Tag: Hostel

Three days in London is the perfect amount of time to get a taste of this huge city that will leave you wanting more! We were lucky to experience the city with minimal rain and boy oh boy did we pack it in! Some highlights included the Tower of London, St. Paul’s Cathedral, the House of Parliament, Westminster Abbey and Camden Market. London has amazing public transportation and is also extremely walkable. Check out our trip report, pictures and tips!

• Thursday, April 4 morning through Sunday, April 6 morning
• Arrived via Heathrow (LHR) airport and departed via Stansted (STN) airport
• Transportation: Oyster card, pay as you go for the Underground (subway) and buses
• Accommodations: Excelsior Hotel, easy walk from Kings Cross Station; feel free to use my Booking.com referral link for any hotel accommodation and we each get money at no additional cost to you

Thursday (Day 1)

We picked a hotel near Kings Cross station because it’s a hub with lots of different Underground (aka “The Tube”, aka metro/subway/train) lines running through it. It was easy to get on the Piccadilly Line from Heathrow airport and take the Tube for about a 50 or so minute ride without any need to transfer. The Excelsior Hotel was conveniently located about 2 blocks away once we found the correct exit and allowed us to store our luggage early. 

We were able to start exploring before 1 pm and headed to the Tower of London. We figured a weekday would probably be a little less crowded then the weekend and we were right. We walked up and bought our ticket without issue (you can also get a slight savings by buying it ahead of time). We took a free tour with one of the Beefeaters, saw lots of the notorious crows and the famous crown jewels. We brought our stroller here (plus our rain cover that we ended up needing), which worked out fine. We enjoyed walking along the top of the castle wall through each of the towers and just left our stroller until we returned for it. If you do this, make sure to go in the room that tells about the Royal Beasts (animals). We made one of the three offerings of the White Tower tour (when we went it was offered at 10:45 am, 12:45 pm and 2:15 pm) and ended up getting a PRIVATE tour because no one else came. We really enjoyed it. From inside and outside of the castle you can see Tower Bridge, which is beautiful and often confused as being London Bridge. It’s definitely worthy of a few pics! If you look up from inside the Tower of London you can also see the Shard (cool looking triangle glass building) which was completed around 2012.

From here we walked the River Thames and crossed the London Bridge. On the way we got to see the Monument to the Great Fire of London (you can pay to go up it). The view of Tower Bridge from the London Bridge is spectacular on a clear or semi-clear day. We stumbled upon a gorgeous church called Southwark Cathedral (the city’s oldest gothic church) and the Borough Market as they were closing once we crossed the London Bridge to the south bank. This area has some amazing street art that’s fun to find or stumble across in our case. We continued along the river past Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre to the Millennium Bridge where you get a gorgeous view of St. Paul’s Cathedral. Before crossing the Millennium Bridge, you may want to pop into the Tate Modern, art museum. While we didn’t have time to see any art, it’s free, so it makes a great stop for a bathroom and changing station if needed. Actually, many of London’s amazing art museums are free, just like the Smithsonians in Washington, D.C. If you do have time or can time it right to be here on a Friday or Saturday night when it’s open late (until 10 pm), you can look for work by famous artists such as Cézanne, Dali, Matisse, Picasso and Warhol. While you’re walking around London, don’t forget to keep your eye out for the iconic red telephone booths which make for another great photo op! If you decide to keep walking around, like we did, you can see additional places like the Royal Court of Justice, London School of Economics and Covent Garden to name a few. We ended up walking to Convent Garden because there was a Tube station here with a direct ride (8 minutes) on the Piccadilly Line back to Kings Cross.

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Friday (Day 2)

We started our morning early with a Tube ride. When we got off the train, we wandered through the official Temple Bar Gate which signifies you are entering the City of London. Make sure to check out the cool dragon! Since we brought our stroller again, we were able to enter St. Paul’s Cathedral through the accessible entrance and then were taken to the ticket counter to purchase our ticket. It’s absolutely gorgeous inside the Cathedral and the tour with a guide is included in the price. After our tour, we left our stroller and moved Addy to our on-person carrier to climb the many stairs (very narrow in some places) up to the dome. This should NOT be missed! The views from the top are spectacular! You can also enjoy some time wandering the crypt. From here we made our walk to the Royal Court of Justice. It’s free to enter after you pass security and some people say it has a Hogwartesque feel to it. Unfortunately, they don’t want you to take pictures inside (good luck trying to do so incognito). Covent Garden was not too far around the corner and is super fun to walk around. There are tons of shops, restaurants and good people watching! If you have time to spare in this area, it’s a short walk to Neal’s Yard which is a super colorful hidden alley.

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Hopping on the Tube is super easy with the Oyster card. We rode the Piccadilly line from Covent Garden to Green Station. We enjoyed wandering Green Park, St. James Park (to see the famous resident pelicans; they are fed daily at 2:30 pm, but we saw them even outside of feeding time) and seeing Buckingham Palace (if you want to see the changing of the guard this happens around 10:45 am. Because we LOVE to walk and see it all, we continued to Hyde Park. This park has lovely flowers, tons of birds, and points of interest to see like Kensington Palace and Gardens. We exited on the south side of the park by the Albert Memorial and Royal Albert Hall. From here, we ventured to a street with many museums and popped in the Victoria and Albert Museum. Besides being a free museum, it also has late hours on Friday nights (open until 10 pm), which made it a great place to rest and again find a free bathroom.  If you are here earlier in the day, the Natural History Museum is on this block and is free too.

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As if our feet weren’t exhausted, we trekked on to Harrods, the must see humungous department store. We walked the main floor and then took the elevator to the kids section. The organization of each cubby-like room is by theme (stuffed animals, Legos, Barbie dolls, etc.) and fun to see…but forget about being able to buy anything. Take a picture, it’ll last longer. The baby furniture section and the creepy kids’ mannequins were also unique to see. Then right outside of Harrods we hopped on a bus heading in the direction of Piccadilly Circus and got off there (very short, less than 10 minute ride). It’s a fun area to see at night and we loved posing for pics in the Lego Shop at Leicester Square. They had a life-sized Tube train with characters to sit with and a map made entirely from Legos. Let’s just say we CRASHED after this day of exploring London!

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Saturday (Day 3)

We woke up early and rode to the Embankment station which put us right along the River Thames. It was a beautiful walk with views of the London Eye. If Big Ben weren’t under construction until 2021, we would have had a nice view of the clock as well. Since we did not buy our tickets ahead of time for the House of Parliament (aka the Palace of Westminster), we had to go to the ticket booth located in front of Portcullis House on Victoria Embankment, which was actually on the way from the train station. If we had gone during peak tourist season, it would have been better to buy these ahead of time, but luckily we were able to secure tickets for later in the day.

In the meantime, we hustled over to Westminster Abbey (across the street) and got in line to purchase our tickets. Luckily, we were able to secure them here and go right in (it opened at 1:30 pm on Saturday). We got the self-guided tour headset and thoroughly enjoyed this beautiful church (if we were here during peak season, we would have purchased it ahead of time). So many famous people are buried here like Isaac Newton and Charles Dickens! Since my visit as part of my study abroad experience in May 2010, Stephen Hawkins’ ashes were buried in Westminster among other brilliant science-y people (think Newton and Darwin). When you get near the Poets’ Corner, you have the option to pay and climb up Westminster Abbey.  

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From Westminster, we exited into Parliament Square (where there are tons of famous statues to see like Mandela and Churchill) and it was booming with people! It was like a bunch of tour buses opened their doors and the people flowed out to the streets! We crossed the street and entered the House of Parliament for our ticketed time. Touring this was an absolute highlight and getting a self-guided tour headset is included in the ticket price here too. We were only allowed to take pictures in the first two rooms, but the other rooms are gorgeous and I definitely wish I could have snapped away!

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After we exited, we walked along Horse Guard Road between St. James Park (another chance to see the famous pelicans) and a lot of other beautiful architecture on our way to Trafalgar Square. We made it to the National Gallery, which hosts loads of famous work from artists we’ve all heard of like Botticelli, Leonardo da Vinci, Rembrandt, Renoir and Van Gogh. The beauty is, this place is FREE, so you don’t have to feel bad only seeing a few particular paintings and on Friday nights it’s open late (9 pm).

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To catch a breather, we hopped on the Tube and road past our hotel stop at Kings Cross up to see Camden Market. This area has tons of shopping, incredible street art and murals and is a must see area of town, very different from the sites we had seen up to this point on our trip. After a nice coffee break, we walked to Regent’s Park. We enjoyed the park stroll on our long walk back to Kings Cross. Other things in this area include: Queen Mary’s rose garden, the ZSL London Zoo (the world’s oldest scientific zoo) and Hampstead Heath (supposed to have great views) if you have the time.  

Sunday

London is definitely a city that requires more than a stopover. There is so much to see that even with our three days, we know we could come back and see more. On Sunday morning, we took the Tube from Kings Cross to Tottenham Hale station. We then had to buy a separate ticket for the Greater Anglia Railway to take a direct commuter-type train for 35 minutes to Stansted Airport. Even with a baby and our luggage, we found this to be incredibly easy and worthwhile since we were flying on an inexpensive one-way ticket via Ryan Air to Barcelona, Spain to board our Mediterranean cruise to Italy and France. Check out those hyperlinks to read about those portions of our trip!

Trip Planning Considerations and Tips

• For some, it may make sense to purchase the London Pass. Ultimately, we decided on the Oyster pay as you go card and purchasing individual attractions. This article may be helpful for your review: https://www.londonpass.com/london-attractions/
• If you are looking for other ideas, perhaps free or inexpensive ones, this article may be helpful: https://www.visitlondon.com/things-to-do/budget-london/101-free-things-to-do-in-london
• There are tons of other blog articles with ideas for stopovers, weekends and 3 day adventures. I also found reviewing the Free Tours by Foot, such as this article to be helpful: https://freetoursbyfoot.com/things-to-see-near-buckingham-palace/
• Transportation: Make sure to have a map or a transportation app. If you’re not using your phone overseas except on Wi-Fi, I definitely recommend screenshots or physical paper maps for reference. Of course, you can always just ask a local! If you’re going to use your phone a ton, it may be worth getting a portable battery bank!
• Accommodations: Our hotel, was really more like a hostel (Excelsior Hotel). We had a shared bathroom and a private room. Since we had our stroller, two pieces of small luggage and a backpack, plus a pack-n-play, there was virtually no room to walk in the hotel room. For us, this was perfect because it was the least expensive place I saw for 3 nights (because we didn’t want to have to switch hotels in the middle of our short trip) in a good central location. We also knew we wouldn’t spend any time in the room except for sleeping.

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