Bridge, about an hour. Pebble beach rather than sand, the Royal Pavilion, and the Lanes for browsing. It is the easiest way to see the English seaside from London, and it is a very different day out from another cathedral or castle.
London is by a distance the easiest of these three cities to do with older parents or small children, and it is worth saying plainly. Buses are the reason. TfL says every route is served by low-floor vehicles with a retractable ramp and a dedicated wheelchair space, they run everywhere, and they are the default answer whenever the Tube looks like hard work. The Elizabeth line is step-free from street to platform at all 41 of its stations, with boarding ramps where the gap needs one, and it is step-free right onto the train between Paddington and Woolwich and at Heathrow - if your route can be made to work on the Elizabeth line, take it. The DLR is fully step-free too. On the Tube itself, TfL puts step-free access at around a third of stations, which still leaves a lot that don't have it, and the deep lines like the Piccadilly, Northern, Central and Bakerloo mean long escalators and often a further staircase after that. Plan specific stations on the TfL step-free map rather than assuming. The major museums - British Museum, V&A, Natural History, Science Museum, Tate Modern, National Gallery - are free for their permanent collections, lift-served and stroller-friendly, with accessible toilets. Some also have Changing Places facilities; check the individual museum's access page if you need one. That combination makes bad-weather days easy. The honest downsides. Rush hour, broadly the couple of hours after eight in the morning and from five in the evening, is a genuine crush and not something to put a nervous parent or a small child through - shift your day around it. Pavements around Oxford Circus and Leicester Square are shoulder to shoulder most of the year. And the weather is not hot but it is wet and grey, so the risk is boredom and damp feet rather than heatstroke. From the GTA the flight is around seven hours nonstop to Heathrow or Gatwick, overnight eastbound. Heathrow is on both the Piccadilly line and the Elizabeth line, and the Elizabeth line is the step-free option with luggage. Also: look right before stepping off a kerb. Every Canadian gets this wrong at least once.
Pound sterling. Contactless is the default and you do not need an Oyster card - tap your Canadian credit card or your phone directly on the yellow reader for the Tube, buses, DLR, Overground and Elizabeth line. Use the same card all week and daily and weekly caps apply automatically. Buses take no cash whatsoever. Plenty of shops and cafes are now card-only.
Sit-down restaurants usually add a discretionary service charge to the bill. It is optional, it is printed as a separate line, and you can ask for it to be taken off without drama. Do not tip at a pub bar when you order and pay at the counter - that is not a thing. Round up for a taxi. UK law now requires tips to be passed to staff in full without deductions.
230 volts, 50 Hz, Type G - the big three rectangular pins. The adapter is bulky, so pack a multi-port charger rather than three adapters. Many UK sockets have a small switch beside them: if nothing is charging, the switch is off. Dual-voltage chargers are fine; a 110-volt-only Canadian hair tool is not.
Safe everywhere, regulated by the Drinking Water Inspectorate. Ask for tap water in a restaurant and you will get it free. Refill points are common in stations, museums and parks, so bring a bottle.
English, with the obvious caveat that some words mean different things - a subway is a pedestrian underpass, not the Tube. Beyond that, London is one of the most multilingual cities in the world; Punjabi, Urdu, Gujarati, Bengali, Polish and Arabic are all everyday here, and in Southall, Wembley or Tooting you may hear very little English on the street.
Global Affairs Canada says cellphone theft is common in tourist areas of London and flags pickpocketing at Piccadilly Circus, Trafalgar Square and Leicester Square, as well as at airports, in hotel lobbies and on public transport. A frequently reported method is a rider on a moped or bicycle taking the phone straight out of your hand at the kerb - do not stand at the roadside navigating with your phone held out. The other firm rule, which Global Affairs also warns about: never get into an unlicensed minicab that touts for you on the street. Use a black cab, which you can hail, or a pre-booked licensed private hire.
May, June and September are the reliable months: long daylight, the parks and garden squares at their best, and the Tube bearable. July and August bring the crowds and the heat, and the deep-level tube lines run hot - the sub-surface Circle, District, Hammersmith and City and Metropolitan lines are the air-conditioned ones, and air-conditioned trains are only now being phased in on the Piccadilly. From November to February it is dark by mid-afternoon, which is fine if you came for museums, galleries and pubs rather than for parks.
Compare the ways to get there, then build a day-by-day plan.
Nonstop from Pearson to London Heathrow (LHR) runs year-round on Air Canada, British Airways and Virgin Atlantic, roughly seven hours eastbound and usually flown as an overnight. From LHR the Elizabeth line leaves from all three Heathrow rail stations (Terminals 2 and 3, Terminal 4, and Terminal 5) and runs to Paddington, Bond Street, Tottenham Court Road, Farringdon and Liverpool Street on Oyster or contactless. The Heathrow Express is the separate nonstop to Paddington only, sold on its own ticket, and the Piccadilly line is the slower Tube option that calls at more places. Air Transat is the only airline flying Pearson nonstop to Gatwick (LGW), where the named links are the Gatwick Express to Victoria and Thameslink trains through London Bridge, Farringdon and St Pancras.
Transport for London runs the Tube, the Elizabeth line, the DLR, the trams and the six renamed London Overground lines (Lioness, Mildmay, Windrush, Weaver, Suffragette, Liberty). Pay with a contactless bank card, phone or watch, or with a physical Oyster card. Both get automatic pay-as-you-go capping, daily and again across a Monday-to-Sunday week, so no maths and no ticket queue. Buses and trams take no cash at all and you touch in only, never out; the Hopper fare lets you change buses or trams as often as you like within an hour of your first touch-in, provided every tap is the same card or device.
May, June and September are the reliable months: long daylight, the parks and garden squares at their best, and the Tube bearable. July and August bring the crowds and the heat, and the deep-level tube lines run hot - the sub-surface Circle, District, Hammersmith and City and Metropolitan lines are the air-conditioned ones, and air-conditioned trains are only now being phased in on the Piccadilly. From November to February it is dark by mid-afternoon, which is fine if you came for museums, galleries and pubs rather than for parks.