London Necessities

It’s not news that London is expensive. We’d been waiting years to take our kids to London, and with their years left at home rapidly dwindling, we decided this was the time to go. Not that the timing was great: with the exchange rate at essentially £1 = 2 dollars, it wouldn’t be cheap. Plus, there were five of us.

We’d need to pay more than a little attention to cost. We went at spring break, not in the summer—by comparing prices with a friend who’s taking his family this summer, we saved a ticket (OK, there’s a reason—mid-March isn’t summer in London). Housing five in tight, expensive London quarters is a difficult proposition. A fair number of smaller hotels offer ‘family rooms’ that sleep five in the space of a more typical hotel room. Spending five days with my teens in such quarters didn’t sound very appealing; were there other options? And then we'd have to feed those three teenagers at London prices.

Before enjoying all that London has to offer, you need to pay some attention to these issues. This journal focuses on the necessities: sleeping, eating, and getting to and around town. All the museums, churches, and other attractions that bring you to London in the first place are covered in another journal.

Quick Tips:

London’s food revolution has now extended to the low price range. If you think American chains are everywhere, Pret a Manger and EAT have an amazing level of ‘market penetration’, or whatever you call it. It’s not hard to see why: the food is decent, the prices are low (for London), and the service is fast. As a tourist, they’ll probably be part of your trip on several occasions. We ate every breakfast at one or the other, choosing from baked goods, yoghurts & fruit, oatmeal, granola with steamed milk, breakfast sandwiches and more. For five of us, the tab was always £15-£18 (and a light dinner here ran about £5 a head).

Of course, £15 is 30 dollars for breakfast. A lot of smaller London hotels (and even some larger ones) will include breakfast with your room, whether it’s a full ‘fry up’ or a continental breakfast. That’s nice, but as my father-in-law stressed while raising my wife, nothing’s really free. When it was just two of us here seven years ago, we stayed at such a place: James House on Ebury Street, a 10-minute walk south of Victoria Station. It was convenient, friendly, family-run place. For £70 a night (then), we were in a room large enough to hold a double bed and a chair (and nothing else). But we didn’t come to London to hang out in our room–we’d rise in the morning, head to the breakfast room, and come back at 11pm.

With two of us, I’d gladly stay there again. But with five, we’d need two rooms, and prices have gone up: a triple and a double would would be £220 a night. Some places offered family rooms (a double and three twins) for £125 or more.

So we went another route: the Travelodge chain has rooms all over Britain, and a number in central London (Covent Garden, Kings Cross, Euston, Marylebone and others). It was hard to know what to make of these, but they offered doubles or family rooms as low as £49—so maybe we could put our three teens in one room and us in another for under £100 a night. Then a new Travelodge London City Road opened north of Moorgate. Brand new rooms at £26—that was a risk I was willing to take, even with the prepay requirement. The closest US match for Travelodge might be Motel 6, but it worked out great—nice rooms, decent space, ample breakfast and coffee options, access to the Tube and a bus stop right outside.

No matter what choices you make, it’s probably best to calculate your budget before you go, and when you’re there, evaluate everything as though a pound were a dollar. If you’re not planning to have every meal at Pret, then Wagamama and Pizza Express are popular, modestly priced chains serving good food—and there’ll probably be one or the other (or both) nearby whenever you’re hungry. Our bills here were £7-12 a person.

Best Way To Get Around:

Transportation is a major focus of this journal. Most cross-Atlantic travelers arrive at either Heathrow (where the Tube is an option), or at Gatwick (where it’s not). Gatwick arrivees often turn to the Gatwick Express for transport into town: the non-stop train that runs directly to London Victoria every half-hour. There are better options that are nearly as fast, more frequent, and much, much cheaper. Recommendations for other choices lead off the Trains, Tube and the rest of TfL journal.

Everyone knows about the Tube. It’s only one part of an amazing network that goes by the title Transport for London (TfL): Underground, buses, trams, Thames river cruises, light rail to the Docklands and Greenwich, and regional rail. The Tube is classic London, but it may not be your best bet: consider riding the terrific bus network, which we relied on during our six days in town. There’s more in A Modest Proposal.

Depending on your length of stay, the ages of your party, and the parts of Greater London you’ll travel in, your options for paying for your travel are intimidating. The Trains, Tube & TfL journal runs these down, and the separate journal Paying for Kids tackles how to handle everyone from 0 to 17.

Whatever your age, and whatever you buy, it makes sense to get an Oyster card as a surrogate for your ticket or your cash. Using this plastic, chip-enabled card will reduce any one-trip fares you pay, and will make moving through the system so much easier. TfL knows that, and charges a steep penalty for those purchasing fares the old-fashioned way.

A 7-day Travelcard gives you a free pass on all modes of transport; for shorter trips, you may just want to rely on the Oyster system to calculate and cap your daily fare. You don’t have to pay full price for your kids, but if you want the further savings 11 through 17 year olds are entitled to, you’ll have to plan ahead and order Oyster photocards that prove they’re 11 to 17. Again, the Kids journal gives details.

If you want your hotel to be a destination in itself, you’ll be disappointed here. Yes, it’s an inexpensive chain, but there’s much beyond price to recommend this newest London addition to the widespread UK brand. Opened in October 2007 in the former Singer Sewing Factory, it offers clean, bright modern rooms that are actually spacious by London standards. It’s a large place: there are nearly 400 rooms across seven floors. But due to the compact layout, narrow halls, and lack of lengthy uninterrupted corridors, it feels more intimate than expected.

The desk staff was friendly, welcoming and helpful, as well as apologetic for our one-night neighbors who began a loud, alcohol-influenced 90-minute discussion of life at 3 am. (The staff was glad to be able to inform us that these neighbors had indeed checked out.) Thus we learned that the soundproofing wasn’t perfect, but that was about my only complaint.

Travelodge bills itself as low on frills so it can stay low on cost. There’s no clock, no in-room phone (which made notifying the front desk of our neighbors’ shenanigans a little difficult). Also missing are irons, toiletries (with the exception of a small courtesy bar of soap, which actually lasted a few days) or copious towels. All can be had for the asking at the front desk. There was an electric teakettle, tea bags and instant coffee, and a sleek new LCD TV. The light wood furniture ran the length of the far wall, with a seven-foot stretch of desk connected to an open-faced wardrobe at the right end. Each side of the bed was flanked by nightstands of the same design, with individual wall-mounted lights. The bath held a shower, sink and toilet, which was small but not cramped (some rooms have space for a full bath). The towels were more like bath sheets: more than large enough, and well above the threadbare cotton that might be expected at an inexpensive hotel.

We got two rooms, each at an unbelievable £26 a night, astounding friends who paid three times that in London and thought they had a deal. That price applied to both our room and the kids’ room, a ‘family room’ with double and sofa (which sleeps one on the sofa itself, and another on a trundle that pulls out from underneath). This nice arrangement gave each of our kids a separate bed, a real luxury.

There’s a restaurant on the ground floor, with a Coffee Republic offering caffeine and pastries at the bar. Breakfast isn’t included in the price, but Travelodge offers a buffet breakfast for £6.75 that’s served in the restaurant.

Better options are available right nearby: an EAT is next door, where five of us ate a light breakfast for £18 the first two mornings; a Pret a Manger is just a few more doors down. Given the location in the business-oriented City, both are only open 7am-5pm on workdays, so you’ll need other evening and weekend options. Two pubs are also close by: The Master Gunner (recognizing the Honourable Artillery Company, the oldest regiment in the British Army, whose HQ is just up the street) is just south and across the street; The Angel is a block north.

After booking our rooms (and prepaying them) on October 1, an email arrived just before Christmas with the ominous title 'Update to Your Booking'. Thankfully, it just offered early check-in (before 3), or late check-out (after noon) for £10/room. An early check-in for a quick nap seemed like a good idea with tired teens, but trying to arrange it on-line not only incurred the £10 charge, but also raised the room rates by £3/day. At at total of $100, that seemed a little steep. We decided to ask at the front desk on arrival, where the helpful clerk suggested we take just one room, and arranged to have our other room nearby and in a quiet part of the hotel.

Wireless is available throughout the hotel: at £5 an hours, £10/day, and £20/week, you might have better options. Pay-as-you go Internet is available on two machines in the lobby at £1 for 10 minutes.

It’s a pretty easy place to reach: it lies about two-thirds of the way between Moorgate and Old Street on the Northern Line, which are the first two stops north of Bank. A bus stop is right outside the hotel’s door, served by six lines heading to Southwark, Trafalgar Square, or north and east through Clerkenwell. (We reached Abbey Road with only one change at Baker Street, and got home from the British Museum on a single bus.)

I’d stay here again, and if you’re interested, make sure you monitor the web for the regular ‘Saver Rate’ specials that Travelodge runs. Even at ‘normal’ prices, it’s still a deal, and a good option in a very expensive city.

Time was, you couldn’t avoid fish and chips at mealtime in London. You can still scare up an order, but any number of sources will tell you that a deep-fried filet served along side ‘french fries’ in a newsprint-lined paper basket is more likely to be a nod and a wink to the past than the real thing. Curry, noodles and pizza have nearly overtaken all of London for quick, inexpensive meals.

But not quite everywhere. Several books, including Time Out’s authoritative Cheap Eats in London, recommended The Fryer’s Delight as one of the last of a vanishing breed—the ‘chippie’, specializing in fish & chips, plus anything else that might be served after a good long dunk in scalding-hot oil. After gamely trying to make the best of late Thursday hours at the British Museum, we finally surrendered to our sore feet and empty stomachs and took the short bus ride up Theobald’s Road for a final meal in London.

The restaurant is in Holborn, just a few bus stops east of the Museum. This is a real London neighborhood, filled with businesses that were largely closed when we arrived after 6 pm and absent any apparent tourist destination. It’s a storefront establishment, only about 20 feet wide and hardly any deeper. The setting feels like another era, with fading, framed newspaper clippings highlighting the restaurant, or fish and chips in general, mounted above the four red booths and their Formica tables. Across the aisle, three cooks work quickly in the fryers that you can’t see but you can quite clearly detect by other means. A single server works the booths, while another person runs the register and handles the takeaway trade. The owner (I’m guessing) completes the cast, greeting everyone as they come and go, and ‘supervising’. A lot of people around a lot of hot beef drippings (the fry oil of choice here).

But they clearly know what they’re doing. The menu is on a large wallboard, but if you’re dining in, you get another paper copy. If you’re not in the mood for fish, you might try either the quarter or half chicken, or deep fried sausage or pies. Otherwise, you’re out of luck (and why were you here in the first place, anyways?) Three of us went for haddock; I chose cod, and my youngest ordered the quarter chicken. All of it came quickly, and was fresh, hot, and delicious. The chips were the best we had in London: crisp on the outside, but still moist inside. The servings were generous, and reasonably priced: even with the substantial VAT added for eating in, my cod was just over £6; the haddock just under, and the chicken was cheapest at £4.10. Add in five sodas (I recommend the ginger beer) and tip, and five of us had a great meal and great experience for exactly £36.

Takeaway prices are unbelievably cheap: roughly £3.50 for any of the fish choices. It was a great finish to our final day in London, and we headed back to the hotel satisfied, ready (if not willing) for the melancholy task of packing up.

Directions
The Fryer’s Delight is on the south side of Theobald’s Road, which becomes Bloomsbury Way to the west and Clerkenwell Road to the east. The restaurant is just east of Red Lion St, and a short walk from either the 38 or 19 buses. If you’re coming by tube, it’s roughly equidistant from the Holborn and Chancery Lane stations on the Central Line, no more than a quarter mile from each. If you’re coming from the British Museum, it’s no more than a 15-minute walk.

This widespread pizza chain has over 300 locations in London and the UK, so it’s a little hard to ignore as you move around town. It’s more upscale than you might expect for pizza, and I can’t really think of an American equivalent.

There can’t be too many that look like this one, however. As we headed from St. Paul’s to the Museum of London in a rather hungry state, I pulled out Cheap Eats in London to see what might be in the neighborhood. There seemed to be one right across the street, but we kept walking around the corner to the east, where someone made out the word ‘Pizza’ in the metal and glass above the street.

This section of London was hard hit during the Blitz. Just north of here is the 1960’s era Barbican. The complex containing this restaurant replaced a building of a similar era, and actually arches over London Wall, a highway that runs along the site of the original Roman era wall (a section can be seen just to the west outside the Museum of London).

The restaurant is split across both sides of the walkway, although only the western section was open at lunch. The restaurant is also a split level, with about a third of the seating on a second level partial balcony. The walls are two stories of glass, each apparently supported by a modern-looking vertical support that I realized later was a stack of glass electrical insulators.

It’s a little unusual to walk into a pizza restaurant and see many folks in suits and ties. The lunchtime crowd was clearly City denizens taking a break from running the world’s financial affairs. The menu wasn’t entirely geared to their standard of living, but it was a bit higher than I’d hope to pay for lunch. The menu contains several dozen speciality pizza, and the clear standard is choosing one as opposed to the more familiar design-your-own. One of my crew can’t live without pepperoni; this was named ‘the American’, appropriately enough. We also ordered a ‘Quattro Formaggio’, a four-flavor cheese feast, and a third Romano style pizza: a bit larger, with an even thinner crust.

All three were quite thin-crusted, and extremely tasty. Despite an early adherence to thick-crusted pizza (which was eventually worn down by too many doughy Philadelphia pizzas), I’ve become a convert. Of course, they’re a little less filling, and I could tell that I wasn’t the only one wishing we’d tipped the money/food balancing act in favor of a fourth pizza. At £7 or more per pie, I could remember why we didn’t. Adding in five Cokes at £1.90 each, our lunch tab came to over £40. The food was good, but the principal outcome of this meal was to ensure that I’d search out slightly cheaper options for the remaining days.

Food in London is better than it used to be; everyone says so, and that’s easy to detect once you’ve landed. But what if you’re looking for a little bit of the way things used to be? Sunday roasts, Yorkshire pudding, pies, fish and chips? Maybe only tourists seek these things out, but I was trying to find someplace that might give us a little bit more traditional dining experience.

This place is located west of Covent Garden, two blocks north of the Strand. Rather than run from English food, they celebrate it. Pies and puddings line the menu, as well as bangers & mash, beer battered cod, and fish or spinach cakes. The dessert menu is lined with more puddings, as well as the infamous Spotted Dick. There are other options, too: steaks, roast chicken, salmon, and even a burger. A la carte prices range from £10 to £13 for mains (steaks are a little more), with soups and other starters at £4-£6.

Richard, Earl of Bradford founded this place 30 years ago, "aiming to fill a gap in the market," as he says on the website: traditional English food at reasonable prices. I’m guessing he’s referring to Rules, the nearly ancient standard bearer just abound the corner (where prices are essentially double that of Porter’s). From the website on, the impression is one of friendliness, welcome, and affordability.

The affordability is enhanced by several special low-price menus that require on-line booking: a 3 courses, £15 special, and an ‘Inflation Busting Deal’ that offers 2 courses for £6 or three for £8. Each has a subset of the full menu, and obviously, the cheaper menu features the cheaper dishes. I made a reservation for our first evening in London, at 7:30 on a Sunday night following a walking tour. We nearly lost our bearings at Leicester Square, but made our way to Porter’s, where a ‘who’s here’ board indicated that the Earl wasn’t there that evening. The place was a little smaller than I anticipated, with a bar and a number of small tables occupying the first floor. From the bar to the paneling to the tables, the entire restaurant was done in lighter wood. It wasn’t too full on a Sunday night, and the other patrons seemed to be a combination of Londoners and Brits on holiday.

We were seated at a round table in a corner, and I immediately ordered a Fuller’s London Pride, which tasted amazingly good after a day of transatlantic travel followed by 10 hours in London. Our server was a friendly, talkative young man whose accent and speed of speech made it hard for my kids to understand. The £6 menu didn’t hold enough choices for two of my them, but he was happy to provide other options. One went for bangers & mash, one stuck with a familiar chicken strips & chips. My wife went with fish & chips, while my oldest and I stuck with the discount menu. I considered the shepherd’s pie or salmon & prawn fish cakes before choosing the three bean, lentil & vegetable pie; my fellow bargain hunter went with the salmon. The food was hot and came relatively quickly, and the servings were pretty healthy; enough so that a few entrees went unfinished. With the exception of the chips, everyone thought their choice was pretty good. And I tasted enough of them to agree.

Sleek, ubiquitous, and—at least if you visit early—not necessarily as communal as it’s made out to be, Wagamama is a one-restaurant primer in noodles. Ramen, udon, yaki soba, teppan: if your experience is limited to pasta and three-minute ramen, Wagamama is just what you need to expand your horizons.

I remember when a student of mine returned from a semester in London 10 years ago raving about a cool new restaurant, and sporting a Wagamama t-shirt. I think he ate there several times a week, which must have been a touch more affordable than it is now. Alan Yau opened the first restaurant in 1992, and sold the ‘chain’ (then two restaurants) in 1998. He’s since gone on to new challenges (his new venture, Busabe Eathai is enjoying a similar level of popularity and expansion in London). The conglomerate-in-the-making that he left behind is certainly thriving, with nearly 25 restaurants in London and 60 more across the UK, Europe, Australia/New Zealand (and now Boston!).

Having missed out on eating here on a previous visit in 2001, and with it somehow at the top of my kids’ consciousness, I knew we’d have at least one meal here during our five-night stay. We walked back over the Millennium Bridge after a quick tea at the Tate Modern, and headed east to the Mansion House location just south of Upper Thames St.

It was early for dinner in London—only 6 pm—and the restaurant that seated nearly 200 had only about a dozen diners. The service was correspondingly prompt, and our friendly server scrawled our beverage and noodle orders on our placemats as we made our selections. We selected a couple side dishes (not starters, as the menu and server both stressed; nonetheless, he brought them before our meal). As western Michiganders (asparagus capital of the world!), we had to go for the grilled asparagus, which was excellent, and came with five perfect, large and tender stalks each seasoned with chili garlic salt and adorned with sesame seeds.

Two daughters went for a ramen dish, each of which is a big bowl of noodle-laden soup. At the table were chicken ramen, seafood ramen (stocked with tiger prawns and squid), as well as chicken kare lomen, a fairly spicy coconut-based soup. The servings were generous, and people struggled to reach the bottom of the bowl. My wife and I each ordered a version of teppan—‘noodles cooked on a hot griddle’—which is not a soup-based dish, but comes as a more than adequate serving on a large white-plate. I went for the ginger chicken udon, whose marinated chicken and thick, white egg-free udon noodles came with sprouts, onions and fresh ginger and coriander. It was probably the best thing I ate in London. My wife chose the yaki soba: wheat noodles (like ramen) with egg, chicken, shrimp, peppers and bean sprouts. It made converts among the ramen crowd, who found it a little more accessible.

Even though my youngest seemed to struggle with her ramen (and ended up dining off my wife’s yaki soba), she led the charge to return to Wagamama two nights later. Each of them went with a teppan dish (looking around the busy place, the teppan dishes seemed to be the most popular). I tried the Wagamama Ramen (go with the signature dish, right?). It was good—a vegetable soup with an assortment of fish, chicken, tofu, prawns and large Portobello caps. I was glad I tried it, but should there be a next time, I’ll move on to something else.

On this second visit (on Tavistock Street, just off the Strand and south of Covent Garden), our experience was a little different. The restaurant was the same size, but in a windowless space a story beneath the ground floor. It was full, and we waited about 15 minutes for a table (we’d given up after a similar wait at Leon down the street). It was noisy but energetic, and we splurged on the gyoza (steamed dumplings) and tori kara age (deep fried chicken pieces) as ‘side dishes’ this time. These are roughly £5 each, with entrees ranging from £6-£8.

You can spend a lot more in London, but these meals were our upper limit. Our cost each night was just shy of an unfortunately modest £12 a head, with beverages, tip and no dessert.

The Short Answer

Skip Gatwick Express; take Southern Rail or First Capital Connect into London

Get an Oyster card; don’t pay for single rides with cash

For stays of 5 days or longer, put a 7-day Travelcard on your Oyster card

For shorter stays, load money on your Oyster card and rely on daily price capping

A 7-day Travelcard may still be a better bet, since it could save you big on admissions

Consider buses for getting around, particularly if you’re trying to travel at peak times

The Long Answers
To London from Gatwick Airport
Before you travel in town, you have to get to town. I’ve flown into Gatwick on both of my trips to London. You may be tempted, as I was the first time, to follow the crowd and the advertising and take the pricey, over-hyped Gatwick Express. Don’t. There are a variety of other services that are cheaper and just as fast. Leaving the airport, we rode Southern Railway to London Victoria on a Day Saver pass: four of us traveled on one ticket for £20, and our youngest was £1 (I booked on-line a few weeks ahead before leaving home). On the return, we took First Capital Connect from London Bridge Station for £18.50. This was a pleasant surprise: based on the website, I thought it would be £40, so I was glad I hadn’t booked this before leaving. I’m guessing the difference was because we bought the tickets at the station, or because it was a Bank Holiday.

But even if it had totaled £60 altogether as I expected instead of £38, that still would have saved us money over the Gatwick Express. If you do decide to take the Express, try to take advantage of their 4-for-2 ticketing if there are three or more in your party. This deal is valid on all classes of tickets (should you want to pay even more for First Class), but must be purchased at one of the stations (not online or onboard). With 4-for-2 ticketing, our return ticket would have been £72 (and an astonishing £129.60 without that discount). These are all ‘Express Class’ tickets; there’s a £17 premium on a First Class return ticket.

The best site for summarizing all your rail options for this route (or any other in the UK), is National Rail. Their Journey Planner accesses all possible carriers for your route. And by the way, you can’t get from Gatwick to London via the Underground—that’s only possible from Heathrow.

Transport in Town: the Tube, Travelcards, and more
Oyster cards are just a method of payment, nothing more. Having one just means you’re not paying cash at each bus, tube, or tram station. They have definite advantages: almost the entire transport system is set up to use these credit-card like objects, which have RFID chips embedded in them. That includes all tube stations, where you use them to get through the turnstiles, and all buses, which have Oyster card readers on board. Do not pay cash for a ride: in order to force riders towards Oyster, there is a steep penalty for buying single-ride tickets with cash (£4 vs. £2 for a tube ride in Zones 1-2!). Normally, there’s a refundable £3 charge for an Oyster card, but it’s a pain for tourists to get back. But that £3 is waived if you purchase…

… a 7-day Travelcard (£24.10), which is probably your best bet for 5-7 days (or even less). This price gets you a card that’s good in Zones 1 & 2, which is where nearly all visitors spend nearly all their time. Even stops and locations that many consider to be outside the central region are still in Zone 2: Kensal Green, Hampstead Heath, Swiss Cottage, Greenwich.

Plus, A 7-day Travelcard can also be loaded on to your Oyster card. This is good at all times, so there’s no need to worry about whether you’re traveling at peak periods (M-F before 9:30am, the intimidating London rush hour) or off-peak (after 9:30am and all day on weekends and holidays). A 7-day card (unlike the 1-day or 3-day versions) also gives you access to the 2-for-1 admissions through www.daysoutguide.com (which may mean you should buy one even for shorter stays).

Should you go beyond Zones 1-2? If you know you’re staying in another Zone, and riding into town each day (you can save money on lodging this way), then certainly get an appropriately larger field of travel. But there’s no need to buy a card for Zones 1-6 just because you’re flying into Heathrow (in Zone 6): if your only trips beyond central London are to and from this airport, just pay for those rides separately. A single ride from Heathrow is £3.50 (on Oyster, of course), and naively adding the extra zones on your 7-day card will cost you £20 more.

But by all means, don’t fall for the London Travelpass. Yes, you can buy it before you go—but there’s no need to. It will be a Zone 1-6 card that you probably don’t need, and then you’ll be charged £6 shipping. All in all, any ‘peace of mind’ you may have by settling this issue from this side of the Atlantic will cost you dearly.

Four days or less
Now you (may) have to think about the peak/off-peak distinction. Perhaps traveling after 9:30 each morning won’t affect your plans: it baffles me, but I know that not everyone rises at the crack of dawn on vacation. But there also aren’t many attractions in London that open early. The short list includes St. Paul’s (8:30), the Tower of London (9:00, but 10:00 on Mondays), Shakespeare’s Globe (9:00), the British Library (9:30) and Westminster Abbey (9:30). That’s it; everything else opens at 10. In addition, peak time travel by Tube in London is something else. After fighting through crowds, waiting for three trains, and nearly getting separated twice, my kids were far more comfortable on morning buses.

There’s a 1- and 3-day version of the Travelcard, but I don’t think they’re worth it. There’s a peak and off-peak version of the 1-day card, but it’s peak only for the 3-day card. Neither can be loaded on an Oyster card (instead, you get the old paper-and-magnetic-strip technology). Secondly, the Oyster price capping system ensures that all your tube, bus and tram journeys will max out at £0.50 less than a 1-day Travelcard. Oyster will automatically do the calculations: if all your rides are off-peak, £4.80 will be deducted from your card; if any of your journeys were during peak times, you’ll be charged £6.30. What you miss out on with this approach is free transport on ‘London Overground’ (the new name for some rail networks in the city) and a 33% discount on river travel. If you know you’re going to take a cruise on the Thames, then definitely buy a 1-day Travelcard for that day. You probably won’t find a need to use the Overground, though.

If you’re traveling from Heathrow, loading an Oyster card is also your best bet. A day that includes a trip to or from Heathrow during off-peak times will charge your card £6.50 for all your travels that day (it’ll be a much steeper £13.30 if you make your trip before 9:30).

You can always get unused money back from a cashier at any station. I did this with my 13 year old’s Oyster, who didn’t need a Travelcard. Believe it or not, she rode all week for less than £5. But teens (or kids) and the tube are another story and another review.

Someone remarked that London Transport appears to be priced to make things as hard as possible. Just for adults, the fare structure is truly a challenge. It's not cheap, either, and if you’re traveling with a family, you’ll have another obstacle: figuring out how to move kids around town without paying full fare. Kids can get Oyster cards, too, and some ages will require a specially ordered photocard if you’d like to get their travel at reduced prices.

Under 5
These are the easy ones—the only easy ones, unfortunately. They’re just plain free, no matter where you go or what you ride, and it doesn’t take any documentation to obtain those rates. Tube, tram, bus, Overground and Docklands Light Rail are all gratis for this group.

5-10 year olds
Another step up in complexity. They can ride buses and trams free at any time, even without an adult. For the Tube, Overground and DLR, up to four kids can travel free with each adult. Riding unaccompanied on these last three modes of transport requires a 5-10 Oyster photocard.

11-15 year olds
Sigh. Soon this will be treated as just one age group. But until 31 May ’08, 11-13 year olds are free on buses & trams without a photocard (unless they ‘look older’—yikes), while 14-15 year olds must have one for free rides.

But starting 1 June, all 11-15 year olds will require an Oyster photocard for this free travel. With this card, they’ll also qualify for half-priced pay-as-you go fares on other modes of transport. But even better, they can travel the Tube, Overground and DLR for £1 a day in all zones at off-peak hours, when accompanied by an adult with a ticket. Even though they’re free, they’ll still need to use their Oyster card on each journey.

So the days we rode nothing but buses, my 13 year old was free; the days we took a Tube, it cost £1. As explained below, if you purchase a photocard, you’ll end up with £5 on it; I got money back from that initial deposit.

16-17 year olds
Unfortunately, nothing is free for this group, and any discounts require a photocard. With it, you can purchase Travelcards at half-price, and we bought a 7-day card at £12.10 for our 16 and 17 year olds. Any pay-as-you-go rides are also half-priced. Without a photocard, they’ll be adults. So you could bite the bullet and get them an ordinary Oyster card and pay full price, which is still a big savings over paying cash—but not as big as if you plan ahead and order photocards.

Ordering Photocards
Remember, this is not necessary for adults—just for kids and youth. You can request an application through the mail, but it’s easier to do it online at the Transport for London website (this page is not that easy to find; I hope this link works for you). You need to complete the application three weeks ahead of time, and must upload a passport-like photo (a simple shot-at-home pic will suffice). There’s a £5 charge per card that must be paid with a credit card, but this is given as a credit on each photocard. A complication: at this time, you need to provide a different email address for each card application.

You must also designate the Travel Information Center at which you’ll pick up the card(s). There are eight: the Underground stations at Heathrow Terminal 1/2/3, Liverpool Street, and Piccadilly Circus; Rail stations at London Victoria and Euston; Victoria Coach Station or West Croydon bus station, or at Camden Direct (opposite King’s Cross). You’ll also need to specify a day on which you’ll retrieve the cards; you’ll have two weeks from that day to get them.

Even though our hotel was closer to Liverpool Street or London Bridge Station, we arranged to come into Victoria. My thinking was that Westminster and its familiar sights were close by, and a cross-city ride on a Route 15 bus would be a fun introduction to London as we headed to the hotel. After waiting in line for 45 minutes, waiting 10 minutes while the third card was located, and then coping with a cold rainy day that fogged the bus windows, it didn’t quite work out as I’d hoped. This was just before noon on Palm Sunday at Victoria Station; I’m thinking Liverpool Street Station (or any other) would have been a better choice.

The tube is, in most parts, old. It’s not as fast as you think (average speed, stops included, is under 30 mph). It (usually) beats walking, but you’ll spend more time than you expected walking through its labyrinthine subterranean passages, particularly if you’re changing lines at a station. At peak times, you may wait for two or even three trains before there’s space to board. And your journey may be affected by closures (‘engineering works’) or out-of-service elevators (‘lifts’), forcing you into 100 or 200 step journeys to and/or from the surface (‘surface’). Finally, the tube map, for all its elegance, is far from a faithful representation of the city, so don’t assume that a tube journey is the shortest time or distance between two points. It’s worth having a traditional map that has the tube lines and stations on it as well, to ensure you don’t make any unnecessary trips.

Despite these cautions, I do like the tube. I think it’s best for longer journeys across town outside of rush hour. Heading home after the theater, or traveling the Jubilee line from St. John’s Wood to Westminster to catch a 10am ride on the London Eye were both fast, easy rides by tube. And riding it is definitely an experience that every trip to London should include.

But I’d recommend that you not make it your only or even primary form of transportation. London buses are fantastic: the network is more extensive than the tube, and the rate of travel is comparable. The Mayor’s well-known £8 congestion charge is reducing the number of cars in central London, and buses move quickly even at peak times. After our first intimidating 8:30am tube experience, we took the bus in the mornings. Buses can be full, and we did stand on occasion—but it’s nothing like the sardine-tin packing at peak tube times.

Plus, you get to see the city! Whether you’re on the first or second level of a double decker bus, you’ll see where you are and where you’re going. And wasn’t that the reason you came? And people are a little more likely to talk: we struck up several conversations on the bus; zero on the Tube.

Information at bus stops is pretty complete. They show the full extend of every route at that stop, list average time between buses, and show a map of the area around the bus stop. But you’ll want a copy of the Central London Bus Guide, which I thankfully remembered to ask for as we finished picking up our kids’ Oyster photocards the first morning. It’s worth spending a little time getting familiar with this. You can view and download the Central London Bus map or individual bus route maps. The buses run at night, too, and service is still very good.

If you have a Travelcard, it’s good on the buses, too. If you’ve simply loaded cash on an Oyster card, the system will track your travels and perform its price capping magic, ensuring that a tube+bus day caps out at £6.80/£4.50 for peak/off-peak travel. But if you stick only to the buses, single rides are £0.90 with an Oyster card, and a maximum of £3 a day: a real bargain.

Another advantage of buses: your kids can ride free. Of course, ‘kids’ in London means under 16. (Bus travel will come at half-price for 16 & 17 year olds, but only if they have Oyster photocards. Otherwise, they’ll be charged as adults.)

But for 10 and unders, no ID or pass is needed; 11-15 year olds do need an Oyster photocard for free rides (these can be ordered on-line and picked up in London; a bit of a hassle, see the ‘Kids Transport’ entry for details). But even without kid photocards, an adult with an Oyster card (or just a regular ticket) can purchase up to four off-peak child passes for £1 each that allow kids to ride bus, tube, tram and more all day.

You cannot pay cash on buses in Central London: you’ll have to have a valid ticket before you board. If it’s not an Oyster card with sufficient funds, tickets can be bought from machines at most bus stops (but they’ll cost you £2 each).

One caution: the only neighborhood where bus travel crawled to a halt was Kensington and Knightsbridge, as we tried to make our way back to Trafalgar Square mid-afternoon. My sister-in-law and family were in London a year ago, rode buses exclusively, and spent a lot of their time in this area. They came back questioning the wisdom of their decision, and I think I can see why. But we gave the buses a shot, based in part on their experience, and I’m glad we did.