How to Visit London on a Budget

We all have dream cities that we’d like to visit, but feel sure are not in our budget: New York, where hotels under $300 a night are near impossible to find; Tokyo, recently listed in the top 10 most expensive places to travel; or London, where the strength of the pound over the dollar just adds to the hefty price tag associated with a vacation there. So how can a family enjoy London on a budget? It is actually possible, and I’m going to tell you how!

When we decided to travel to London, we did some serious research first to make sure we could afford it. Is it cheap? No. Is it doable? Yes. These are the top 4 ways we saved money:

1. Finding a budget hotel (they DO exist) or staying in an apartment/Airbnb
2. Buying the London Pass
3. Walking (almost) everywhere
4. Sticking to affordable food (without eating junk!)

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Budget Lodging

Let’s talk about accommodations. London’s hotels are notoriously expensive, but it is possible to find budget hotels, particularly if you’re willing to stay a little outside the most central areas. For example, I’ve found budget hotels in desirable areas like Chelsea and Kensington, or on the other side of the Thames in Battersea and Southwark. Booking.com also books apartments that are often less expensive than hotels. In an apartment, you can buy groceries and not have to eat out every meal. Some of them also come with laundry!

Sightseeing in London on a budget

Something that will really get you in London is the entrance fees. Luckily, there are a lot of free museums! For the numerous attractions that do charge an entrance fee, we saved a ton of money by purchasing the London Pass. I’m generally wary of these multiple-attractions-in-one-pass deals, because I feel like you’re often paying for things you’ll never end up doing. I spent a couple of hours researching and adding up the entrance fees to everything we wanted to do in London, checking that they were all included in the pass, and comparing the prices. It turns out to be a big savings! We chose the option to include a hop-on hop-off tour, which we did the first day and it was fantastic. You can also add your Oyster Card on to the pass. You may balk at the price because it’s a huge chunk all at once, but let me give you some great reasons to do it anyway:

• It saves you money. I did the math, so you don’t have to. If you paid for all these attractions individually it would cost you a lot more. We only went to about 10 of the places available on the pass and it still saved us money!

• You can purchase it well in advance and have it sent to your house. If you plan ahead and buy it a couple months beforehand, you can have that part of the trip paid off before you ever leave.

• It comes with a handy guidebook and map.

Getting around London on a Budget

Another great way to save money is to walk, rather than ride to most places. We bought the Oyster card for the London Underground because we needed it to get into central London each day. But we basically planned our days by clustering the areas we were going to visit so we could walk everywhere and only have to tube in and home each day. We walked a lot, but it’s great exercise and London is one of those cities where every single block has something interesting to see. We took exactly one cab the whole time we were there, just so my daughter could have the experience of riding in the cute London black cabs with the backwards seats! Everywhere else we hoofed it!

Eating on a budget

If you’re anything like us, food is what always kills our budget when we travel. Here’s how we managed to avoid that pitfall in London: We planned ahead so that we never found ourselves so hungry that we would just eat anywhere. Because we were staying in an apartment, we bought some simple breakfast stuff – coffee, eggs, toast – and ate at home every morning. We brought snacks to keep us from getting too hungry, and we brought our own water bottles. We knew we would want to try at least a couple of nice restaurants (we happened to be there on our anniversary), so we picked those out ahead of time. Then we really stuck to affordable but good food. We also ate at places like the Borough Market, where we picked up picnic items (and a few oysters) to eat along the banks of the river. Our favorite find by far was suggested to us by a friend: Nando’s! It’s an African-Portuguese chicken place that is absolutely fabulous. It has healthy choices, isn’t terribly expensive and there are several in London.

I have about a million more things to say about traveling to London on a budget (I love it, I love it, I love it!), but I really think the affordability aspect is something that deters people from going. Additionally, you should check out the itinerary I created for One week in London with kids – it’s chock full of activities for the whole family. I’ll be doing an additional post about the week-long driving trip we took through Southern England soon – stay tuned. (Hint: it involves wrecking our rental car before we got it out of the parking lot. Not kidding!)