Visitor Information

Three official information units supported by British taxes are set up to help tourists, but only online: Visit Britain (www.visitbritain.com, @VisitBritain), Visit England (www.visitengland.com, @VisitEngland), and Visit London (www.visitlondon.com, @VisitLondon), which possesses the biggest database.

The only official information bureau with a public office is opposite the south side of St Paul’s Cathedral: The City of London Information Centre (www.visitthecity.co.uk; [tel] 020/7332-1456) sells attraction tickets and Oyster cards, runs guided tours, supplies brochures and counsel for daytrips throughout the country, and even publishes its own walking tours and children’s discovery trail maps. Opening hours are Monday to Saturday 9:30am to 5:30pm, Sunday 10am to 4pm.

Excellent independent sources for things to do include Londonist.com, LondonCalling.com, TimeOut.com/London, Townfish.com, and the Twitter accounts Everything London (@LDN), @LeCool_London (nightlife), and @SkintLondon (for cheap or free activities).

The Best London News & Views Websites

BBC London (www.bbc.co.uk/london)

Greenwich.co.uk (www.greenwich.co.uk)

London Evening Standard (www.standard.co.uk)

London SE1 (www.london-se1.co.uk)

MayorWatch (www.mayorwatch.co.uk)

Metro (www.metro.co.uk)

Yeah Hackney (www.yeahhackney.com)

 

Tips for Women Travelers

First and foremost, lone women should avoid riding in unlicensed London taxicabs, especially at night. However attractive the price you’re quoted, flag down a black cab or call a minicab instead. Addison Lee (www.addisonlee.com; [tel] 020/7387-8888) has a huge, efficient fleet, and will text you the registration plate of your cab for added security. It has a free app for hailing rides.

Generally, however, London is as safe for solo women as is any densely populated major Western city. Millions of single women live and work freely in London.

A true club and not an agency, Women Welcome Women Worldwide (www.womenwelcomewomen.org.uk; [tel] 01494/46-54-41) is for female travelers, and membership costs £35 a year. The organization connects members with other members from foreign cultures, so if you avail yourself of this group, you’ll be seeing London with someone who wants to treat you like a friend and takes an active interest in your experience.

Neighborhoods in Brief

London’s neighborhoods were laid out during a period of wagon and foot traffic, when districts were defined in narrower terms than we define them today; indeed, for centuries people often lived complete lives without seeing the other side of town. Ironically, in our times, the Tube has done much to divide these districts from each other. Visitors are likely to hop a train between them and don’t often realize how remarkably close together they really are.

Are these the only areas of interest? Not even close. Literally hundreds of fascinating village clusters abound, many with names as cherishable as Ponders End, Tooting, and The Wrythe. And considering that a third of Londoners now belong to an ethnic minority and more than 200 languages are spoken, the flavor of your experience shifts as you go. But visitors are likely to spend time here:

BLOOMSBURY & FITZROVIA

Best for: Museums, affordable inns, residential streets, universities, and homewares and electronics shops on Tottenham Court Road

What you won’t find: Evening entertainment, nightclubs

Bloomsbury’s dark-brick, white-sashed residential buildings and leafy squares date mostly from the Georgian period, when the district became the first in a chaotic city to be planned—it was an early version of the modern suburban development. The refined air attracted the intelligentsia nearly from the start, and its two universities are both 19th-century institutions. The British Museum settled here, too. Bloomsbury became a place of remembrance on July 7, 2005; of the 52 who died that day, 26 perished underground on a bombed Piccadilly line train between King’s Cross and Russell Square stations, and 13 were killed on a double-decker bus passing above through Tavistock Square. Bloomsbury’s cozier sister Fitzrovia, similar in character but devoid of major attractions, lies on the western side of Tottenham Court Road. Famous residents include George Bernard Shaw and Virginia Woolf, who both lived (at different times) at 29 Fitzroy Square.

KING’S CROSS

Best for: Budget hotels, trains heading north (and south to Paris), alternative/down-and-dirty nightlife, student housing, take-away counters

What you won’t find: A large restaurant selection, shopping

A decade ago, the area around King’s Cross station was an unsavory tenderloin of porn stores and warehouses. Behind the station, millions of pounds have just transformed once-derelict industrial infrastructure into Granary Square, a canalside center for arts hotspots, restaurants, colleges, and tech HQs. Legend (surely apocryphal) says the Celtic queen Boudicca rests somewhere near Platform 8 of King’s Cross. Fans of Harry Potter know that the young wizard boards the Hogwarts Express at the (fictitious) Platform 9 3/4; the movie versions have shot at Platforms 4 and 5 but used prettier St Pancras station, next door, as a stand-in facade. Change came, as it often has in English history, from France: The Channel Tunnel Rail Link is the starting point for Eurostar train trips to France and beyond.

MARYLEBONE & MAYFAIR

Best for: Luxe shopping, hotels, restaurants, small museums, strolling, embassies

What you won’t find: Historic sights, savings

The middle-class hubbub of Oxford Street west of Regent Street divides high-hat Marylebone from its snobbish southern neighbor, Mayfair. Both play host to upscale shopping and several fascinating, if overlooked, museums, but there the similarities end. World-famous Mayfair, typified by hyperluxe bauble shops and blue-blood heritage (the present queen was born at 17 Bruton St. in a building that is no longer there), has a high opinion of itself as a starchy enclave of wealth, much of it from other countries> Yet Mayfair has less to offer the casual tourist, although it is the city’s hot zone for cushy hotels. (The title of the musical My Fair Lady is witty wordplay on how its Cockney heroine, Eliza, would have pronounced “Mayfair lady.”) Marylebone (Mar-le-bun), on the other hand, benefits from convenient Tube and bus connections and lively sidewalks crowded with evening celebrants, particularly around James Street. Also, thanks to a territorial local authority, its main shopping drag (Marylebone High St.) remains one of the last important streets in London that isn’t awash with the ubiquitous corporate chain stores. Oxford Street is The City’s premier shopping corridor; the western half between Oxford Circus and Marble Arch is the classier end, with marquee department stores such as Selfridges and Marks & Spencer.

SOHO, COVENT GARDEN & CENTRAL WEST END

Best for: Shopping, restaurants, theater, cinema, nightlife, opera, free art (National Gallery and National Portrait Gallery), star sightings

What you won’t find: Elbow room, silence

London’s undisputed center of nightlife, restaurants, and theater, the West End seethes with tourists and merry-makers. After work, Old Compton Street and Covent Garden overflow with people catching up with friends; by 7:30pm, the theaters and opera houses are pulsing; by midnight, the action has moved into the nightclubs of Leicester Square and lounges of Soho; and in the wee hours, you might find groups of partiers trawling Gerrard Street, in a teeny Cantonese Chinatown, hunting for snacks. Prim Trafalgar Square, dominated by the peerless National Gallery, has often been called London’s focal point. On a sunny day, you’ll find few places that exude such well-being.

WESTMINSTER, INCLUDING ST JAMES’S

Best for: Historic and government sights, river strolls, St James’s Park

What you won’t find: Affordable hotels, a wide choice of restaurants

Though it’s near the West End, this area’s energy is more staid. It’s a district tourists mostly see by day. South of Trafalgar Square, you’ll find regiments of robust government buildings but little in the way of hotels or food. Whitehall’s severity doesn’t spread far: Just a block east, its impenetrable character gives way to the proud riverside promenade of Victoria Embankment overlooking the London Eye, and just a block west, to the greenery of St James’s Park, which is, in effect, the queen’s front yard, since Buckingham Palace is at the western boundary of this area. North of the park, the tidy streets of St James’s are even more exclusive than Mayfair’s, if that’s possible. 

THE CITY

Best for: Old streets, the Tower of London, St Paul’s, financial concerns

What you won’t find: Nightlife or weekend life, affordable hotels

Technically, this is the only part of London that’s London. Other bits, including the West End, are under the jurisdiction of different local governments, such as Westminster or Camden. The City, as it’s called, is where most of London’s history happened. It’s where Romans cheered gladiators. It’s where London Bridge—at least 12 versions—touched shore. It’s where the Great Fire raged. And, more recently, it’s where the Deutsche Luftwaffe focused many of its nocturnal bombing raids, which is why you’ll find so little evidence of the aforementioned events. Outside of working hours, the main thing you’ll see in The City is your own reflection in the facade of corporate fortresses; west of Liverpool Street station, even most of the pubs close on weekends. Although it encompasses such priceless relics as the Tower of London, St Paul’s Cathedral, the Tower Bridge, the Bank of England, and the Monument, many of the area’s remnants are underfoot—the spider web of lanes and streets dates to the Roman period, with names that hint at their former lives (Walbrook is where the river Walbrook, now hidden underground, flowed down to the Thames; Honey Lane, Bread St., Milk St., and Poultry all once hosted food markets.) Buildings have come and gone, but the veins of The City have pumped in-situ for thousands of years.

THE SOUTH BANK, SOUTHWARK & BOROUGH

Best for: Museums, memorable pubs, strolls, gourmet foods and wines

What you won’t find: Shopping, parks

During the recent rehabilitation of Southwark (Suth-urk) from a crumbling industrial district, its blighted power station became one of the world’s greatest museums (the Tate Modern), a master playwright’s theater was re-created (the Globe), and a sublime riverfront path replaced the coal lightermen’s rotting piers. Now it’s where London goes to fall in love with The City. It’s a 1-mile riverside stroll between the London Eye and the Tate Modern, and every step is a pleasure. Once-dank railway viaducts are filled with cafes and reasonable restaurants; Western Europe’s tallest skyscraper, The Shard, lords over from above; and the nation’s dramatic showpiece (the National Theatre) anchors them at South Bank. But it’s gratifying to see that some things never change: Borough Market, which attracts gourmet foodies from around the world, is the descendant of a market that fed the denizens of that medieval skyscraper over the water, London Bridge.

VICTORIA & CHELSEA

Best for: Boutiques, low-cost lodging, town homes, wealthy neighbors

What you won’t find: Transit options, street life, museums

Victoria doesn’t technically apply to the neighborhood around the eponymous train station—Belgravia (to the west) and Pimlico (south and east) take those honors—but the shorthand stuck. Most of the area, which is residential or uninterestingly workaday, was developed starting in the 1820s in consistent patterns of white stucco-terraced homes. The area around the station, which is being redeveloped in a massive works project, contains two outlier West End theatres, but little else. Just north, you’ll face the brick walls of Buckingham Palace Gardens. Chelsea, to its south, has a history of well-heeled bohemianism—Oscar Wilde, James McNeill Whistler, and the Beatles all lived here—although it’s known more as one of The City’s most exclusive (and some would say insular) communities. A stroll past boutiques and pocket-squared residents on the King’s Road, turning ever-more corporate and indistinct, is not the adventure it once was.

KENSINGTON, KNIGHTSBRIDGE

Best for: Museums, shopping, ultra-luxe boutiques, also-ran hotels

What you won’t find: Historic sights

Here, one expensive neighborhood genuflects to another, and barely anyone you meet was born in England. South Kensington and Brompton draw the most visitors to their grand museums; and Knightsbridge is where moneyed foreigners spend and show off—London now has the most billionaires in the world, nearly twice as many as New York or Moscow. They can’t legally change most of the facades, so to satisfy their hunger for more space, the big trend among the rich is to burrow downward to build underground rooms—the “pleasure caves” of Kensington. Privilege has long had an address in Kensington—that’s a reason those edifying institutions were located here to begin with, away from the grubby paws of the peasants—but it also is home to a core of French expats; you’ll find the cafes catering to them on Bute Street. Kensington Palace, at the Gardens’ western end, is where Prince William and Kate live when they’re in town. When you travel west to Earl’s Court, you experience a considerable drop in voltage. It’s a frumpy zone deprived of a contingency to the park with undistinguished eats and sleeps; the rise of King’s Cross and Shoreditch for younger travelers has reduced it to near-negligible stature. Your parents may have stayed here once, but you shouldn’t.

SHOREDITCH, SPITALFIELDS & HOXTON

Best for: Nightclubs, music, food of all types, galleries, clothing

What you won’t find: Museums, parks

If Mayfair is London’s champagne, the East End hoods have been its hangover. For centuries it was an impoverished, squalid slum for poor immigrants and shifty souls. Jack the Ripper slashing and the Elephant Man suffering jibes—it happened here. That’s in the history books now. Spitalfields (Spit-all-fields), named for its excellent covered market and increasingly threatened by an unstoppable cancer of soulless, open-plan office buildings from The City, blends into Shoreditch, big on name-dropping up-and-coming designers and party promoters as if you knew who they were. Shopping, restaurants, bars, hipsters—it’s all here now. Dalston, young and bohemian, is north of these. East of Spitalfields, in ancient homes that have long housed waves of immigrants (French, then Jewish, now South Asian), you’ll find the famed restaurants of Brick Lane, the cafes and dance clubs of the converted Old Truman Brewery, and the art-savvy neighborhood of Whitechapel. Prostitutes are out, £4.50 coffee is in—which may not be an improvement.

GREENWICH

Best for: Museums, antique and food markets, river views, strolls, boats

What you won’t find: Hotels, bustle

Greenwich, on the south bank across from the Canary Wharf developments, retains the tranquility of an untouched village. Such lovely insularity exists because the Tube (well, the DLR) didn’t connect it to the greater city until 1999—all the more remarkable when you consider the town’s illustrious pedigree as a royal getaway (it’s got the oldest royal park in London), as a scientific capital, and as one of the world’s most crucial command centers. If it all sounds like a living museum, it is: On top of being a UNESCO World Heritage Site (Maritime Greenwich), the village is literally the center of time and space, since it inhabits the exact location of Greenwich Mean Time, and of longitude 0 0 0. Set away from Greenwich town there’s the colossal O2 dome, The City’s iconic concert venue.

Other Popular London Neighborhoods

Mostly because of iffy transit connections (for example, service by a single Tube line that, should it go on the blink, would derail your vacation), this book doesn’t focus on these neighborhoods as prime places to stay, but they’re still vital parts of town.

BAYSWATER & PADDINGTON

Best for: Sub-par inns, ethnic food, well-preserved Victorian thoroughfares

What you won’t find: Attractions, non-chain stores, street life, adorable bears

Its whitewashed, terraced houses were briefly the most fashionable in The City (Churchill and Dickens were residents), yet today, the sizable transient population of this area deprives it of sustained energy, and its hotels tend to be for immigrant tradesmen. Crowning the muddle is Queensway, a popular shopping street containing Whiteleys, a 1911 department store edifice converted into a mall with fairly unexciting tenants. Although Paddington station is one of London’s most beautiful train hubs (it was built by the legendary architect Isambard Kingdom Brunel in 1838), it’s also the most inconvenient—although Heathrow and Windsor trains go from it.

DOCKLANDS

Best for: Development, ancient warehouses, super-cheap chain hotels

What you won’t find: Street life, nightlife

Most of far east London along the north side of the Thames is ignobly called by a single, sweeping name: Docklands. The past is rich here: Captain Cook set off on his explorations from here, and its hand-dug basins once teemed with ships bearing goods from around the planet. Docklands made colonial Britain successful—and thus America, Canada, Australia, and South Africa, too. After a fallow generation, East London’s hand-dug pools are under constant redevelopment by corporations in stacks of fluorescent-lit office cubes, and the Olympics settled here in 2012 near the Stratford Tube stop. Away from the river, in salt-of-the-earth neighborhoods like Bethnal Green, Stratford, and West Ham, The City’s Pakistani and Indian populations flourish, with marvelous but unglamorous food and shops.

ISLINGTON

Best for: Antiques, gastropubs, theater, street markets, cafes, strolls

What you won’t find: Museums, hotels

Few neighborhoods retain such a healthy balance between feisty bohemianism and groomed prosperity, and almost none retain streetscapes as defiantly mid-century as Chapel Market. Islington’s leafy byways are dotted with antiques dealers, hoary pubs with backroom theater spaces, beer gardens, and most pleasingly on a sunny day, pedestrian towpaths overlooking Regent’s Canal. Why more tourists don’t flood Islington is a mystery—and a blessing—but that hasn’t stopped its ascendancy as a choice neighborhood for those with money.

CAMDEN

Best for: Alternative music, massive clothing markets, junk souvenirs, pubs

What you won’t find: Elbow room, hotels, upscale restaurants

Name a British tune that got under your skin, and chances are it received its first airing in the beer-soaked concert halls of Camden Town. London’s analogue to San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury District, it was big in the countercultured '60s and '70s and is still grotty enough for Amy Winehouse to have expired in. The area’s shoulder-to-shoulder markets, which hawk touristy hokum, cheap sunglasses, and £5 falafel in the former warehouses and stables serving Regent’s Canal, can be pretty awful, and the sort of places where you feel compelled to carry your wallet in your front pocket. Tourists come more out of duty than for any true mission for commerce and they cram the inadequate Tube stop on weekends.

NOTTING HILL

Best for: Markets, village vibes, restaurants, pubs, tourists, antiques

What you won’t find: Well-priced shopping, museums, Hugh Grant

Thanks partly to Hollywood, this westerly nook known to locals for race riots and, in 2017, the horrible Grenfell Tower fire, appears high on many visitors’ checklists. Its Saturday Portobello Road market, the principal draw, is fiendishly crowded but short on truly wonderful wares. In fact, it’s touristy. Like Camden, people go because they think they should. But if you feel compelled, Hugh Grant’s blue door from Notting Hill (1999) is at 280 Westbourne Park Rd.

Use the Code

London is chopped into geographic parcels, and you’ll see those postcodes on street signs. The heart of The City, in postcode terms, is near the Chancery Lane Tube stop. From there, areas are given a compass direction (N for north, SW for southwest, and so on) and a number (but ignore that, since a number greater than 1 doesn’t mean the area is in the boonies). In the very heart of town, addresses get an extra C for “centre,” as in WC1, which is where Covent Garden is located. Every address in this book includes its postcode, which corresponds to the neighborhood in which you’ll find it. Don’t worry—you won’t need to memorize these because each listing also includes the nearest Tube stop to help you quickly place locations on a map. Here are some of the most common postcodes:

WC1 Bloomsbury

WC2 Covent Garden, Holborn, Strand

W1 Fitzrovia, Marylebone, Mayfair, Soho

W2 Bayswater

W6 Hammersmith

W8 Kensington

W11 Notting Hill

SW1 Belgravia, St James’s, Westminster

SW3 Chelsea

SW5 Earl’s Court

SW7 Knightsbridge, South Kensington

SE1 Southwark

SE10 Greenwich

EC1 Clerkenwell

EC2 Bank, Barbican, Liverpool Street

EC3 Tower Hill

EC4 Fleet Street, St Paul’s

E1 Spitalfields, Whitechapel

E2 Bethnal Green

E14 Canary Wharf/Isle of Dogs

N1 Islington

NW1 Camden Town

NW3 Hampstead

Getting Around

There are three practical methods for taming London’s sprawl: by Tube (historic and enchanting, but expensive); by bus (less expensive and less glamorous, but more edifying and often quicker); and by foot (the best method, but not always possible). Taxis are overpriced, Ubers require mobile data usage, and driving a car is lunacy.

A significant savings strategy is to choose a hotel that’s within walking distance of lots of the things you want to do. Fortunately, the city’s extremely walkable. Tube trains go shockingly slowly (34kmph/21 mph is the average and has been for more than 100 years); and in the center of town, stops are remarkably close together and the stairs can wear you out. In fact, if your journey is only two or three stations, you’ll often find it less strenuous to simply walk.

The Underground (also known as The Tube)

Londoners call their 402km (249-mile) metro system the Underground, its official name, or just as commonly, “the Tube.” Its elegant, distinctive logo—a red “roundel” bisected by a blue bar—debuted in 1913 as one of the world’s first corporate symbols, and it remains one of the city’s most ubiquitous sights. The Tube is much more dignified than most American systems. In fact, seats are upholstered—that’s because the British know how to take care of nice things. And yet there’s no older subway system on earth—the first section opened in 1863 while America was fighting its Civil War—and it often acts its age, with frequent delays and shutdowns. Check posters and whiteboards in the ticket hall to see what “engineering works” are scheduled.

The Tube is an attraction unto itself. It’s fun to seek out vestiges of the early system (1907 tilework on the Piccadilly Line; the fake house facades built at 23–24 Leinster Gardens to hide exposed tracks; abandoned stations like the one at Strand and Surrey Street). If such “urban archaeology” fascinates you, visit the London Transport Museum in Covent Garden, one of the city’s family-friendly highlights.
 
There are 13 named lines, plus the Docklands Light Railway (DLR), which serves East London, and a tram line in South London. Lines are color-coded: The Piccadilly is a peacock purple, the Bakerloo could be considered Sherlock Holmes brown, and so on. In 2019, the newly dug, £14.8-billion Elizabeth Line joined them. There’s no way to exaggerate how excited natives are to finally have a quick train line that links East London to West London; it has never existed before. What’s more, they’ll all have step-free access, once unheard of on the Tube. All told, the Underground serves nearly 300 stations.

The Tube shuts down nightly from Sunday to Thursday. Exact times for first and final trains are posted in each station (using the 24-hr. clock), but the Tube generally operates from 5:30am (0530) to just after midnight (0000), and Sundays 7am (0700) to 11:30pm (2330). On Friday and Saturday nights, many lines in Central London run every 10 minutes all night long: “Night Tube” trains are the Piccadilly, Victoria, Central, and Jubilee lines, plus the Charing Cross branch of the Northern line and a slice of the Overground between Islington and New Cross Gate. Still, if you plan to take the train after midnight, always check the Night Tube map and schedule beforehand. Transport for London (TfL) offers 24-hour information at tel. 0343/222-1234.

What happens if you miss the last train? Don’t worry—you’re not stranded, although your trip may take longer or cost more. Just turn to the city’s network of 24-hr. and Night Bus routes.

HOW TO FIND YOUR WAY ON THE TUBE: Navigating is mostly foolproof. Look for signs pointing to the color and name of the line you want. Pretty soon, more signs separate you according to the direction you want to go in, based on the Tube map. If you know the name/color of the line you want, as well as the direction of your destination, the signs will march you, anthill-like, to the platform you need. Nearly every station is combed with staircases. You’ll shuffle through warrens of cylindrical tunnels, many of them faced in custard-yellow tiles and overly full of commuters, and you’ll scale alpine escalators lined with ads. Stand to the right so “climbers” can pass you.

On the DLR (the Overground) and commuter trains, the carriage may not automatically open. Push the illuminated button and it will.

One of the groovier things about the Underground is the electronic displays on platforms that tell you how long it’ll be until the next train. A 24-hr. information service is also available at tel. 0343/222-1234. The best resource is the TfL Journey Planner, online at www.tfl.gov.uk/gettingaround. For specific journey information using a mobile device, you can text your start-point and end-point—as full postcodes (what tourist knows those?), or station or stop names, in the format “A to B”—to [tel] 60835. TfL will fire off a text with the quickest route and scheduled times. The best resource is the free app Citymapper, which tells you which Tube, bus, or train to use, how long it takes, and includes mapped walking directions to the nearest stop. The UK Bus Checker app shows 3D maps of routes and where the next bus is.

The most confusing lines for tourists are the Northern line (black on the maps) and the District line (green). Owing mostly to the petty backbiting of the Victorians who built these lines as individual businesses, they split and take several paths. You can handle it. Platform displays and signs on the front of the trains tell you its final destination before you board, so you can figure out the direction. You won’t get too far off course if you mess up. If you ride the DLR (and you should—it provides a lovely rooftop-level glide through the brickwork of the old East End and the monolithic towers of Canary Wharf), those lines split variously, too, but there are lots of chances to rectify mistakes.

The Underground’s website provides the excellent “London’s Rail and Tube Services Map” at www.tfl.gov.uk/maps/track/national-rail. It’s a truer picture than the Tube map alone because it shows all the places your fare card can take you by rail. (Buses are on separate maps.) The site also has terrific simplified bus maps that show you routes from any neighborhood. Plug in your hotel’s address, access Citymapper via Wi-Fi, and you’ll have your options.

FRUSTRATIONS OF THE TUBE: The Tube lists everything about itself in exhaustive detail at www.tfl.gov.uk, which contains more maps, planners, and FAQs than a normal person can use. As endearing as the Tube is, it is not perfect. In fact, it can be so dehumanizing that it has had to put up signs begging people not to abuse its staff (sad but true). Be prepared for a few things:

1. Stairs. Most stations are as intricate as anthills. Passengers are sadistically corralled up staircases, around platforms, down more staircases, and through still more staircases. Even stations equipped with extremely long escalators (Angel has the longest one in the system—59m/194 ft.) perversely require passengers to climb a final flight to reach the street. So if you bring luggage into the Tube, be able to hoist your stuff for at least 15 stairs at a time. (This is where backpacks make sense—but don’t be the person who leaves it on while on a crowded carriage.) For a list of which stations are step-free (there are only 66 so far), contact Transport for London Access & Mobility (www.tfl.gov.uk; tel. 020/7941-4600).

2. Delays. When you enter a station, look for a sign with the names and colors of the Tube lines on it. Beside each line, you’ll see a status bar reading “Good service,” “Severe delays,” or the like. Trust this sign—it’s updated every 10 minutes and lines close without warning. If you note “Minor delays,” don’t worry. Do worry about labor strikes—they’re unpleasantly common.

3. Heat. The network can be stuffy. In summer, health advisories are issued to passengers. The worst lines: Bakerloo, Central, and Northern. The best: Circle and District. Air-conditioning is being added—slowly.

4. Hellish rush hours. Shoulder-to-shoulder, silently shuffling through airless underground cylinders. It’s memorable in the wrong way.

5. Tough weekends. Unlike modern systems, which generally have two sets of rails in each direction, London’s ancient system has one set, so entire lines have to shut down when maintenance is required. Weekends are when this happens. This is a major reason why it’s smart to stay in central London, where you don’t depend on a single Tube line. Check in the ticket hall to see what “engineering works” are scheduled.

FARES, PASSES & TICKETS: London Underground (www.tfl.gov.uk/tickets) provides 1.1 billion rides a year—and seemingly every passenger pays a different fare. Rates go up every January (these rates were current at press time and will give you a sense of proportion). Britain’s system is so complicated that it’s accused of having been engineered to bewilder travelers into paying more than they have to. But it can be boiled down to this: Get an Oyster card and load it with money. I’ll explain.

How much you pay: The center of town—basically everything the Circle line envelops, plus a wee bit of padding—is zone 1. Heading outside of town, in a concentric pattern, come zones 2 through 6. Most tourists stick to zones 1 and 2; very few popular sights are outside those (Wimbledon, Hampton Court, and Kew being the main exceptions). Your fare is calculated by how many zones you go through, and the lower the zone number, the less you pay. If a station appears to straddle zones, you’ll pay the cheaper zone’s rate. One-way tickets are called “singles” and round-trips are “return.”

Astonishingly, kids 10 and under travel for free when accompanied by an adult. Adults must buy their own ticket and then ask the staff to wave Junior through the entry gate. Ask an agent about the going discounts for kids.

There are essentially three ticket types for visiting adults.

1. Via Oyster Pay As You Go (PAYG). This is the best option, and it’s what locals use. Rub this credit card–size pass on yellow dots at the turnstiles and you get the lowest fares. You load it with cash and it debits as you go, no tickets required, on all forms of in-city public transit. No matter how many times you ride the Tube (debited at £2.40 in zone 1—that’s a lot better than the £4.90 cash fare!) and bus (debited as £1.50—you can’t pay cash on a bus), the maximum taken off your card in a single day will always be less than what an equivalent Day Travelcard (see below) would cost. Which makes it the cheapest. Nonstop Oyster use will always peak at £6.60 for anytime travel in zones 1 and 2 (£4.50 if you only took buses), versus the flat rate of £12.30 you’d have paid if you’d bought an equivalent Travelcard. It’s called “price capping,” and it resets daily at 4:30am. Getting an Oyster usually requires a £5 deposit, but you can get that back before you skip town at any Tube ticket office (there’s even one at Heathrow; ID may be requested). The card won’t get erased if you keep it beside your mobile phone. And if you don’t use up all the money you put on it, you can get a refund as long as there’s less than £10 value left on your card. (Travelcards offer no refunds for unused monies.) So. Buy an Oyster card. They’re sold at vending machines when you enter the Tube and then you can use it on buses, too.

2. Via Travelcard. Aimed at tourists, this is an unlimited pass for 1 or 7 days on the Tube, rail, and bus. “Day Anytime” Travelcards for zones 1 through 3 with no timing restrictions are £12.30. If you find you have to pop into a zone that isn’t covered by your card, buy an extension from the ticket window before starting your journey; it’s usually £1.50 to £2 more. 7-Day Travelcards cost adults £33 for travel in zones 1 and 2. For Travelcard prices that include more zones, visit www.tfl.gov.uk/tickets. You can load a Travelcard purchase onto an Oyster. Downside: Unlike PAYG, you may end up paying for rides you never use.

3. In cash, per ride. You could, but don’t. To travel a mile in zone 1 on the Underground, the cash fare is £4.90 (more than $7). I did the math: It costs 3.5 times more to pay cash to go a mile on the Tube than to go a mile in transatlantic First Class. What’s more, bus drivers don’t even take cash anymore. They do take Oyster.

The Tube does offer contactless payment on turnstiles’ yellow dots—charges are exactly the same as with Oyster—but there’s no telling if your card issuer or bank supports it. Apple Pay and American Express equipped with contactless payment should work. Visit www.tfl.gov.uk/fares-and-payments/contactless and confer with your issuer to make an educated guess whether you can use this method. If you do use Apple Pay, complete fingerprint recognition as you approach the turnstiles or you’ll hold everyone else up. Frankly, for visitors, an Oyster card is more surefire.

How to use tickets: Since pricing depends on how far you’ve gone, you must touch your Oyster card to the big yellow reader dot both before you board and after your trip—even if there are no turnstiles (so don’t forget). On the DLR, the dot may be at street level. The same goes if you have a paper ticket for any train; keep it handy because you’ll need it to get back out at the end. If you can’t find it, you’ll have to fork over the maximum rate. Inspectors regularly check passengers’ tickets and they won’t hesitate to fine you because they feed on the power.

How to pay at a vending machine: If you are using a swipe credit card to buy tickets from a vending machine, don’t pull your card out of the vending machine too quickly, or it will falsely tell you it’s declined. (Underground machines never hesitate to claim something is wrong with your card. Don’t believe them. Try a few times.) Vending machines usually accept cash and coins. If your credit card issuer offers a version of your card embedded with a SIM chip, order one ahead of your trip—it makes a lot of transactions a lot easier in London, where chip cards are the norm.

Buy ahead?: Although TfL will mail Oysters or Travelcards ahead of time, that’s a waste. You can purchase them at any Tube stop without shipping fees.

Buses

The Tube and buses are seen as one piece, so the same payment systems work on both. Buses are what smart Londoners use. The buses in your city may not come often, but London’s are frequent (every 5 min. or so on weekdays), plentiful (some 100 routes in central London and 700 in the wider city), and surprisingly fast (many zoom in dedicated lanes). Sitting on the second level of a candy-apple red double-decker, watching the big landmarks roll past, is one of London’s priceless pleasures. Best of all, the bus is cheaper than the Tube.

The 1-day Oyster PAYG price cap for bus-only travel is£4.50, no matter the zone. Travelcards and Oysters (per trip £1.50; buy in Tube stations) are the best way to pay. You can make free transfers between as many buses as you want within a 1-hour window. Don’t ride without paying: Surprise card inspections are common. Note that bus passes and Travelcards expire at 4:30am the day after you buy them. The TfL supplies 24-hr. information at tel. 0343/222-1234.

Drivers do not accept money, and very few bus shelters have automated ticket machines (cash only, and don’t expect change), so you must have an Oyster card or Travelcard (get one in any Tube stop). All stations have easy-to-read maps that tell you where to catch the buses going to your destination. Major intersections have multiple stops named with letters, and each stop services different routes; check the map in the bus shelter to find the letter stop you need. Many shelters even have electronic boards that approximate the arrival time of the next bus.

Board the bus in front, by the driver, and tap your card on the big yellow dot to check in. An automated voice announces stops with plenty of warning. Press a button on a handrail to request a halt before the next one. (Unlike on Tubes and trains, which are charged by how far you go, buses are one price so you should not tap again at the end.) Get off via the door at the middle. Newer buses have reinstated a rear-door design with its own conductor, so on those, you can leap off that back entrance and break your neck whenever you like.

Routes that start with N are Night Buses, which tote clubbers home after the Tube stops around midnight; many connect tediously in Trafalgar Square, so pee before setting off. London has trams, too, charged like buses, but they’re in areas where tourists are unlikely to go.

RED LETTER DOUBLE DECKERS:  A few routes are truly world-class, linking legendary sights. With routes like these, you won’t need to splurge on those tedious hop-on, hop-off tour buses:
*    The 15 bus, which crosses the city northwest to southeast, takes in Paddington, Oxford Street, Piccadilly Circus, Trafalgar Square, Fleet Street, St Paul’s, and the Tower of London. And it has antique Routemaster vehicles.
*    The 10 passes Royal Albert Hall, Kensington Gardens, Knightsbridge (a block north of Harrods), Hyde Park Corner, Marble Arch, Oxford Street, Goodge Street (for the British Museum), and King’s Cross Station.
*    The 159 links Paddington, Oxford Circus, Trafalgar Square, and Westminster.
*    The RV1 hits Covent Garden, Waterloo, the Tate Modern, and as a bonus, you get to ride over the Tower Bridge to the Tower of London.

National Rail

These are the rail lines that aren’t operated by the Underground. These comfortable, standard-size trains go to suburbs, distant cities, and to neighborhoods the Victorians didn’t tunnel the Tube to, and they operate on a regular, reliable, published timetable—on maps, they are denoted by two red parallel lines with a zig-zag line connecting them. These lines, which for comfort are actually preferable to the Underground, are covered by Travelcards and Oyster PAYG for roughly the same price as the Tube as long as you stay in the zone system. (The major stations have information desks if you’re unsure about Oyster’s validity on any journey.) You must tap Oyster at the start and at the completion of each journey or you’ll be charged as if you took the train to the end of the line. If you accidentally tap in for a wrong or missed train, alert staff. They can ensure you aren’t penalized.

There are many termini, but you don’t have to hunt by trial and error. Check TheTrainLine.com website or app, call the 24-hr. operators at National Rail Enquiries (www.nationalrail.co.uk; tel. 08457/48-49-50), or plug your journey into your favorite map app such as the free Citymapper. Alternatively, each station posts timetables. Schedules are listed by destination; find the place you’re going, and the departures will be listed in 24-hr. time.

National Rail stations (not Eurostar or the Underground) accept discount cards for certain folks. Each card requires proof of eligibility (passport, ISIC student ID), but since they can be used for trips to distant cities, they pay for themselves quickly if you’re doing lots of rail-riding. Get them at rail stations:

*    The Senior Railcard (www.senior-railcard.co.uk; £30 a year): Discounts of about 33 percent for those 60 or over.
*    The 16–25 Railcard (www.16-25railcard.co.uk; £30 a year): Discounts of 33 percent for those 16 to 25, plus full-time students of any age. It requires a passport-size photo, which may be uploaded from a computer. If you’re applying in the U.K., bring a passport photo for that purpose.
*    The Family & Friends Railcard (www.family-railcard.co.uk; £30 a year) is for at least one adult and one child age 5 to 15, with a maximum of three adults and four kids on one ticket; at least one child must travel at all times. It awards adults 33 percent off and kids 60 percent off. But know that two kids age 4 and under can travel with an adult for free at all times, even without this card.

Ferries

Partly thanks to the dedication of a series of mayors, London’s river ferry services are now one of the most pleasurable ways to get around. The boats, nicknamed River Bus, cover a surprising amount of terrain quickly. Some of their most useful stops include right outside the London Eye, the Tate Modern, the Tower of London, Greenwich, and the O2. Getting from Greenwich to Embankment takes all of 45 idyllic min. (but on weekends, you may have to wait 30 min. for a boat back). You can go right under the famous Tower Bridge—and because it’s intended for commuters, it’s at a fraction of the price of a tourist boat.

Fares depend on how far you’re going, but for a trip from Westminster to Greenwich, expect a one-way fare around £8.40 (£6.50 with Oyster). You will always save money if you buy a return trip instead of two one-ways, and always ask if your Oyster card or Travelcard grants a discount. The fast catamarans of Thames Clippers
(www.thamesclippers.com; tel. 020/7930-2062; generally 6:30am–10:30pm; bookable via its app) go every 20 min. during the day and are much cheaper and plentiful than the narrated tour boats. The RB1 route is particularly useful, hitting most of the major tourist stops plus Greenwich and the O2. One snag: On weekends, the queue to return from Greenwich can be 40 min. to an hour long. River Roamer passes, which allow you to take as many trips as you want on a single day after 9am, cost £18.50 for adults, £37 for a family of two adults and up to three kids. You can buy at the piers or, for a discount of a few quid, buy ahead via the Thames Clippers Tickets app, downloadable via www.thamesclippers.com/route-time-table/book-tickets-with-ticketing-app. Thames River Services (www.thamesriverservices.co.uk; tel. 020/7930-4097) is a sightseeing version of the Clippers and offers a £12.75 single/£16.75 return (£8/£10.50 children) ride from Westminster to Greenwich. It calls these “sightseeing” trips but note that it’s not fully guided and the Clippers are just as good. You can pay with Oyster.

Bikes

Scattered throughout town, you’ll see racks of identical red bikes in racks. They’re yours to borrow, day or night! They are called Santander Cycles (www.tfl.gov.uk/modes/cycling/santander-cycles), but Londoners call them Boris Bikes, after the blowsy former mayor who brought them here (or Barclays Bikes after a previous sponsor), and they provide more than 10.3 million rides a year. Interestingly, it’s been reported this is the only part of Transport for London that makes a profit.

It works like this: You choose one and pull it out of the rack by lifting the seat. You ride it to any other docking station in the city with a free space, and you park it by slotting the front wheel in until a green light appears on the dock. When you’re ready to ride somewhere else, just get another bike. You buy the right to borrow bikes for 24 hr. for £2, and that gets you 30 min. (payments are on your credit card) every time you pull a bike out of the rack. Go past that, and you pay the same rate: £2 per extra 30 min. The idea is for you to use a bike as you need it, not to keep it with you all day. You are required to follow the same traffic rules that cars do, which won’t be easy, although the city’s huge parks are safer places to cycle. Locations of nearby docks are listed on every pylon. Use the free apps Santander Cycles or Citymapper to find nearby stations with space.

Taxis

Even Londoners think taxis are crazy expensive. It’s not the fault of the cabbies. They’re the best in the world. Before they’re given their wheels, every London taxi driver (there are some 24,000 of them) must go through a grueling training period so comprehensive that it’s dubbed, simply, “The Knowledge.” On Sundays, you’ll see trainees zipping around on mopeds with clipboards affixed above their dashboards. Cabbies arrive inculcated with directions to every alley, mews, avenue, shortcut, and square in the city, and if they don’t know, they’ll find the answer so discreetly you won’t catch the gaffe. They’re even trained in first aid, childbirth, and assisting after an acid attack—so breathe easy. And then there are those adorable vehicles: bulbous as Depression Era jalopies, roomy as a studio apartment, yet able to do complete U-turns within a single lane of traffic.

But for this admittedly peerless carriage, you’ll pay a £2.60 minimum. Trips of up to 1.6km (1 mile) cost £6 to £9.40 during working hours; 3.2km (2-mile) trips are £9 to £14.60; 6.4km (4-mile) trips are £16 to £23; and trips of around 9.6km (6 miles) hit you for a painful £24 to £31. Rates rise when you’re most likely to need a taxi: by about 10 percent from 8 to 10pm or all day on weekends, and roughly another 20 percent from 10pm until dawn. Trips that start at Heathrow cost an extra £2.80, and trips around Christmas and New Year’s Day tack on £4. Mercifully, there is no charge for extra passengers or for luggage. It has become customary to tip 10 percent, but most people just round up to the nearest pound. Some taxis accept credit cards (don’t count on it), but mostly they are a cash-only concern.

Taxis are often called “black cabs,” although in fact 12 colors are registered, including “thistle blue” and “nightfire red.” Minicabs, which are hire cars that operate separately from the traditional black cab system, are easy to find using apps. Don’t accept a ride from an unsolicited one. Among the top free apps that can hail the nearest ride: Splitcab (www.splitcab.co.uk), which finds people going your way to share the cost (and gives women the option of female-driven cars); Kabbee (www.kabbee.com; tel. 0203/515-1111), which canvasses cab fleets for the best fixed price; Minicabit (www.minicabit.com); taxi-calling app MyTaxi (once called Hailo; https://uk.mytaxi.com); independent share ride app Uber (www.uber.com), which is at odds with city regulators and may not last; and London’s reigning power minicab operator, Addison Lee (www.addisonlee.com), which makes more than £100 million in bookings a year from its free app alone.

Renting a Car

Are you insane? Rare is the local who drives in central London, where there’s a mandatory daily “congestion charge” of £11.50 (don’t believe me? see www.cclondon.com), and where parking rates look like your rent back home. Streets were cramped enough when people rode horses, and now they’re dogged with one-way rules and police cameras that will ticket you for even honest errors, which you’ll definitely make since you’re just visiting. You’ll go crazy and broke, so why do it? If you’re driving out of the city for a tour of the country, fine, but do not rent a car for a London vacation.

 

Tips for Student Travelers

Have ID ready to go, and always mention that you’re a student, because it’ll save you cash, including on trains to other cities. Attractions gladly offer discounts of around 25% for full-time students, but your high school or university ID may not cut it where clerks haven’t heard of your school. Before leaving home, obtain a recognized ID such as the International Student Identity Card (ISIC; www.isic.org or www.myISIC.com). Those under 26 who are not in school can obtain an International Youth Travel Card, also through ISIC, which performs many of the same tricks as a student discount card.

Before buying airline tickets, those under 26 should consult a travel agency that specializes in the youth market and is versed in its available discounts: STA Travel (www.statravel.com; [tel] 800/781-4040) is big.

Calendar of Events

Money

Frommer's lists exact prices in the local currency. 

The British pound (£1), a small, chunky, gold-colored coin, is usually accepted in vending machines, so you can never have too many in your pocket. It’s commonly called a “quid.” Like money in America, Canada, and Australia, it’s divided into 100 pennies (p)—the plural, “pence,” is used to modify amounts over 1p. Pence come in 1p, 2p, 5p, 10p, 20p, and 50p coins. Patterns on the obverse of the £1 and 50p coins periodically change to commemorate various areas or events. You’ll see large bull’s-eye £2 coins, too. Bills come in £5, £10, £20, and £50. Now and then, you’ll receive notes printed by the Bank of Scotland; they’re perfectly valid, but an increase in forgeries means some shops refuse them. Banks will exchange them.

Currency rates fluctuate, so before departing consult a currency exchange website such as www.oanda.com/currency/converter to check up-to-the-minute rates. There’s also a smartphone app available for pretty much any mobile device; see www.oanda.com/mobile.

All prices (including at most B&Bs but not at all hotels) are listed including tax, so what you see is what you pay. No guesstimating required.

When bringing up prices, always insert the word “pounds”: For example, £2.50 would be uttered as “two pounds fifty” but not “two fifty.”

Every visitor should have several sources for money, but cash is still king, as they say (Queen Elizabeth isn’t jealous—her face is on all the money). The simple prescription is to pull cash from an ATM upon arrival; the rates are the cheapest there. Before leaving home, warn your bank and your credit card issuers that you intend to travel internationally so that they don’t place a stop on your account when international charges start cropping up. You may also need to adjust your PIN, since English banks require 4-digit codes. If you know your PIN as a word, memorize the numerical equivalent. Most banks hit you with fees of a few pounds each time you withdraw cash. Your own bank may toss in a small fee of its own (another 2% or 3%, but ask ahead to see what its policy is), so gauge for yourself how much you feel comfortable withdrawing at a time to offset that fee. If you have an account with an international bank chain, ask whether using their machines during your visit will save on fees. Also ask your bank if it has reciprocal agreements for free withdrawals anywhere. One institution known to charge international usage fees that are below the industry standard is Everbank (www.everbank.com; [tel] 888/882-3837); another is Charles Schwab (www.schwab.com; [tel] 866/855-9102), which reimburses ATM fees.

Be quick when using ATMs. Retrieve your card immediately from ATM slots; many machines suck them in within 10 to 15 seconds, for security. Should that happen, you’ll have to petition the bank to have it returned to you.

Now that ATMs are common, traveler’s checks are nearly dead. Using them, you run the risk of most places declining them. Creditors have come up with traveler’s check cards, also called prepaid cards, which are essentially debit cards loaded with the amount of money you elect to put on them. They’re not coded with your personal information, they work in ATMs, and should you lose one, you can get your cash back in a matter of hours. If you spend all the money on them, you can call a number or visit a website and reload the card using your bank account information. Travelex Cash Passport (www.cashpassport.com; [tel] 877/465-0085 or 01733/501-370 in the U.K.; $2 per ATM transaction) works anywhere MasterCard does and can be loaded in British pounds, Euros, or American dollars; also try NetSpend (www.netspend.com; [tel] 866/387-7363; $1 per purchase, $5 per ATM transaction). That one costs $4.

Changing cash is also on the outs, and good riddance, since exchange rates are usurious. ATM withdrawals give the best deals, so old-fashioned cambios are few and far between these days, although you’ll still find a few upon landing at the airport and around Leicester Square. If you need to change money, take advantage of the better rates offered by banks (9:30am–4pm).

Credit cards are accepted nearly everywhere. However, American Express is accepted less widely. Bring a Visa or MasterCard; they are the chief cards. Many credit card issuers levy an annoying international transaction fee on top of your purchase; Capital One Venture (www.capitalone.com; [tel] 800/955-7070) is one that does not. Small vendors may charge a transaction fee (3% is the norm) as a way of defraying the cost of dealing with credit card companies. Try not to use credit cards to withdraw cash. You’ll pay a currency exchange fee, and worse, you’ll be charged interest from the moment your money leaves the slot.

Europeans use “chip and PIN” credit cards requiring a code number. Many vending machines will not accept swipe-only cards and may cause you to think you were declined. Travelex (see above) sells debit cards that work in chip-and-PIN readers. For swipe-only cards, clerks will always verify your signature, so make sure your card is signed. For security, restaurants will usually process your payment at your table with a radio device.

Bonus: The money on your Starbucks card can be used for coffee in the U.K.

What Things Cost in London (UK£)

Taxi from Heathrow to central London -- 60.00-85.00

Double room at a very expensive hotel -- 360.00

Double room at a moderate hotel -- 140.00

Double room at an inexpensive hotel -- 99.00

Lunch for one at an expensive restaurant -- 24.00

Lunch for one at an inexpensive restaurant -- 9.75

Dinner for one, without wine, at a very expensive restaurant -- 75.00

Dinner for one, without wine, at a moderate restaurant -- 17.50

Dinner for one, without wine, at an inexpensive restaurant -- 13.00

Pint of beer -- 3.00-4.50

Cup of coffee -- 1.80-3

Admission to state museums -- Free

Movie ticket -- 9.00-14.00

Theatre ticket -- 25.00-85.00

Health & Safety

Crossing the street is the most perilous thing you’ll do. Always look down to see which way traffic is flowing—the street will be painted “Look right” or “Look left” so you’ll know. Also, a steady-lit green man on the crosswalk signal means it’s safe, but when the green man flashes, do not begin crossing—it means cars are about to gun it again.

Few places in London are unsafe. Neighborhoods that might be called sketchy are usually distant from the Tube lines, and they only feel tense after dark, when shops close. Simply be sensitive to who’s around you and you’ll do fine.

The biggest nuisance tourists might encounter—besides tipsy locals—is moped muggings. Each day, dozens of people are so absorbed in their smartphones that they don’t notice the two-wheeled pickpockets zoom up, snatch their phone, and speed off. Simply be smart about how you use your phone and, of course, where you put your cash and what you leave sitting in the open.

London is always on the lookout for terrorists, and it has been since the days of IRA violence. Don’t leave a bag unattended even for seconds or you may lose it.

Guns are banned in London—even on most police officers—so you don’t often see the kind of violence taken for granted in the United States. Londoners cite knife crime as a problem, but the victims are almost always young men who themselves carry knives. Some male tourists have gotten fleeced at “hostess bars” in Soho. If you do suffer a lapse of judgment and accept the barker’s invitation to go into one, understand that you might have cash exacted by lunkheaded yobs with tattooed fingers.

Should you find yourself on the business end of the legal system, you can get advice and referrals to lawyers from Legal Services Commission (www.legalservices.gov.uk; tel.  0300/200-2020). Crime victims can receive volunteer legal guidance and emotional fortification from Victim Support (www.victimsupport.org.uk; tel. 0808/168-9111). In the event of a sexual assault, find help through the Rape Crisis Federation (www.rapecrisis.org.uk; many caseworkers will only assist females).

Tips for Travelers with Disabilities

London can be hard going. It can’t seem to strike the right balance between preserving old buildings and making sure they’re accessible to all. With the laudable exception of the Docklands Light Railway, only a slim selection of Tube stations offer lifts, and those with plenty of escalators still require passengers to climb several flights of stairs. The situation is so scrambled, and positive changes so slow, that you’ll need to do a bit of research. Your first stops should be Visit London (www.visitlondon.com/access) and Transport for London (www.tfl.gov.uk/accessguides). Many London hotels, museums, restaurants, Tube stations, buses, taxis, and sightseeing attractions have dedicated wheelchair access, and persons with disabilities are often granted admission discounts. Generally speaking, the more expensive a hotel is, the more likely it is to be wheelchair accessible, but not always. For £2, iPhone users can download the LDN Access app, which reviews the accessibility of hotels, restaurants, attractions, and more across the city. The website for Nationwide Disabled Access Register (www.directenquiries.com) tattles about the accessibility features of a wide range of facilities, from attractions to car renters.

Artsline (www.artsline.org.uk) distributes information about accessible entertainment venues, including which ones have infrared hearing devices for rental; it also welcomes calls. Blind or partially sighted travelers will find useful advice from the Royal National Institute of Blind People (www.rnib.org.uk; [tel] 0303/123-9999). Tourism for All (www.tourismforall.org.uk; [tel] 084/5124-9971) passes accessibility information to older travelers as well as to travelers with disabilities. The British agency Can Be Done (www.canbedone.co.uk; [tel] 020/8907-2400) runs tours adapted to travelers with disabilities. Wheelchair Travel (www.wheelchair-travel.co.uk; [tel] 01483/23-76-68) rents out self-drive and chauffeured chair-accessible vehicles (including ones with hand controls), provides day tours, and arranges city sightseeing in special vehicles.

Tips for Gay and Lesbian Travelers

Entry Requirements & Customs

Passports

To enter the United Kingdom, all U.S. citizens, Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders, and South Africans must have a passport valid through their length of stay. No visa is required. A passport will allow you to stay in the country for up to 6 months. The immigration officer may also want to see proof of your intention to return to your point of origin (usually a round-trip ticket) and of visible means of support while you’re in Britain (credit cards work). If you’re planning to fly from the United States or Canada to the United Kingdom and then on to a country that requires a visa (India, for example), you should secure that visa before you arrive in Britain.

Visas

No E.U. nationals require a visa to visit the U.K. Visas are also not required for travelers from Australia, Canada, New Zealand, or the U.S. To be sure that hasn’t changed, see www.ukvisas.gov.uk/en/doineedvisa. The usual permitted stay is 90 days or fewer for tourists, although some nationalities are granted stays of up to 6 months. If you plan to work or study, though, or if you’re traveling on a passport from another country, you’ll need to obtain the correct paperwork.

Customs

Non-E.U. nationals aged 17 and over can bring in, duty-free, 200 cigarettes, or 100 cigarillos, or 50 cigars, or 250 grams of smoking tobacco. You can also bring in 4 liters of wine and 16 liters of beer plus either 1 liter of alcohol more than 22% ("spirits") or 2 liters of "fortified" wine at less than 22%. Visitors may also bring in other goods, including perfume, gifts, and souvenirs, totaling £390 in value. (Customs officials tend to be lenient about these general merchandise regulations, realizing the limits are unrealistically low.) For arrivals from within the E.U., there are no limits as long as goods are for your own personal use, or are gifts.

For specifics on what you can take back home and the corresponding fees, U.S. citizens should download the invaluable free pamphlet Know Before You Go online at www.cbp.gov. Alternatively contact the U.S. Customs & Border Protection (CBP), 1300 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, Washington, DC 20229 (tel. 877/CBP-5511), and request the pamphlet. For a clear summary of their own rules, Canadians should consult the booklet Travelling Outside Canada, issued by the Canada Border Services Agency (tel. 800/461-9999 in Canada, or 204/983-3500; www.cbsa-asfc.gc.ca). Australians need to read Know Before You Go. For more information, call the Australian Customs Service at tel. 1300/363-263, or download the leaflet from www.customs.gov.au/webdata/resources/files/GuideForTravellers.pdf. For New Zealanders, most questions are answered under "Arriving in New Zealand" at www.customs.govt.nz. For more information, contact the New Zealand Customs Service (tel. 0800/428-786, or 09/300-5399).

Medical Requirements

Unless you're arriving from an area known to be suffering from an epidemic (particularly cholera or yellow fever), inoculations or vaccinations are not required for entry into the U.K.

Staying Connected

Telephones

Directory assistance: www.bt.com or [tel] 118-500. Local calls start with 020. The main toll-free prefixes are 0800, 0808, and 0500. Numbers starting with 07 are usually for mobile phones and will be charged at a higher rate. Numbers starting with 09 are premium-rate calls that will usually be very expensive (around £1.50 per min.) and may not even work from abroad.

Many attractions, hotel companies, and services have cynically changed their standard phone numbers to profit-generating ones that charge for every minute you call them. Sometimes, these are not reachable from outside the United Kingdom or Internet calling. If you find you cannot reach a number in this book, try from London, or use the website.

When dialing a number in this book from abroad, precede it with your country’s international prefix (in the U.S. and Canada, it’s 011), add the U.K.’s country code (44) and drop the first zero in the number. Many British companies are cheap and don’t offer toll-free numbers. You often can’t reach 0845, 0870, and 0871 numbers (charged at 10p a minute or less) from abroad, and when you can, you’re charged more; if you have to call one from abroad, use the Web instead to get information. 0845 numbers are charged at a local rate; 0870 at a national rate. The 0845 prefix enables companies to make a profit for every call received. As you can imagine, this profiteering leads to putting customers on hold.

To make an international call from Britain, dial the international access code (00), then the country code, then the area code, and finally the local number. If you call a toll-free number located back home, you’ll still pay international rates for it.

The majority of London’s rapidly vanishing payphones are operated by BT (British Telecom), and they are costly. The minimum charge is 60p (nothing under a 10p coin accepted, and phones don’t give change), and then you’ll be charged in 10p increments. Some payphones accept credit cards at a premium: £1.20 to start and 20p per minute for local and domestic. Full charge breakdowns by country and call duration are at British Telecom (www.payphones.bt.com/publicpayphones). Stick to payphones on the street if you can, since phones at many pubs and hotels legally jigger their phones to charge at a higher rate.

When calling from a mobile phone, dial the full number including area code.

Phonecards are often the most economical method for both international and national calls. They are available in several values, and are reusable until the total value has expired. Cards can be purchased from newsstands and small retailers citywide, and offer call rates of a few pence per minute to English-speaking countries such as Australia and the United States.

Many hotels routinely add outrageous surcharges onto phone calls made from your room. It’s usually much cheaper to purchase a phonecard.

Mobile Phones

Anytime you call a mobile phone in Britain, the fee will be higher than calling a land line, although there is no fee to receive a call or text.

Apart from renting a phone (not recommended to the casual visitor), many tourists simply enable their international roaming feature. That works, but your provider will bleed you. You’ll pay as much as $2.50 per minute, even if someone from home calls you, and data is a killer. Even package plans tend to be stingy with time and data allowances and you’ll exceed them without warning.

The best solution, if you do have an unlocked quad- or tri-band phone that uses the GSM system, is to pop into any mobile phone shop or newsstand and buy a cheap pay-as-you-talk phone number from a mobile phone store. You pay about £5 for a SIM card, which you stick in your phone, and then you buy vouchers to load your account with as much money as you think you’ll use up (no refunds). That will give you a British number, which you can e-mail to everyone back home, that charges local rates (10p–40p per min.) and a deal on data that might allow 1GB in a month for about £5—much, much cheaper than roaming. Just call your provider before you leave home to “unlock” your phone (out-of-contract and last-generation phones are better candidates), so that the British SIM card will function in it. That service is usually free. U.K. mobile providers with pay-as-you-talk deals, all comparable, include: Vodafone (www.vodafone.com), O2 (www.o2.co.uk), Lebara (www.lebara.co.uk), EE/T-Mobile (www.ee.co.uk), and Virgin Mobile (www.virginmobile.com). Annoyingly, purchased SIMs come with automatic child content locks, and gay and lesbian travelers will find some of their special interest sites blocked. To remove the censorship, go to a mobile phone store run by your SIM provider (Vodafone, EE, and O2 are easiest to find) to prove you’re an adult. Bring your hotel’s details since you must supply a U.K. address.

Even if you are not permitted to unlock your phone, you can always use its Wi-Fi features for Skype, FaceTime, WhatsApp, and the like.

Internet & Wi-Fi

Wi-Fi flows freely at the majority of pubs, cafes, museums, and nearly all hotels. Usually, you will have to fill in an email address to activate it, but often it’s a data collection ploy and you can write dummy information. Virgin Media (www.virginmedia.com/wifi) provides Wi-Fi in many Tube stations but not between them. Visitors can buy passes for £2 (1 day), £5 (1 week), or £15 (1 month). Savvy smartphone users will find it cheap and practical to switch off 3G altogether and use available Wi-Fi in combination with Skype (www.skype.com) for voice calls, WhatsApp (www.whatsapp.com) for texts and voice messages, and Voxer (www.voxer.com) for voice messages. 

When to Go

It’s always time to visit London. Even though it’s approximately at the same latitude of Edmonton, Alberta, weather patterns keep the environment from being extreme. It gets cold in the winter, but rarely snowed in. It gets warm in the summer, but rarely blisteringly so (in fact, most buildings don’t even have air-conditioning). The winter months are generally more humid than the summer ones, but experience only slightly more rain. Locals use the free, reliable Met Office Weather app, by the U.K.’s national weather service, to pinpoint forecasts by GPS.

You don't come to London for the weather. Yes, it rains, but nowhere near as much as Britain's reputation suggests. Downpours are most likely in the Autumn, especially November (2 1/2 in./63mm. on average). It can, however, rain at any time; there's no "dry season" here. Daytime temperatures can range from -1° to 35°C (30° to 95°F), but they rarely stay below 2°C (36°F) or above 26°C (79°F) for too long. Evenings are usually cool, even in summer, but hot July and August days can be muggy -- particularly on the Underground, which is not air-conditioned. Note that the British like to keep hotel thermostats about 6°C (10°F) below the American comfort level.

The principal art season (for theater, concerts, art shows) falls between September and May, leaving the summer months for festivals and park-going. A few royal attractions, such as the state rooms of Buckingham Palace, are only open in the summer when the Queen decamps to Scotland. In summer, when the weather is warmest, the sun sets after 10pm, and half of Europe takes its annual holiday, the airfares are higher, as are hotel rates, and the queues for most of the tourist attractions, such as the London Eye and the Tower of London, might make you wish you’d come in March. For decent prices and lighter crowds, go in spring or fall—April and October seem to have the best confluence of mild weather, pretty plantings, and tolerable crowds. Prices are lowest in mid-winter, but a number of minor sights, such as historic houses, sometimes close from November to March, and the biggest annual events take place during the warmer months.

When You'll Find Bargains

The cheapest time to fly to London is usually during the off season: from late October to mid-December and from January to mid-March. In the last few years, long-haul airlines in particular have offered some irresistible fares during these periods. Remember that weekday flights are often cheaper than weekend fares.

Rates generally increase between March and June, and hit their peak in high travel seasons between late June and September, and in December for the run-up to Christmas and New Year. July and August are also when most Europeans take their holidays, and so as well as higher prices you have to deal with more crowds and limited availability of the best hotel rooms.

You can avoid crowds to some extent, by planning trips for November or January through March. Sure, it may be rainy and cold -- but London doesn't shut down when the tourists thin out a little! In fact, it's a 365-days-a-year tourism city, and the winter season includes some of London's best theatre, opera, ballet, and classical music offerings. Additionally, hotel prices can drop by 20% (unheard of during peak travel times). By arriving after the winter holidays, you can also take advantage of post-Christmas sales, which these days start as early as December 26 or 27. There's usually another major sales period in stores in midsummer.

Public Holidays

England observes eight public holidays (also known as "bank holidays") spread throughout the year: New Year's Day (January 1); Good Friday and Easter Monday (usually April); May Bank Holiday (first Monday in May); Spring Bank Holiday (usually last Monday in May, but occasionally the first in June); August Bank Holiday (last Monday in August); Christmas Day (December 25); Boxing Day (December 26). If a marked date such as Christmas Day falls on a Saturday or Sunday, the public holiday rolls over to the following Monday.

London’s Average Daytime Temperatures & Rainfall

Temp. ([dg]F)              39     39     43     46     52     58     62     62     57     51     44     42

Temp. ([dg]C)              3       3       6       7      11     14     16     16     13     10      6       5

Rainfall (in.)                 3.1      2      2.4    2.1    2.2    2.2    1.8    2.2    2.7    2.9    3.1    3.1

Sustainable Travel & Ecotourism

Londoners in general are an eco-aware bunch -- but don't always practice what they preach. And even the concept of taking a "responsible," "green," or "environmentally friendly" trip here isn't without controversy, particularly if you're traveling by plane. However, there are everyday things you can do to minimize the impact -- and especially the carbon footprint -- of your travels. Remove chargers from cellphones, laptops, and anything else that draws from the mains, once the gadget is fully charged. If you're shopping, buy seasonal fruit and vegetables or local cheeses from markets rather than produce sourced by supermarkets from the far side of the globe. Most importantly, use public transportation to get around town. The city's Tubes and buses are easy to use and efficient.

The Congestion Charge Zone was introduced to discourage car travel within the center, and there's no reason why you should be driving the capital's labyrinthine streets. One particular environmental annoyance is the buildup of discarded freesheets throughout the day on buses and trains. Most stations now have paper recycling points near the exit, so if you read a Metro or Evening Standard on your travels, take it with you and recycle.

Greener even than Tubes and buses are the publically accessible cycle hire bikes dotted around town, ideal for short journeys across the center. Provision and marking of dedicated cycle lanes is very hit-and-miss, however, so you'll need to take care and rent (or buy) a helmet if you plan to get around by bike.

Green vacationing also extends to where you eat and stay. Vegetarian food tends to have a much smaller impact on the environment, because it eschews energy- and resource-intensive meat production. The best places around town to sample it are Mildreds and Rasa Samudra. Most hotels now offer you the option to use your towels for more than one night before they are relaundered -- and of course, you should, because laundry makes up around 40% of an average hotel's energy use. Also, ask for a room that allows you to turn down the air-conditioning whenever you go out. The Green Tourism for London Scheme (www.green-business.co.uk) awards grades to hotels that meet various sustainability criteria -- businesses that are "actively engaged in reducing the negative environmental and social impacts of their tourism operations." Gold, silver, and bronze award-winners are expected to manage energy effectively, promote public transport and green spaces, and support local cultural activities -- and are listed on their website.

Responsible Travel (www.responsibletravel.com, www.responsiblevacation.com in U.S.) is just one among a growing number of environmentally aware travel agents. They offer a number of "green holidays" across the U.K., including in London. Newspaper green travel sections such as www.guardian.co.uk/travel/green and www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/hubs/greentravel are good local places to keep up with the issues and get inspiration. Vision on Sustainable Tourism (www.tourism-vision.com) is another excellent news hub. Carbon offsetting (again, not uncontroversial) can be arranged through global schemes such as ClimateCare (www.climatecare.org). In the U.K., Tourism Concern (www.tourismconcern.org.uk) works to reduce social and environmental problems connected with tourism.

Tips for Senior Travelers

Don’t hide your age! Seniors in England are usually classified as those aged 60 and over, and they’re privy to all kinds of price breaks, from lower admission prices at museums to a third off rail tickets (but you first have to apply for the Senior Railcard; www.senior-railcard.co.uk). You may hear seniors being referred to as OAPs, which stands for Old Age Pensioners. That acronym is falling out of use, perhaps because it’s rare to find a solvent pension fund anymore. Don’t be offended if you’re also referred to as a “geezer,” though—in England, it’s a compliment that means a fun-loving (if sometimes rowdy) bloke.

If you’re over 50, you can join AARP (601 E St. NW, Washington, DC, 20049; www.aarp.org; [tel] 888/687-2277), and wrangle discounts on hotels, airfare, and car rentals. Elderhostel’s well-respected Road Scholar (www.roadscholar.org; [tel] 800/454-5768) runs many classes and programs in London designed to delve into literature, history, the arts, and music. Packages last from a week to a month and include airfare, lodging, and meals.

Tips for Families

To a dazzling degree, London attractions cater to the family market. The kingly treatment starts, at many places, with the so-named Family Ticket, which grants a low price for parents and kids entering together, and continues with a huge array of activity trails, kid-focused exhibits, activities, and even costumes to try on. Weekends are prime time for the availability of family activities, but always ask what's available.

For any length of stay, you can rent baby equipment from Chelsea Baby Hire (www.chelseababyhire.com; tel. 07802/846-742). Babysitting: Top Notch Nannies (www.topnotchnannies.co.uk; tel. 020/7881-0893, 020/7824-8209) normally brokers child-minders—usually Australians or Eastern Europeans—to wealthy London families, but it also runs a sideline, Brilliant Babysitters, which starts with a £12 booking fee (£15 last-minute), then £10–£15 an hour.

If you are a divorced parent with joint custody of your children, bring proof that you are entitled to take your kids out of the country.

Some resources for family-specific travel tips include the Family Travel Network (www.familytravelnetwork.com), online since 1995. Travel with Your Kids (www.travelwithyourkids.com) specializes in tips for international travel, and it also maintains a section just about London’s finds. The Family Travel Files (www.thefamilytravelfiles.com) rounds up tour operators and packagers geared to families, but its suggestions aren’t always the most economical or efficient. Time Out (www.timeout.com/london) also includes a section on kids’ activities.

When it comes to baby supplies, pacifiers are called “dummies,” diapers are “nappies,” a crib is a “cot,” and Band-Aids are “plasters.”

Getting There

By Plane

Transatlantic flights almost always land at Heathrow, Europe’s busiest international airport (17 miles west), or Gatwick, perhaps the most disliked (31 miles south). With a few minor exceptions, the other four airports, Stansted (37 miles northeast), Luton (34 miles northwest), London City (in London’s Docklands area), and Southend (42 miles easy) serve flights from Europe, and they’re where cut-rate flyers and executive jets tend to go. Rail service doesn’t start until around 5am. So don’t book flights that depart at 6am unless you’re prepared to a) grab a £80 hotel room near the airport, b) splash out on a taxi, or c) suffer highly infrequent night bus services.

Happily, getting to and from all of the airports is easy and clear. Every airport offers some kind of rail connection to the central city, and that’s the smart way to go. Tickets can be bought at windows in the arrivals halls, at machines, or online, where you get a discount. You’ll rarely have to wait more than 20 minutes for the next train. 

The business-class-level Heathrow Express (www.heathrowexpress.com; [tel] 08456/00-15-15) zooms to Paddington every 15 minutes. First Class is a waste of money; Express Saver, the cheapest option for purchase online or at vending machines, is plenty plush. Heathrow Connect (www.heathrowconnect.com; [tel] 084/5678-6975) is designed to give access to local stations, so it takes twice as long (almost 30 min.—still not long at all) and costs half as much. It uses commuter-style carriages and leaves half-hourly. Both trains arrive at Paddington, where you can hop the Tube system or a taxi (above Platform 12).

 

Gatwick Express (www.gatwickexpress.com; [tel] 084/5850-530) runs from Victoria. On First Capital Connect (www.firstcapitalconnect.co.uk; [tel] 08456/76-47-00), you can get to Gatwick via Blackfriars, Farringdon, St Pancras, or London Bridge stations in 30 to 50 minutes—service ends at 11:45pm.

Stansted Express (www.stanstedexpress.com; [tel] 0845/600-7245) runs from Liverpool Street station. Luton has rail service from St Pancras station, Blackfriars, London Bridge stations by First Capital Connect (www.firstcapitalconnect.co.uk; [tel] 0845/026-4700; four times hourly). The correct stop is Luton Airport Parkway Station, linked by a 10-minute shuttle (5am–midnight) to the terminals.

City Airport is linked so expediently and affordably by the Docklands Light Railway that it doesn’t support commuter rail or coach service. Southend Airport, too, is so well-connected to a shiny new station by Greater Anglia rail from Liverpool Street that buses don’t bother to go, and public city transport doesn’t reach it.

Should you take a car from the airport? Well, should you pay more and take longer than you must to get in from the airport? If you insist. The cheapest coach and van services for each airport are listed in the chart, and they all drop you off at standardized stops such as major train stations. For Gatwick, Stansted, and Luton, in addition to the usual National Express coach options, there’s the no-frills easyBus (www.easybus.co.uk). Unless you book far in advance, it may not beat the National Express prices.

Finding the Lowest Airfare

The central question is when to go. London is such a popular destination (it’s served by more flights from the United States than any other European city) that plenty of airlines vie to carry you across—although the ones that are not American-run are usually of higher quality. If you’re not redeeming frequent flier miles (book very far ahead if you are), there are five rules to finding bargains:

   1.   Fly on days when traffic is lightest. Some airlines post calendars that show you when their best prices are, or test fare trends on a site such as Hopper.com.

   2.   Depart after dinner. This saves you from paying another hotel night, since you’ll arrive in the morning. You’re also likely to find lower fares, because business travelers like day flights.

   3.   Go off-season. London’s weather isn’t extreme, so there’s really not a no-go month. November through March yield the lowest airfares and hotel rates, although the late December holidays and the last week of November (American Thanksgiving) can be busy, too. Summer prices (June–Sept) soar over a grand.

   4.   Search for fares for or on a weekend. Many major airlines post lower prices to fly then. You might also save money by booking your seat at 3am. That’s because unpaid-for reservations are flushed out of the system at midnight, and prices often sink when the system becomes aware of an increase in supply.

   5.   Don’t buy last-minute. Desperation bleeds wallets dry.

Hotwire’s TripStarter tool (www.hotwire.com/tripstarter/index.jsp) tracks how much the airlines charge, and when. Monitor airline newsletters, sale pages, Twitter accounts, and sites such as Frommers.com and SmarterTravel.com. Both Airfarewatchdog.com and Yapta.com spit out emails when airfare drops.

Primary websites that collect quotes from a variety of sources (whether they be airlines or other websites) include Ebookers.com, Expedia.com, Kayak.com, Lessno.com, Mobissimo.com, Momondo.com, Orbitz.com, and Travelocity.com. Always canvas multiple sites, because each has odd gaps in coverage because of how they obtain quotes. Always compare your best price with what the airline is offering, because that price might be lowest of all. Some sites have small booking fees of $5 to $10, and many force you to accept non-refundable tickets for the cheapest prices. If you’re hitting a wall, search for transatlantic itineraries that allow for one or two stops, since routes that include stops in Reykjavik or Frankfurt (on Icelandair or Lufthansa, respectively) can produce hidden bargains. No matter which airline you go with, prepare yourself for added taxes and fees, which are usually $500 or higher round-trip from the USA—London’s airport fees are truly noxious.

Most times of year, the least expensive way to reach London is with an air-hotel package, which combines discounted airfare with discounted nights in a hotel. Most air-hotel deals will allow you to fly back days after your hotel allotment runs out, and at no extra charge. Keep in mind that solo travelers always pay a little more, typically $200.

By Car

Don’t! Roads are clogged. In bad traffic, a trip from Heathrow to the western fringe of London can take 2 hours. And once you’re in the city, just about every technology is deployed against you (see “Getting Around,” below). Roads are confusingly one-way. Cameras catch and ticket your honest driving errors. Parking is a fantasy. I heartily beseech you to get into town by rail alone. Many North Americans think of cars as the default transportation mode, but not in London.

The M25 highway that rings the city is prone to major time-eating traffic jams at any time of day -- but especially between 7:30 and 9am, or 4 and 7pm, on weekdays, and on Sundays from mid-afternoon onward. And once you're in the city, just about every technology yet imagined is deployed against you. On top of that, and despite the complaints and grumbles of Londoners, the public transportation system is pretty efficient.

If you insist upon wheels, reserving ahead from home yields the best prices. Try to return your car outside the congestion-charge zone to avoid charges and aggravation. You will find similar rates among Nova Car Hire (www.novacarhire.com), Auto Europe (www.autoeurope.com), Europe By Car (www.ebctravel.com), Europcar (www.europcar.com), and Holiday Autos (www.holidayautos.com). Also check the major names like Avis, Hertz, and Budget, in case they can do better. Air conditioning, something you won’t need, adds about £5 to the daily bill. Fuel, or “petrol,” is even more expensive than at home, and although most rentals include unlimited mileage, not all do. Also: Many rental cars are stick shift models.

Not all routes into the city have been created equal, and road maps can be deceiving. From the north, the M1 and A1 converge at London's North Circular Road (the A406), and then proceed in a fairly orderly fashion into the center, with the occasional bottleneck and inevitable jam. It's horribly clogged at peak traffic hours, but otherwise a reasonable route into the north of the city. From the west, both the M40/A40 and M4/A4 routes into the city are similarly efficient. (Remember, we're talking in relative terms here; no one averse to sitting in stationary traffic should attempt any of these routes at peak times.) From the east and northeast, take the M11 or A12 roads into the city. Approaching the city from the south is much more problematic, however. London's supposed South Circular Road (the A205) is that in name only. It's little more than a collection of linked high-streets for much of its length, and very slow going. Roads from the south into the center are similarly tortuous. From Kent and the Channel ports, the A2 usually clips along satisfactorily outside rush hour, although the bottleneck at the Blackwall Tunnel creates long queues every weekday. From the southwest, it's usually quicker to head clockwise around the M25 to enter London via the M4 or M40 , unless you're heading for a southwestern suburb such as Richmond, Kew, or Twickenham. From Brighton and the south coast, the arrow-straight M23/A23 route might look inviting, but it's incredibly slow. You're usually better advised to head anticlockwise around the M25 to pick up the A2 for the City and East London, or clockwise to the M4 for the West End -- even though that looks insane on a roadmap.

By Train

The original railway builders plowed their stations to every town of size, making it easy to see the highlights of the United Kingdom without getting near a car. The British whine about the declining quality of the service, but Americans, Canadians, and Australians will be blown away by the speed (and the cost, if they don’t book ahead) of the system. Find tickets to all destinations through National Rail ([tel] 08457/48-49-50; www.nationalrail.co.uk/cheapestfare) or the indispensible TheTrainLine.com. Seats are sold 12 weeks ahead, and early-bird bookings can yield some marvelous deals, such as £26 for a 4-hour trip to Scotland (£125 last-minute is common). When hunting for tickets, always search for “off-peak” (non-rush hour) trips going or coming from London in general, not a specific London station, because each London terminal serves various cities. Unfortunately, not every train company website accepts international credit cards; TheTrainLine does.

Tickets bought reasonably in advance will still be cheaper than what you’d pay for the same trips on a BritRail pass (www.britrail.com; [tel] 866/938-7245 in North America) and few tourists ride the rails with the near-daily regularity and long distances that would make a timed pass pay for itself. Check prices against the U.S. seller Rail Europe (www.raileurope.com; [tel] 800/622-8600), as quotes vary.

For trips to northwestern Europe, the train is more dignified. Unlike taking a flight, you won’t need to set aside extra hours and pounds to get to and from airports; train stations are in the middle of town. We’re living in marvelous times: The Channel Tunnel opened two decades ago (although they still seem to be working out the kinks), so you can reach Paris in an incredible 2 hours and 15 minutes from London. You can literally ride both the Tube and the Métro before lunch. In fact, you can ride both a black taxi and Space Mountain before lunch, since the Eurostar train alights in the middle of Disneyland Resort, just east of Paris. Eurostar links London’s St Pancras station with Paris, Brussels, Lille, and Calais, and from there, you can go just about anywhere using other trains.

Book via Eurostar (www.eurostar.co.uk; [tel] 08432/186-186 in the U.K. or +44 1233/61-75-75; phone bookings are £4 more) itself or the U.S.-based Rail Europe (www.raileurope.com; [tel] 800/361-7245 in North America), which also sells European rail passes. Check both sites, since prices can differ, but do it early, because rates boom as availability decreases. Pay attention to the special offers on Eurostar’s site; using them, prices go as low as £69 round-trip in summer. Seat61.com has up-to-date tips for booking European train travel.

Precisely which of London's many mainline stations you arrive at depends on where you start your journey. Paddington station serves Heathrow Airport, and also destinations west of London -- including Oxford, Reading, Bath, Bristol and Wales and Cornwall -- as far as South Wales. Marylebone station is used mostly by commuters, but also serves Warwick and Stratford-upon-Avon. Euston station serves North Wales and major cities in northwest England, including Liverpool and Manchester; trains also depart from here to the Lake District and Glasgow, Scotland, via the West Coast Mainline. King's Cross station is the endpoint of the East Coast Mainline -- trains arrive here from York, Newcastle, and Edinburgh. Liverpool Street station is the City's main commuter hub, but also links London with Stansted Airport, Cambridge, and Norwich. The City's other mainline stations -- Cannon Street, Moorgate, Blackfriars, and Fenchurch Street -- are also heavily used by commuters from the neighboring counties of Hertfordshire, Essex, Kent, Surrey, and Sussex, as is Charing Cross station, close to Trafalgar Square. Waterloo station serves the southwest of England: trains from Devon, Dorset, and Hampshire terminate here, as do Salisbury services. Victoria station serves Gatwick Airport, as well as cities and towns across southern England, including Brighton. South of the River Thames, London Bridge Station is another busy commuter hub, and also serves Brighton and Gatwick Airport. Each of London's mainline train stations is connected to the city's vast bus and Underground networks , and each has phones, sandwich bars, fast-food joints, luggage storage areas, and somewhere to ask for transport information.

St. Pancras station is the London hub for high-speed Eurostar services to Paris and Brussels, as well as some domestic services to the East Midlands and South Yorkshire. Restored and reopened in 2007, it connects England with Belgium and France through the multibillion-pound Channel Tunnel. Recent upgrades to the line mean you can now reach London from Brussels in about two hours. It is also served by six Underground routes -- the Victoria, Northern, Piccadilly, Circle, Hammersmith & City, and Metropolitan lines -- as well as seven rail companies. In the U.K., you can make reservations for Eurostar (www.eurostar.com) or Rail Europe (www.raileurope.com). U.S. visitors arriving from Continental Europe should remember that the validity of the Eurail pass ends at the English Channel. You'll need to purchase a separate BritRail pass if you plan to tour the U.K.; visit www.britrail.com.

By Bus

The least expensive way to get from city to city in Britain (but not the fastest—that’s usually the train) is via coach, and because the country’s not very big, it rarely takes more than a few hours to reach anyplace. Even Scotland is only 5 hours away. National Express (www.nationalexpress.com; [tel] 08717/818-8178) is a major carrier with scads of departures, but the best-priced is Megabus (www.megabus.com; [tel] 090/0160-0900 or 0871/266-3333), which serves more than 60 cities across Europe, and charges as little as £1.50 for early bookings, although £19 to £45 for Edinburgh is a more typical rate. It accepts bookings 2 months ahead; book online to avoid phone fees. Both coach services depart from the miserable Victoria Coach Station, located behind Victoria railway station.

What’s the best place to hear about inexpensive ground tours? Hostels. Drop into one; most of their lobbies are papered with brochures. Don’t neglect their bulletin boards, either, since you may catch wind of a shared-ride situation that’ll often cost you no more than your share of the gasoline (in Britain, petrol).

A few coach companies also travel to Europe, usually crossing the Channel with a ferry. Because of the pressure put on the market by mushrooming no-frills airlines, rates are extremely low. You’ll pay as little as £21 one-way to Paris via Eurolines (www.eurolines.co.uk; [tel] 08717/81-81-78; 8–10 hr. each way). Brussels or Amsterdam are £25 with a 7-day advance purchase. The trade-off: It can take all day, sunrise to sunset, to reach Paris by this method.

Young, social adventurers should investigate Busabout (www.busabout.com; [tel] 8450/267-514), a coach system that follows set loops from London to France and Spain, Austria, Belgium, Italy, Switzerland, and Germany and the Czech Republic. Passengers can hop on and hop off as they please. Some other companies arrange full-on organized tours of Europe’s greatest hits—but never for less than you could do independently; choose one only because you’d enjoy having company: Contiki (www.contiki.com; [tel] 866/266-8454) is geared toward a party-hearty under-35 crowd, Tucan Travel Adventure Tours (www.tucantravel.com; [tel] 855/444-9110) is for social scrimpers, and Fanatics (www.thefanatics.com; [tel] 020/7240-3233) is for followers of organized sports.

Most buses terminate at Victoria coach station, 164 Buckingham Palace Rd. (www.tfl.gov.uk), although many offer intermediate stops in the capital too.

By Boat

No ferry to Europe sails from London. For those, you’ll have to get down to the Southern coastal towns of Folkestone and Dover (for France), or Portsmouth (for Spain). Unless you have your own car, it’s hard to use the ports of the France-destined lines; most people take them in conjunction with a coach trip booked from London. Advance purchase can be from £35 each way with a car and including taxes (150 min.) on P&O Ferries (www.poferries.com; [tel] 08716/64-21-21), and the aggregator DirectFerries.co.uk sells routes throughout Europe from a rapidly diminishing roster of companies. Given the proliferation of low-cost airlines, ferry travel has become outdated, and it’s mostly used by people who need to transfer cars.

If you despise flying, one ocean liner still makes the storied 7-day trip between New York City and Southampton, which connects by rail to London in an hour. That’s the Queen Mary 2 (www.cunard.com; [tel] 800/728-6273), intermittently scheduled. Fares start around $900 per person, including all your food.

Orientation

Guides to city-planning rarely use London as an example of how things should be done, preferring instead to cite more neatly ordered metropolises with carefully drawn grid plans and formally delineated zones.

London is certainly not neat. But then the city wasn't so much planned as made-up, created piecemeal as and when new bits were required. It represents 2,000 years of local projects, individual labors, grand aristocratic ambitions, philanthropic ventures, government schemes, and royal follies -- all created with little reference to each other -- and then placed on the same patch of ground like the pieces to 500 separate jigsaws.

This history can, unfortunately, make it confusing for visitors to find their way around. Roads don't meet at precise right-angles, but wind and roam, seemingly at random. There appears to be no obvious city center -- or conversely, several separate centers vie for your attention. This occasionally maddening muddle is also a huge part of London's charm.

One thing the city's great mish-mash layout guarantees is surprises -- hidden alleys, unexpected delights, stumbled-upon treasures -- as well as the near certainty that you'll get lost at some point (even locals do, all the time). For peace of mind, it's worth investing in an A to Z street atlas, available in all good bookshops, and quite a few central newsagents.

Examined on a map of the U.K., London can look intimidating -- a vast urban sprawl. You need to remember, however, that the city comes in two different sizes. There's Greater London, which is huge, encompassing some 650 square miles; this part is made up largely of residential suburbs, and most of it can safely be ignored by sightseers. Central London, where most of the major attractions are -- and where you'll be spending the majority of your time -- isn't really so big at all.

Of course, things aren't entirely straightforward. Central London may be where it's at, but exactly where the center is, isn't always clear. The areas used in this guide -- the West End, West London, Southwest London, and so on -- are not for the most part formally recognized zones with marked boundaries, but unofficial identifiers used for the purposes of splitting the city into manageable chunks for readers.

The most important of these areas, from a sightseeing perspective, is the West End. Unofficially bounded by the River Thames to the south, Farringdon Road and Farringdon Street to the east, Marylebone Road and Euston Road to the north, and Hyde Park and Victoria station to the west, this is where most of London's major attractions are found. Visitors will probably spend a good deal of their time here, whether at Buckingham Palace, the British Museum, or the bars, shops, and theatres of Soho. It's also where you'll find the capital's greatest concentration of good hotels and restaurants.

For the purposes of this guide, Hyde Park has been nominated as the gateway to West London. Its main hotel district lies just to the north, where cheap and mid-range places cluster around Paddington station, which serves as the main train link with Heathrow Airport, and thus provides many visitors with their introduction to the city. A more limited supply of more expensive, more fashionably appointed accommodation is available farther west in the swankier surrounds of Notting Hill, site of the famed Portobello Road Market.

South of Hyde Park in Southwest London are the upscale neighborhoods of Belgravia, South Kensington, Knightsbridge, and Chelsea, which offer high-class restaurant and hotel options -- at high prices.

To the south, across the river, the South Bank and Bankside present a great line of attractions, including the London Eye, the Southbank Centre, Tate Modern, Shakespeare's Globe, and HMS Belfast,which hug the river's edge between Westminster Bridge and Tower Bridge. South of this attraction hotspot, however, London's cultural energy fades into sleepy waves of suburbs, with the odd point of interest poking its nose above the surface. There are hotel and B&B options south of the river, which are often a good deal cheaper than those in the center, but you will have to factor in the (often high) transport costs that staying on the outskirts incurs.

There's less choice in the City, immediately east of the West End, site of the original Roman settlement of "Londinium," and today one of the world's major financial centers. Although jeweled with historic sites, the City empties out in the evenings and on weekends, and there are better places to base yourself if you're looking for an atmospheric place to stay or a hopping nightlife scene.

Keep heading east or northeast beyond the City and you reach East London, the inner part of which is known as the East End. Much of this area is poor and deprived, with postwar tower blocks littering the skyline. Pockets of gentrification have emerged in recent years, particularly in the arty enclaves of Shoreditch and Hoxton, where some rather grand hotels have opened. Elsewhere the accommodation can be cheap, but often comes with very few frills. The Docklands area has been revitalized and reenergized in the past few decades, and Canary Wharf has emerged as London's second major center of finance. It's hoped that Stratford will enjoy a similar resurgence following the development of the main London 2012 Olympic Park there.

Although primarily residential, North and Northwest London have more to offer visitors than their southern counterpart, with the great sprawling markets of Camden and the wild open spaces and genteel charms of Hampstead among the main draws. Hampstead also boasts a fine collection of small hotels and B&Bs, but staying here will mean a deal of traveling back and forth to the center.

Out in the suburbs, areas such as Greenwich, and Kew, Richmond, and Wimbledon offer great day-trip opportunities. Although some of these areas are perhaps a bit too far-flung to make convenient bases, Greenwich is ideally situated on the Jubilee tube line and Docklands Light Railway (DLR), making it a good base for easy trips to Stratford and the Olympic Park, while also being near enough to 2012 Games venues such as Greenwich Park (Equestrian) and North Greenwich Dome (Artistic Gymnastics).

London postcodes

As a visitor it's easy to dismiss the letters that appear at the end of addresses as some sort of arcane cipher. In fact, these postcodes -- or at least their first two or three letters and numbers -- can be a handy way of finding out an establishment's general location. This can be particularly useful when hotel hunting: The postcode will reveal just how "close to central London" your prospective room really is.

The very center of London is divided into six postal zones, where the postcodes are prefixed by either the letters WC (West Central) or EC (East Central). All other London postcodes use letters to indicate what direction they are from these central zones: W is West, SW is Southwest, and so on. So, much of what you might consider to be central London does not fall under either the WC or the EC postcodes. Most of the West End, for instance (including Soho, Marylebone, Mayfair, and Fitzrovia), is actually in W1. Still, despite these anomalies, it's a useful system. The postcodes where you'll likely be spending the majority of your time are: WC1, WC2, W1, W2 (Bayswater & Paddington), W11 (Notting Hill), E1 (East End), SW1 (Victoria & Knightsbridge), SW3 (Chelsea), SW7 (South Kensington), SE1 (South Bank), EC1, EC2, EC3, EC4, N1 (Islington & Hoxton), and NW1 (Camden & Primrose Hill).

Fast Facts

Area Codes -- The country telephone code for Great Britain is 44. The area code for London is 020. The full telephone number is usually 8 digits long. Businesses and homes in central London usually have numbers beginning with a 7; those from further out begin with an 8. For more info, see “Telephones,” later in this section.

Business Hours -- Offices are generally open weekdays between 9 or 10am and 5 or 6pm. Some remain open a few hours longer on Thursdays and Fridays. Saturday hours for stores are the same, and Sunday hours for stores are generally noon to 5 or 6pm. Banks are usually open from 9:30am to 4 or 5pm, with some larger branches open later on Thursdays or for a few hours on Saturday mornings.

Customs -- Rules about what you can carry into Britain are standard but ever-shifting, so get the latest restrictions from HM Revenue & Customs (www.hmrc.gov.uk; tel. 011-44/2920-501-261). Your own government is responsible for telling you what you can bring back home.

Doctors -- Ask your hotel first. Then try the G.P. (General Practitioner) finder at www.nhs.uk. North American members of the International Association for Medical Assistance to Travelers (IAMAT; www.iamat.org; 716/754-4883, or 416/652-0137 in Canada) can consult that organization for lists of local approved doctors. 

In any medical emergency, call 999, or 112. Less urgent? Call 111.

Drinking Laws -- The legal drinking age is 18. Children 15 and younger are allowed in pubs only if accompanied by a parent or guardian. Although there are no open container laws, drinking on London’s public transport network is forbidden and on-the-spot fines are issued to transgressors.

Electricity -- The current in Britain is 240 volts AC. Plugs have three squared pins. Foreign appliances operating on lower voltage (those from the U.S., Canada, and Australia use 110–120 volts AC) will require an adapter and possibly a voltage converter, although the range of capability will usually be printed on the plug. Most modern phone chargers and laptops can handle the stronger current with only an adapter. A few hotels provide outlets for a non-heating appliance such as a shaver.

Embassies & Consulates --  In 2017, the U.S. Embassy moved from Grosvenor Square to an elaborate 4.9-acre complex in West London’s Wandsworth district (Ponton Rd., SW8; https://uk.usembassy.gov; tel 020/7499-9000; Tube: Vauxhall). Standard hours are Monday to Friday 8:30am to 5:30pm. Most non-emergency inquiries require an appointment. You may bring tablets but not laptops. For passport information, call tel. 877/487-2778 in the U.S.

The High Commission of Canada, 1 Trafalgar Sq., London W1 (www.canadainternational.gc.ca/united_kingdom-royaume_uni/index.aspx; tel. 020/7004-6000; Tube: Charing Cross), handles passport and consular services for Canadians. Hours are Monday, Wednesday, and Friday 8am to 10:30am.

The Australian High Commission is at Australia House, Strand, London WC2 (www.uk.embassy.gov.au; tel. 020/7887-5816; Tube: Temple). Hours are Monday to Friday 9am to 4pm.

The New Zealand High Commission is at New Zealand House, 80 Haymarket, London SW1 (www.nzembassy.com/uk; tel. 020/7930-8422; Tube: Charing Cross or Piccadilly Circus). Hours are Monday to Friday 9am to 5pm.

The Irish Embassy is at 17 Grosvenor Place, London SW1 (www.embassyofireland.co.uk; [tel] 020/7235-2171; Tube: Hyde Park Corner). Hours are Monday to Friday 9:30am to 5pm.

Emergencies -- The one-stop number for Britain is 999—that’s for fire, police, and ambulances. It’s free from any phone, even mobiles.

Health -- Traveling to London doesn’t pose specific health risks. Common drugs are generally available over the counter and in large supermarkets, although visitors should know the generic rather than brand names of any medicines they rely on. Pack prescription medications in carry-on luggage and in their original containers, with pharmacy labels—otherwise they may not pass airport security. Also bring copies of your prescriptions, just in case. Don’t forget an extra pair of contact lenses or prescription glasses. The general-purpose painkiller known in North America as acetaminophen is called paracetamol in the U.K. If you don’t feel well and you need the advice of a doctor or a nurse, the national health care system operates a free, 24-hour hotline: National Health Service Direct (www.nhs.uk; tel. 111). Citizens of many European countries are entitled to free health care while in Britain (see www.dh.gov.uk/travellers), but everyone else is not, and although clinics were once known to treat tourists and then look the other way rather than embark upon the odyssey of paperwork required to bill them, private billing companies are now policing for every pound. Non-EU citizens should carry health or travel insurance.

Hospitals -- In the U.K., the ER is usually called A&E, or Accident and Emergency. If your need is urgent, dial 999 (it’s free no matter where your phone is registered) rather than risk going to a medical center that doesn’t offer A&E. You can search www.nhs.uk for the nearest A&E, or go to the 24-hour, walk-in A&E departments at University College London Hospital, 235 Euston Rd., London NW1 (www.uclh.nhs.uk; tel. 020/3456-7890 or 0845/155-5000; Tube: Warren Street) and St Thomas’s Hospital, Westminster Bridge Rd., entrance on Lambeth Palace Rd., London SE1 (www.guysandstthomas.nhs.uk; tel. 020/7188-7188; Tube: Westminster or Waterloo). Soho NHS Walk-In Centre (1 Frith St., W1; tel. 020/7534-6500; 8am–9pm; Tube: Tottenham Court Road) is a central clinic.

Insurance -- U.K. nationals receive free medical treatment countrywide, but visitors from overseas only qualify automatically for free emergency care. U.S. visitors should note that most domestic health plans (including Medicare and Medicaid) do not provide coverage, and the ones that do often require you to pay for services upfront and reimburse you only after you return home. We recommend looking at such insurance marketplace sites as SquareMouth and InsureMyTrip to find the right policy for you.

So what else may you want to insure? You may want special coverage for apartment stays, especially if you’ve plunked down a deposit, and any valuables, since airlines are only required to pay up to $2,500 for lost luggage domestically, less for foreign travel.

Internet & Wi-Fi -- Wi-Fi flows freely at the majority of pubs, cafes, museums, and nearly all hotels. Usually, you will have to fill in an email address to activate it, but often it’s a data collection ploy and you can write dummy information. Virgin Media (www.virginmedia.com/wifi) provides Wi-Fi in many Tube stations but not between them. Visitors can buy passes for £2 (1 day), £5 (1 week), or £15 (1 month). Savvy smartphone users will find it cheap and practical to switch off 3G altogether and use available Wi-Fi in combination with Skype (www.skype.com) and WhatsApp (www.whatsapp.com) for texts, phone calls and voice messages.

Laundry — Launderettes are not easy to find in central London anymore, and expensive hotels will only do laundry and dry cleaning if you’re willing to shell out. Look into the app Laundrapp, which will pick up and drop off to your hotel for free. Prices start at £2 per article or £2.50 for 1kg (2.2 lb.).

Left Luggage -- Useful for taking those cheap European flights with steep luggage fees, Left Baggage (www.left-baggage.com; tel. 0800/077-4530) has locations at Heathrow, Gatwick and the big railway stations: £12.50 per item per 24 hours for up to a week, then £5 per item per day thereafter.

Legal Aid -- If you find yourself in trouble abroad, contact your consulate or embassy (see “Embassies & Consulates,” above). It can advise you of your rights and will usually provide a list of local attorneys (for which you’ll have to pay if services are used), but they cannot interfere on your behalf in the English legal process. For questions about American citizens who have been arrested abroad, including ways of getting money to them, telephone the Citizens Emergency Center of the Bureau of Consular Affairs in Washington, D.C. (tel 877/487-2778).

LGBT Travelers — Gay and lesbian people have equality and marriage rights in England. Public displays of affection are barely noticed in the center of the city, although in the outer suburbs couples should show more restraint. Gay bashings are rare enough to be newsworthy, but it’s true that an element of society can, once full of ale, become belligerent. Particularly in parks at night, be aware of your surroundings and give wide berth to gaggles of drunken lads. This advice holds irrespective of your sexuality.

For nightlife planning, the best sources for information are Boyz (www.boyz.co.uk), which publishes a day-by-day schedule on its website, and the free QX International (www.qxmagazine.com). Both are distributed for free at many gay bars.

Medical requirements -- Unless you’re arriving from an area known to be suffering from an epidemic (particularly cholera or yellow fever), inoculations or vaccinations are not required for entry into the U.K.

Mail -- An airmail letter or postcard to anywhere outside Europe costs £1.25 for up to 10g (1/3 oz.) and generally takes 5 to 7 working days to arrive. Within the E.U., letters or postcards under 20g (2/3 oz.) cost £1.25. 

Mobile phones -- Anytime you call a mobile phone in Britain, the fee will be higher than calling a land line, although there is no fee to receive a call or text.

Apart from renting a phone (not recommended to the casual visitor), many tourists simply enable their international roaming feature. That works, but some providers will bleed you. The best solution, if you do have an unlocked quad- or tri-band phone that uses the GSM system, is to pop into any mobile phone shop or newsstand and buy a cheap pay-as-you-talk phone number from a mobile phone store. You pay about £5 for a SIM card, which you stick in your phone, and then you buy vouchers to load your account with as much money as you think you’ll use up (no refunds). That will give you a British number, which you can e-mail to everyone back home, that charges local rates (10p–40p per min.) and a deal on data that might allow 1GB in a month for about £5—much, much cheaper than roaming. Just call your provider before you leave home to “unlock” your phone (out-of-contract and last-generation phones are better candidates), so that the British SIM card will function in it. That service is usually free. U.K. mobile providers with pay-as-you-talk deals, all comparable, include: Vodafone (www.vodafone.com), O2 (www.o2.co.uk), Lebara (www.lebara.co.uk), EE/T-Mobile (www.ee.co.uk), and Virgin Mobile (www.virginmobile.com). Annoyingly, purchased SIMs come with automatic child content locks, and gay and lesbian travelers will find some of their special interest sites blocked. To remove the censorship, go to a mobile phone store run by your SIM provider (Vodafone, EE, and O2 are easiest to find) to prove you’re an adult. Bring your hotel’s details since you must supply a U.K. address.

Even if you are not permitted to unlock your phone, you can always use its Wi-Fi features for Skype, FaceTime, WhatsApp, and the like. 

Newspapers & Magazines -- London offers more publications than one would think a city of its size could support. The broadsheets, ordered from left to right, politically speaking, are the Guardian, the Independent, the Daily Telegraph, and the Times. On the Tube, Metro is free in the morning and Evening Standard is free in the afternoon. The salmon-colored Financial Times covers business. The tabloids are fluffier and more salacious: They include the Sun, the Mirror, Daily Star, the Daily Mail, and Daily Express. Time Out publishes a free listing of events and entertainments.

Other popular magazines include the Big Issue (written and sold by homeless and formerly homeless people), Radio Times (TV listings and celebrity interviews), and Hello! and OK! (fawning celebrity spreads planted by publicity agents).

Packing -- For your wallet’s sake, pack sparingly! You’ve heard that before, but it’s really true this time. It’s not as easy as it used to be to wink your way through the weigh-in. In some cases, the conveyor belts at check-in are programmed to halt if they sense a bag over the limit.

British Airways, for example, grants coach passengers a puny 23kg (51 lb.). If you exceed that, you will be smacked with a flat fee of £25 per flight. That only buys you another 9kg (20 lb.), because bags over 32kg (71 lb.) will be rejected outright. When it comes to carry-ons (“hand baggage”), it’s got to measure no more than 56cm long by 45cm wide by 25cm deep (22x18x10 in.). Some airlines, such as Virgin Atlantic, can be ruthless about making sure even your carry-on baggage weighs no more than 10kg (22 lb.). That’s very little. If you’re taking multiple airlines, stick to the tightest set of restrictions of the lot. Many airlines (even the no-frills) discount for booking baggage at least 24 hours early, and charge more at the airport.

If you need to buy cheap luggage, Primark sells it for less than £20.

Keep prescription medications in their original, labeled containers for Customs even though they’re unlikely to be inspected. If you require syringes, always carry a signed medical prescription.

Pare toiletries to essentials. You’re not going to the Congo. You will find staples like toothpaste, contact lens solution, and deodorant everywhere. Women should bring a minimum of make-up; the British don’t tend to use very much themselves. Brits are also more likely to wear trousers than blue jeans. If you plan to go clubbing, pack some fashionable duds—Londoners love to look natty. Speaking of that, don’t wear a lot of tee-shirts with writing or logos; it marks you as a tourist.

You’ll be most comfortable if you dress in clothing that layers well. Even in winter, London’s air can be clammy, and dressing too warmly can become uncomfortable. No matter what the average temperature is, the air can grow cool after the sun sets, so plan for that, too. In the winter, a hat, scarf, and gloves are necessities. A compact umbrella is wise year-round, as is an outer coat that repels water, since you never know when you’re going to find yourself in one of those misty rains that makes the British Isles so lush and green.

Don’t bring illegal drugs (duh), and also leave the pepper spray and mace at home; they’re banned in the U.K.

Pharmacies -- Every police station keeps a list of pharmacies that are open 24 hours. Also try Zafash, a rare chemist that is open 24 hours, 233-235 Old Brompton Rd., SW5 (tel. 020/7373 2798; Tube: Earl’s Court); and Bliss, open daily 9am to midnight, 5-6 Marble Arch, W1 (tel. 020/7723-6116; Tube: Marble Arch). For non-emergency health advice, call the NHS on tel. 111.

Police -- London has two official police forces: The City of London police (www.cityoflondon.police.uk) whose remit covers the “Square Mile” and its 8,600 residents; and the Metropolitan Police (“the Met”), which covers the rest of the capital and is split into separate borough commands for operational purposes. Opening hours for all the Met’s local police stations are listed at www.met.police.uk/local. In a non-emergency, you can contact your local police station from anywhere by dialing 101. Losses, thefts, and other criminal matters should be reported at the nearest police station immediately. You will be given a crime number, which your travel insurer will request if you make a claim against any losses. Always dial 999 or 112 if the matter is serious.

Smoking -- Smoking is prohibited by law in any enclosed workplace, including museums, pubs, public transportation, and restaurants. If in doubt, ask permission.

Taxes -- All goods prices in the U.K. are quoted inclusive of taxes. Since 2011 the national value-added tax (VAT) has stood at 20%. This is included in all hotel and restaurant bills, and in the price of most items you purchase.

If you are permanently resident outside the E.U., VAT on goods can be refunded if you shop at stores that participate in the Retail Export Scheme—look for the window sticker or ask the staff. Information about the scheme is also posted online at www.hmrc.gov.uk/vat/sectors/consumers/overseas-visitors.htm.

Time -- Britain follows Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) between late October and late March. Daylight-saving British Summer Time (BST), one hour ahead of GMT, is in operation for the rest of the year. London is generally 5 hours ahead of U.S. Eastern Standard Time (EST), although because of different daylight saving time practices in the two nations, there may be a brief period (about a week) in spring when Britain is only 4 hours ahead of New York or Toronto, and a brief period in the fall when it's 6 hours ahead. Sydney is 10 or 11 hours ahead of UK time; Auckland 12 or 13 hours ahead.

Tipping -- It’s less intense than in the United States, but it’s gradually Americanizing. Restaurant servers should receive 10% to 15% of the bill unless service is already included—always check the menu or bill to see if service was already added, because traditions are changing. At pubs, tipping isn’t customary unless you receive table service. Fine hotels may levy a service charge, but at the finest ones, grease the staff with a pound here and there. Staff at B&Bs and family-run hotels don’t expect tips. Bartenders and chambermaids need not be tipped.

There’s no need to tip taxicab drivers but most people round up to the next £1, although a 10% to 15% tip is becoming increasingly standard.

Toilets -- London doesn’t have enough of them. Washrooms can be found at any free museum in this guide, any department store, any pub or busy restaurant (though it’s polite to buy something), and at Piccadilly Circus and Bank Tube stations. Train stations also have toilets that may cost 30p to 50p. Also keep an eye out for spray-cleaned, coin-operated (50p) Automatic Public Conveniences, or APCs. On weekends, open-air pissoirs for men are placed throughout the West End.