United Kingdom
London
Two thousand years of capital stacked on the same ground, where the national museums are free to walk into and the theatre is the best in the English-speaking world.
London is two thousand years of city built on top of itself: a Roman river port, a walled medieval trading town, the capital of the largest empire in history and a modern financial centre, all still legible within the same few square miles and all still in use. It grew by swallowing villages rather than spreading from one square, which is why it has no real centre and why crossing it feels like changing countries every twenty minutes, a Georgian terrace giving way to a Bangladeshi high street, the Tower of London sitting under glass towers. The great national museums and galleries charge nothing to walk into, the parks are enormous and genuinely used, and the theatre, the live music and the eating are as good as anywhere on earth. It is expensive, crowded and often grey, and it will absorb a week without repeating itself.
Suggested stay
4–7 days
Language
English
Currency
GBP
Timezone
UTC+1
Why you'll love London
The museums the big national collections charge nothing at the door, hold objects that shaped how the world understands itself, and are close enough together that you can drop into one for forty minutes on the way somewhere else instead of treating it as an expedition.
The layering a Roman wall, a Norman keep, a plague-era church, a Georgian square, a Victorian railway shed and a glass tower inside one afternoon's walk, nearly all of it still working rather than fenced off as heritage.
Stages and stages the densest concentration of theatres in the English-speaking world, running everything from centuries-old plays to work that opened last month, plus a live music circuit deep enough that touring bands play the city twice.
Parks and villages unfenced royal parks and genuinely wild heath in the middle of the city, and neighbourhoods that still behave like separate towns, each with its own high street, market and pubs.
Best time to visit
Apr-Sep
Spring · 15-24° days
51.507° N, 0.128° W
UTC+1 · Europe/London
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Weather & when to go to London
Month by month: typical highs and lows, rainfall and rain days.
✓ Best Apr-Sep
Conditions Jan Cold & grey · Feb Cold · Mar Mild · Apr Spring · May Mild · Jun-Aug Warm · Sep Mild · Oct Cool autumn · Nov Cold & wet · Dec Cold & grey
Cards tinted by verified verdict · big number = typical daily high, small = low · hover for conditions
When to avoid London
There is no bad season here, only trade-offs: summer is the warmest and by far the busiest and priciest, and winter is less about cold than about darkness, with the light gone before four in the afternoon and long stretches of flat grey between. The real quirk to plan around is Christmas, when the transport network stops entirely on the day itself - no underground trains, no buses, almost no national rail - and a great many museums, restaurants and attractions close for two or three days around it. Engineering works also shut chunks of the rail network over the spring and late-summer holiday weekends, so check before you rely on a line.
Top things to do in London
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The British Museum - the world in one building, free at the door
history culture arts 👍 PopularThe Rosetta Stone, the Parthenon sculptures, Assyrian palace reliefs, the Sutton Hoo helmet and the Lewis chessmen, arranged around a courtyard that was a hidden inner yard for a century and a half until it was roofed in glass. It is far too big for one visit and much the best way to use it is to pick two or three galleries and come back another day, since walking in costs nothing. Go at opening or late in the afternoon; the Egyptian rooms are the crush point. The contested ownership of several of the headline pieces is a live argument and worth knowing about before you stand in front of them.
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Tower of London - a Norman keep, the Crown Jewels and nine hundred years of bad news
history 👍 PopularWilliam the Conqueror's White Tower still stands at the middle of it, ringed by later walls and a drained moat, and the complex has served as fortress, palace, mint, menagerie, armoury, records office and, most famously, prison and place of execution. The Crown Jewels pass by on a moving walkway, the Yeoman Warder tours are genuinely good and included, and the ravens are a staffed institution with names and a keeper. Allow half a day and book ahead: the queue at the gate on a summer morning is the worst in the city.
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Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament - the state's own stage set
history culture arts 👍 PopularEvery English and British coronation since 1066 has happened in the abbey, and it doubles as a national burial ground and memorial: monarchs, Newton and Darwin, and a poets' corner that is exactly what it sounds like. Next door, the Palace of Westminster is a Victorian gothic fantasy raised after fire destroyed the medieval palace, keeping Westminster Hall and its vast hammerbeam roof from the original building. Both can be toured, Parliament runs tours when the Houses are not sitting, and the clock tower with the great bell in it is climbable by advance booking if you can manage several hundred steps.
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The South Bank - walk the river from Westminster to Tower Bridge
scenic culture arts ⭐ Highly recommendedThe best orientation walk in London and almost all of it traffic-free on a continuous riverside path: Parliament across the water, a giant observation wheel, the concrete terraces of the postwar arts centre, secondhand book stalls under a bridge, a reconstructed Elizabethan playhouse, a power station full of modern art, a food market under railway arches and a Victorian bascule bridge at the far end. Two hours at a stroll, four if you keep stopping, just as good after dark when the whole north bank is lit, and it costs nothing.
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The West End - theatre most nights, and not only the long-runners
culture arts nightlife music ⭐ Highly recommendedAround forty commercial theatres inside a few streets, plus the subsidised houses on the river and in Bloomsbury that do the serious new work, so on any given evening you can choose between a musical that has run for decades, a revived classic with a screen actor in it, and a play that opened last month. Day seats and standing tickets go on sale cheaply on the morning of the performance at many houses, returns queues genuinely work, and the official discount booth on the square is the one to trust. Book the hits weeks out; almost everything else you can decide on the day.
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Tate Modern - a power station turned over to modern art
culture artsGiles Gilbert Scott's brick riverside power station, decommissioned and reopened as the national collection of international modern art, with the enormous turbine hall left empty for one commissioned installation at a time. The permanent collection is free and hung thematically rather than by date, the viewing level at the top of the newer extension has one of the best free views in London, and a footbridge takes you straight across the river to the cathedral.
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St Paul's Cathedral - Wren's dome and the whispering gallery
history culture artsBuilt after the Great Fire and, at the time, the most ambitious building in the country: a dome that is really three shells nested inside one another, with a spiral climb through them to a gallery where a whisper against the wall carries all the way round, then out onto external galleries and a view down the river. It survived the Blitz while everything around it burned, an image that became the defining photograph of the British war, and it still does the state funerals. Services are free to attend; sightseeing is ticketed.
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The National Gallery and Trafalgar Square - Western painting, free, in the middle of town
culture arts historyVan Eyck's Arnolfini portrait, Velazquez's Rokeby Venus, Turner's old warship being towed away to the breakers and a room of Impressionists, all free and all a short walk from most of the West End. The square outside is the closest thing London has to a civic centre, with a fourth plinth carrying a rotating contemporary commission beside the permanent bronzes, and the National Portrait Gallery around the corner is the better visit if you would rather look at people than at paintings.
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The Victoria and Albert Museum - the world's biggest museum of design
culture arts historySeven miles of galleries covering everything people have made and then decorated: cast courts holding full-size plaster copies of Trajan's column and a cathedral portal, Raphael's tapestry cartoons, ironwork, jewellery, fashion from the eighteenth century to last season, and Islamic, Chinese, Japanese and South Asian collections that would be a national museum anywhere else. Free like the others, with a garden courtyard to sit out in, and the natural history and science museums are next door, which makes this corner of town the standing wet-weather plan for a family.
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Borough Market - the oldest food market in the city, under the railway
foodA wholesale market on this ground for a thousand years and a retail one for the last thirty, packed under Victorian iron and glass beside Southwark Cathedral: raclette scraped onto potatoes, salt beef, oysters, a great deal of very good cheese and bread, and traders who actually make what they sell standing alongside the ones who only assemble it. Weekday mornings are for shopping and a decent lunch; Saturday is shoulder to shoulder from mid-morning. The small restaurants and old pubs in the surrounding lanes are half the reason to come.
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Hampstead Heath - swimming ponds and the best free view in London
nature wildlife scenicEight hundred acres of unmanicured hill, wood and meadow in the north of the city, with three natural bathing ponds open all year to anyone prepared for cold water, and a summit at Parliament Hill where the whole skyline lines up on the horizon. This is where Londoners go rather than visitors, the pubs around the village edges are old and good, and the neoclassical house at the top of the heath holds a small free collection with a Rembrandt self-portrait and a Vermeer in it.
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Greenwich - the meridian, the observatory and a tea clipper in dry dock
history scenicDownriver by boat or on the driverless light railway: a baroque naval hospital with a painted hall that took nineteen years to finish, the national maritime museum, the last of the tea clippers propped up in dry dock, and above them a park climbing to the observatory where the prime meridian is a line in the ground and the time ball still drops at one o'clock. The covered market in the middle is worth an hour, and the view back at the towers of the financial district from the hilltop is the classic one.
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The royal parks - Hyde Park, St James's and Regent's Park
nature wildlife scenicFormer royal hunting grounds kept open and unfenced through the middle of the city: a lake you can swim and row on, a speakers' corner where anyone may still stand up and talk, pelicans on an island with the best view of the palace down the water, and a park in the north with an open-air theatre, a canal and the zoo. They are the reason central London does not feel like a downtown, and walking between them is usually faster and always nicer than taking the bus.
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Columbia Road, Brick Lane and Portobello - the weekend market circuit
shopping foodMarkets are a London weekend habit. One east London street is given over to flower traders on Sunday mornings, shouted at volume and finished by early afternoon; the Bangladeshi high street beside it runs vintage clothing, curry houses and a bagel shop at the top that never closes; and a mile of antiques, produce and clothing stalls takes over a Notting Hill street on Saturdays. Go early, carry some cash for the small traders, and treat the surrounding side streets as part of the visit.
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The pubs - the city's actual living rooms
food nightlife musicLondon drinks in public houses rather than bars, and the good ones run from tiled Victorian gin palaces with etched glass and snugs, to seventeenth-century coaching inns down alleys off the old city streets, to plain corner locals with a fire and a dog. Cask ale served cool rather than cold is the thing to try, you order and pay at the bar rather than waiting for service, and the food has quietly become very good wherever the kitchen is taken seriously. Many pubs in the financial district close at weekends when the offices empty, which catches visitors out.
Best areas to stay in London
$ Budget $$ Mid-range $$$ Premium
Bloomsbury and King's Cross
First-time visitors $$Georgian squares, museums and student streets
Explore hotels in Bloomsbury and King's Cross →
Covent Garden and Soho
Theatre and nightlife $$$Theatreland, restaurants and late-night noise
Explore hotels in Covent Garden and Soho →
South Bank and Waterloo
Riverside walkers $$Riverside arts complex facing Westminster
Explore hotels in South Bank and Waterloo →
South Kensington and Knightsbridge
Families and museums $$$Museum quarter of white stucco terraces
Explore hotels in South Kensington and Knightsbridge →
Shoreditch and Spitalfields
Nightlife and markets $$Old East End warehouses turned bars
Explore hotels in Shoreditch and Spitalfields →
Live nightly prices from Booking.com, Agoda and others, centred on London
Getting to & around London
Getting there
Fly into Heathrow and take the Elizabeth line or the Piccadilly line straight into the centre in well under an hour; the other four airports sit further out but each has a fast train or coach into a central terminus.
Flight
Heathrow Airport (LHR)
Heathrow lies about twenty-four kilometres west of the centre and is where most long-haul arrivals land. Three rail options run from under the terminals: the Elizabeth line, which is the sensible default and carries on east through Paddington and across the middle of the city; the Piccadilly line, slower with many stops but the cheapest and useful if you are staying anywhere along it; and a non-stop express to Paddington that is quickest and by some distance dearest. All three take a contactless card or phone at the gate, so there is nothing to buy first. Taxis and rideshares take around an hour into the centre, considerably longer in the afternoon peak. Of the others, Gatwick runs fast trains to Victoria and through the centre, Stansted and Luton run express services to Liverpool Street and to St Pancras, and City Airport is the only one actually inside London, a few minutes from the financial district on the light railway.
Train
King's Cross, Euston, Paddington, Victoria, Waterloo, Liverpool Street
London has no single central station: a dozen or so terminals ring the middle of the city, each serving its own part of the country, with the Underground linking them. Trains for Edinburgh and the north east leave King's Cross, for Birmingham, Manchester and Glasgow from Euston, for the West Country and south Wales from Paddington, for the south coast from Victoria and Waterloo, and for Cambridge and East Anglia from Liverpool Street. Book well ahead: walk-up tickets bought on the day are the most expensive way to travel in Britain.
Eurostar
St Pancras International
Tunnel trains run from St Pancras to Paris in around two and a quarter hours, to Brussels in under two, and direct to Amsterdam. Border and security checks happen before boarding, so arrive well ahead rather than strolling up to the platform. The same building holds the Underground and the fast domestic services into Kent, and King's Cross is immediately next door.
Coach
Victoria Coach Station
The national coach network reaches almost every town in Britain and arrives behind Victoria station, a short walk from the rail terminus and the Underground. It is much slower than the train and much cheaper, and overnight services from Scotland and the far south west trade a night's sleep for a night's room.
Drive
Avoid it if you can. The orbital motorway rings the city and every major route feeds into it, but the centre carries a weekday congestion charge, the whole of Greater London sits inside an emissions zone that charges older vehicles daily, parking is metered, scarce and enforced hard, and nothing worth seeing is easier by car. If you are arriving by road, leave the car at an outer Underground station and ride in.
Getting around
Walking
Central London is smaller than the Underground map suggests and visitors routinely take trains between stations that are three minutes apart on the surface. The river, the parks and the old street pattern make it a rewarding city on foot, and pavements are continuous almost everywhere.
Free
Underground
Eleven colour-coded lines, frequent enough that a timetable is pointless, running from early morning to just after midnight with all-night service on several lines on Friday and Saturday. Stand on the right on escalators, keep left in the tunnels, and be aware that the deep lines get uncomfortably warm in a hot spell because there is no way to air-condition them. Some interchanges involve a long walk underground.
TBC
Bus
The red double-deckers cover far more of the city than the Underground and the front seat upstairs is the best sightseeing in London for the price of a fare. No cash is accepted at all: tap a card or phone as you board and do not tap off. Slow in traffic, but the fastest way to learn how the city fits together, and the night network is extensive.
TBC
Elizabeth line, Overground and national rail
The suburban rail network is the half of London transport that visitors overlook. The Elizabeth line crosses the city underground with big fast trains, the orbital Overground stitches the inner suburbs together without going through the centre, and ordinary commuter trains run from the terminals to Greenwich, Richmond, Hampton Court and Kew. Your contactless card works on all of it inside London.
TBC
Docklands Light Railway
Driverless trains through the old docks and the towers of Canary Wharf, then under the river to Greenwich and the eastern edges. Sit at the very front where the driver's cab would be, which is the best view in the transport system and free with any fare.
TBC
Cycle hire
Docked hire bikes stand at ranks all over the centre, with app-hired e-bikes scattered alongside them. The network of segregated cycleways has grown a great deal and the main routes along the river and east to west are genuinely good; the back streets are calm, but the big junctions and lorry traffic still demand confidence.
TBC
Black cabs and rideshare
Licensed cabs can be hailed on the street whenever the roof light is on, and their drivers pass the Knowledge, an examination on the city's street layout that takes years to prepare for. They take cards, they are dearer than the app services, and both are slow through central traffic. All of them are quicker than nothing at three in the morning.
TBC
River bus
Commuter catamarans run the Thames between Putney in the west and Woolwich in the east, stopping at most of the riverside piers. Not the fastest way anywhere, but a working service rather than a cruise, and the best way to see the city between Westminster and Greenwich.
TBC
Day trips from London
Oxford
Full dayUniversity city
Forty or so colleges built around quadrangles and locked behind gatehouses, several of which open to visitors: a circular domed reading room, a dining hall that has stood in for a rather more famous fictional one, a cabinet-of-curiosities museum with shrunken heads and a natural history hall built like a cathedral to iron and glass. Punting on the river and a walk around the meadows fill an afternoon, and the covered market and the old pubs handle lunch. Everything is within walking distance of the station.
Getting there
train | bus | walk
About 1 hr by train from Paddington or Marylebone
Cambridge
Full dayColleges and punting
Flatter, smaller and greener than Oxford, and arranged along one stretch of river where the grandest colleges back onto lawns and bridges known collectively as the Backs. The perpendicular chapel with its fan vault is one of the great rooms in England and its choir sings evensong most days in term. Punting here is the classic version, either self-poled into the reeds or with a student doing the work, and the university's own museums are free and idiosyncratic.
Getting there
train | walk
45 min to 1 hr 20 by train from King's Cross or Liverpool Street
Bath
Full dayGeorgian spa city
A Roman bathing complex fed by the only hot spring in Britain, preserved almost intact below street level, with a honey-coloured Georgian city built above and around it: a crescent of townhouses on the hill, a circus of identical facades, a bridge lined with shops. It became the fashionable resort of the eighteenth century and Jane Austen's territory, and the compact centre means a full day covers the baths, the abbey, the crescents and a walk up to the skyline path.
Getting there
train | walk
About 1 hr 25 by train from Paddington
Windsor
Half dayCastle and river town
The oldest continuously inhabited castle in the world and still a working royal residence, with state apartments, a doll's house made at architectural scale, and a gothic chapel holding the tombs of a good many monarchs. The town below is small and geared to visitors, the Long Walk stretches straight out through the park for miles, and Eton is over the footbridge. Easily combined with an afternoon back in London.
Getting there
train | walk
About 30-60 min by train from Paddington via Slough, or direct from Waterloo
Brighton
Full daySeaside and lanes
London's seaside, an hour down the line: a shingle beach, a pier of fairground rides, and an absurd oriental-domed royal pleasure palace in the middle of town, built by a prince regent with no restraint whatsoever. The tangle of narrow lanes behind the seafront holds vintage shops, record shops and cafes, the city is the most cheerfully bohemian in the south of England, and the trains back run late enough for dinner.
Getting there
train | walk
About 1 hr by train from Victoria, London Bridge or St Pancras
Stonehenge and Salisbury
Full dayNeolithic stone circle
The stones are smaller than the photographs suggest and the experience is a walk on a path around them rather than among them, but standing on that chalk plateau in front of a five-thousand-year-old alignment does its work anyway, and the visitor centre explains a landscape of barrows and avenues that spreads for miles around. Pair it with Salisbury, which has the tallest spire in Britain, a medieval close and one of the four surviving original copies of Magna Carta.
Getting there
train | bus | tour
About 1 hr 30 by train to Salisbury then a shuttle bus, or a direct coach tour
Canterbury
Full dayCathedral city
The seat of English Christianity since the sixth century, with a cathedral that holds Norman crypt, gothic nave and the spot where Thomas Becket was murdered by knights who thought they were doing the king a favour, which turned the place into medieval Europe's great pilgrimage destination and gave English literature its first road trip. The walled centre is small, half-timbered and crossed by a river with punts on it, and the Roman museum sits beneath the modern street.
Getting there
train | walk
About 1 hr by high-speed train from St Pancras
A little history of London
London begins as a Roman decision. Around the year 47 the invading army bridged the Thames at the lowest point where a bridge was practical and the highest point ocean-going ships could reach, and a supply port called Londinium grew at the junction. Boudica burned it to the ground about thirteen years later; it was rebuilt bigger, walled in stone, and the line of that wall still shapes the boundary of the financial district today. When Rome withdrew the city emptied, and the Saxons traded from a settlement slightly upriver until Viking raids pushed them back inside the old walls under Alfred. In 1066 William the Conqueror was crowned at Westminster and promptly built a stone keep at the eastern end of the city, less to defend it than to make a point to its citizens. That double centre never went away: the merchants and their self-governing City at one end, the crown and its government at Westminster upriver, a couple of miles and a great deal of argument apart. Medieval London was a walled town of guilds, a bridge crowded with houses, and recurrent catastrophe, and its worst two arrived within a year of each other, a plague in 1665 that killed perhaps a fifth of the population and a fire in 1666 that destroyed most of the walled city in four days.
The rebuilding after the fire gave the city Wren's churches and the dome of St Paul's, and the eighteenth century pushed west into the squares and terraces that aristocratic landowners laid out on their estates, a pattern still visible in the street names. Empire and the docks then made it the largest city on earth by the middle of the nineteenth century, and also the filthiest: cholera epidemics and a summer of unbearable stench from the river in 1858 finally forced Parliament to fund the sewers and embankments that still do the job, and the world's first underground railway opened five years later. German bombing between 1940 and 1941 killed tens of thousands of Londoners and gutted the East End and the docks, and the rebuilding that followed was uneven and often bleak. What genuinely remade the city was migration, from the Caribbean arrivals of the late 1940s onward and from South Asia, Africa, eastern Europe and everywhere else since, which is why the modern city speaks several hundred languages and eats accordingly. The docks closed in the 1960s and 1970s, unable to handle containers, and were rebuilt as a second financial district of towers; the population fell for decades and has since climbed back past its pre-war peak.
Roman Londinium is founded as a bridgehead and port at the lowest bridgeable point of the Thames.
Boudica's revolt burns the settlement to the ground; it is rebuilt and later enclosed by a stone wall.
Alfred the Great re-establishes the city inside the old Roman walls as a defence against Viking raids.
William the Conqueror is crowned at Westminster Abbey; construction of the White Tower follows.
The Black Death reaches London and kills a large share of its people within two years.
The Great Plague, the last major outbreak in England, empties the city.
The Great Fire destroys most of the walled city in four days; Wren rebuilds the churches and St Paul's.
The Great Stink forces Parliament to commission Bazalgette's sewer system and the Thames embankments.
The world's first underground railway opens between Paddington and Farringdon.
The Blitz kills tens of thousands and destroys much of the East End, the docks and the old City.
The Empire Windrush docks at Tilbury, marking the start of the postwar migration that reshaped the city.
The closed docks are redeveloped as Canary Wharf, a second financial district of towers east of the centre.
The Olympic Games are staged in the Lea valley, regenerating a large stretch of east London.
Know before you go
Payment
Cards everywhere
English
Everywhere
Wifi
Reliable
Power
Type G
230 V, 50 Hz
Dialing
+44
Mobile network & SIM card
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FAQs about London
▸ When is the best time to visit London?
April to September is the pick, and the shoulders of it are the sweet spot: late April and May bring long light, blossom in the squares and parks that fill up overnight, while September holds the warmth after the summer crowds have gone. July and August are the warmest and the busiest, with real queues at the headline sights and room rates to match. The rest of the year is not bad so much as dim, with the light gone before four in December, but the museums, theatres and pubs are all indoors and all at their best when it is dark outside, and the city is cheaper and calmer then.
▸ How many days do you need?
Four days covers the famous things without running. Five to seven is the honest number for a first visit: it lets you give a proper morning each to two or three of the big museums rather than speed-walking them, keeps an evening free for theatre, allows a day out to Oxford, Cambridge or the coast, and leaves a Sunday for the markets, which are the best thing the city does on the day everything else is quiet. London also repays a slow second visit more than almost anywhere, because the interesting part is the neighbourhoods rather than the monuments.
▸ Is London expensive?
Yes, and mostly it is the bed. Accommodation is the painful line, and it is worth trading a fashionable postcode for a well-connected one. The rest can be managed: the national museums and galleries charge nothing, the parks and river walks are free, transport is reasonable if you tap the same card every time and let the daily cap do its work, and the markets and the enormous range of immigrant-run kitchens across the inner suburbs feed you very well for very little. Where budgets actually go is eating and drinking in the centre at dinner time, and theatre tickets bought late.
▸ Do I still need an Oyster card?
Not really. A contactless bank card or a phone tapped on the yellow reader gets the same fares and the same automatic daily and weekly caps, so an Oyster only earns its keep if your card is not contactless, if you would rather keep a pile of small charges off it, or if you are buying for a child. The rules that matter are simple: use the same card for every tap, touch in and out on trains and the Underground, and touch in only on buses.
▸ Which airport should I fly into?
Heathrow if you have the choice, because it is the closest of the big ones and the Elizabeth line runs from under the terminals into the middle of the city. Gatwick is a perfectly good second, with fast trains to Victoria and through the centre. Stansted and Luton are the budget-airline airports, well over an hour out and awkward late at night, so weigh the transfer against what looks like a cheap fare. City Airport is the only one inside London and much the fastest to get out of, but it flies mostly short-haul European and domestic routes.
▸ Is London walkable, or should I take the Tube everywhere?
Both, and visitors overuse the Underground. The famous map is a diagram rather than a geography, and there are pairs of stations one stop apart that are a three-minute walk on the surface. The centre is compact: Westminster to St Paul's along the river is a comfortable stroll, and the royal parks chain most of the west end together. Use the Underground to cross the city, take a bus for anything within a couple of miles when you are not in a hurry, and walk the rest.
▸ What is the rain actually like?
Overstated. London is grey more often than it is wet, and it takes less rain over the year than Rome, Sydney or New York, but it arrives as drizzle and cloud spread thinly across all twelve months rather than as downpours, which is why people remember it. October and November are the wettest stretch and midwinter the greyest. A hooded jacket beats an umbrella on a windy street, and there is no season here dry enough to leave one behind.
▸ Does anything shut over Christmas?
More than you would expect. There is no public transport at all on Christmas Day: no Underground, no buses, no light railway and effectively no national rail, and services are thin on Boxing Day too. Many museums, restaurants and attractions close for two or three days around it, so check opening times rather than assuming. The city itself is oddly lovely and empty that week if you plan on walking or a pre-booked taxi. Rail engineering works also close whole lines over the Easter and late-summer holiday weekends.
▸ Is London good with children?
Unusually good, and a lot of it is free. The natural history, science and design museums stand in a row in the same street and cost nothing to enter, the parks have playgrounds, boating lakes and deer, the top deck of a bus is an attraction in its own right, and the fortress, the observatory and the tall-ship-and-meridian end of Greenwich are built for short attention spans. The practical drawbacks are stairs and no lifts at many older Underground stations, and hotel rooms too small for four people.
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