We flew into London Heathrow via Chicago-Dublin-London and it was our first stop in Europe. I was very happy that AerLingus didn’t make us check our backpacks at all but let us take them as carry-ons for our flights. This meant we didn’t have to wait for our luggage! Our flight landed at 12:30pm and we were off. Click here for our basic itinerary overview of London and details on transportation. Some things didn’t work out and some did.
From Heathrow Airport, we took the tube to Paddington Station. Of all the metro systems in Europe that we rode (trust me, it was a lot) we found London’s to be one of the easiest to navigate. There are three options from the airport to get to central London, Heathrow Express (20 mins, 21-26 pounds/person), London Underground (1 hr, 5.30 pounds/person) and Heathrow connect (30 mins, 9.90 pounds/person). We opted for the Heathrow Connect as it was much cheaper than the Express. But I’m glad I learned about it ahead of time because we didn’t see any signs for it at the station! We had to ask someone where to catch it and found it it was at the same platform at the Heathrow Express. We bought our tickets at the kiosk no problem, but JUST missed the train and had to wait 30 minutes for the next one. Sigh. But it was ok, we spent the time studying the Metro Map so we’d know what where to go and what we were looking for. Once we made it to Paddington, we bought an Oyster Card to use for the metro. Read about all that in the link to the document above at the top of this post.
We went to Picadiliy Circus first, but I didn’t like it. Way too crowded, so we just grabbed some food at a grocery store since we were starving and kept walking on to Trafalgar Square (about a 15 minute walk). I was disappointed we didn’t get to go to a theater show while in London and Picadiliy Square had all kinds of tickets for shows. I know there’s some really cheap last minute deals you can get as well but didn’t research that and how to go about it. London has little tourist stands set up all over with volunteers manning them to help tourists with any questions they have. They were so friendly and helpful and even gave us free maps to use! They’re literally all over the place so shouldn’t be too hard to find.
Trafalgar Square was nice, we sat down at one of the fountains to eat our lunch. It’s right in front of the National Gallery Museum which, like most museums in London, is free so that was our next stop! The square is full of street performers, but no street food. There was one small cafe but it looked expensive. After we finished our meal, we headed into the Museum only to be told we couldn’t bring our backpacks in and had to use the entrance to the left where they had free luggage storage. Took us a little while to find the entrance, but after asking some people we were headed in the right direction. If we’d been smart we would’ve left our giant backpacks there all day until the museum closed since it’s free! But instead we collected them when we were done touring and dragged them all over London with us. Now we know for next time.
The museum was HUGE but I’m not a big museum person so we only spent an hour or so there. Saw some really famous paintings which was cool to say we’ve done it, but not thrilling for me. Not to mention how PACKED it was. After collecting our bags we asked the ever friendly volunteers outside to point us towards Westminster Abbey and they told us it was only a 10 minute walk. They must be power walkers because it definitely took us at least a good 20 minutes to get there and by the end of it our backpacks were feeling extremely heavy. After that, we pretty much took a bus or metro everywhere else. We passed double-decker buses along the way (I was excited to ride it until I realized it’s slower than the metro, more packed, more confusing, and WAY more hot. That was the end of that) and of course took a photo with a photo booth.
Westminster Abbey was closed (disappointing) the day we were there but Big Ben is right there as well so we walked towards the bridge to check it out. Saw the London Eye from there as well. All the major sights were so close to each other! But we didn’t actually go all the way to the Eye because I’d heard lines are really long and it takes about 45 minutes to do the full ride. I didn’t want to sit on the Ferris Wheel for that long.
Decided to check out Buckingham Palace which was not very thrilling since the Changing of the Guard happens at 11:30am and we weren’t able to catch it. The guards don’t move at all, it’s true! They only marched back and forth about 20 feet and then would resume their same position. I don’t think I could handle being stared at through a gate every day by hundreds of tourists while doing nothing at all- Pablo and I both agreed it would be a very boring job.
We headed to Regents Park from there which hadn’t been on our original list, but a lot of things were closing down now that it was evening time so there weren’t a whole lot of indoor options left after 5:00pm. Regents Park was BEAUTIFUL. I’d highly recommend it. There are a lot of parks in London to visit and this was the one we chose, we were quite happy with it. We were feeling very jet lagged by this time and I was sick and tired of lugging my huge backpack around all day. The park is really big but we were too tired to walk through the whole thing so we sat on a bench and enjoyed it for a while. Pablo actually fell asleep for a few minutes before I woke him up to continue on :-). It definitely did not feel as crowded here either which was nice. Again though, we were hungry and the cafe we checked was already closed (so early!).
Our last stop was Tower Bridge which was a bit of a hike from the metro stop. We did walk by the London Tower on the way and seeing all the red poppies growing around it was cool. I would’ve liked to go inside but it was closed already and expensive anyway. The bridge wasn’t thrilling, though it was a bluish color which surprised me. We bought some yummy nuts roasted in cinnamon and sugar from some guy selling them on the street and that was good to snack on while we walked.
It was close to 9:00pm now and we were tired and needed to find out couchsurfer for the evening. So that was the end of our London touring! It was a nice place to start and felt good to know the local language. The next morning we’d take the Eurostar on to Paris.
Fire Round the World 