Essential London Travel Guide: Explore the Best of London

Intro

As part of our epic Europe journey this past winter, we spent 5 days in the heart of the UK: London. In those few days, we visited many iconic attractions, tasted a variety of food, and walked 100k steps in the streets of London. Here is our London travel guide for you, in which we reflect on the highlights of our trip and offer our honest review on various food places. At the end, we will provide you with a sample itinerary for 4 days in London.

Guides

Transportation

Getting around London cannot be easier with the universal adoption of ‘tap to pay’. On our trip, we used the tube, public buses, Thameslink, and the Thames Uberboat — all of which supported ‘tap to pay’. Usually, you are required to tap in and tap out at the gate; however, you do not need to tap out for buses. Just make sure the credit card you are using does not have foreign transaction fees, and you are good to go.

While doing expenses at the end of our trip, one thing we noticed was that the buses cost a lot less compared to the tube. So we highly recommend you to take the bus whenever you can to save money and enjoy the street views. One more reason to take the bus: all of them in London are the iconic red double-deckers!

Museums

One of the best activities to do in London is to visit museums. The city offers a huge range of interesting museums, featuring topics like art, science, history, and transportation, … and the best part is that most museums are completely free. Some of the most famous museums include the British Museum, National Art Gallery, Natural History Museum, and Tate Modern. On our trip, we visited the British Museum and the Maritime Museum, and we highly recommend visiting both.

Although most of the museums are free, it is advised to make a free reservation online to avoid waiting in line. We decided to visit the British Museum at the last minute on a rainy day without a prior reservation and had to wait in line for about 20 minutes. The Maritime Museum, on the other hand, had a lot fewer people; nevertheless, it was still a great museum to visit while we were in Greenwich. 

Football Match / Stadium Tour

If you are remotely close to being a football fan or just a sports fan in general, you absolutely need to watch a Premier League game! London currently has 7 Premier League teams, and the ticket price falls in a wide range depending on the fixture. Most teams have paid membership, and they release tickets first to their members before any remaining tickets go to the public. These tickets can resell for very high prices on third-party ticket sites. We gave up on Arsenal tickets fairly quickly and settled for a West Ham game, which did not disappoint at all. The atmosphere was spectacular, with fans singing and cheering non-stop, willing the Hammers to a convincing 3-0 win against the Wolves.

A Stadium Tour is another great way to visit the stadium on non-match days. The most popular tour in London is probably the Arsenal stadium tour, followed by Tottenham. We chose to go to Arsenal because it boasts the richest history and has an extensive trophy collection. The tour is self-guided with an audio guide, and it was super worth it. We got to see the VIP club and the players’ locker room. We even walked through the tunnel entrance! 

Food

Terry’s Breakfast

Address: 158 Great Suffolk St, London SE1 0DT, United Kingdom

Terry’s Cafe is a small breakfast cafe located on the south bank. It was mentioned on various Reddit posts as the best English breakfast in London. We ordered “The Works”, “The Hamlet”, and “The Blowout” along with English breakfast tea. “The Works” contains Cumberland sausage, fried egg, bacon, bubble & squeak (cabbage hash brown), black pudding, baked beans, grilled/tinned tomatoes & mushrooms. “The Hamlet” and “The Blowout” each contain one less item. The portions are quite big and a full British breakfast should really be considered as an American brunch. The cafe is well-decorated with antiques, pictures, and plates. We visited it on a cold rainy morning, and the warm breakfast and the cozy vibe definitely brightened up our mood.

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Dishoom

Address (multiple locations): 12 Upper St Martin’s Ln, London WC2H 9FB, United Kingdom

Dishoom was the restaurant that was most recommended to us by our friends and our own research. The UK is known for its good Indian cuisine, and Dishoom is the crown jewel of London Indian food. On the first day, we arrived in London, we tried to line up for it and were told the wait was more than 2 hours. So we tried again on a different night at 10 pm and finally got a table. Going into the restaurant, our expectations were pretty high, but the dishes at Dishoom managed to exceed our amped-up expectations. We ordered the garlic naan, house black daal, chicken tikka masala, and chicken berry britannia. Every single dish was amazing! I will let the picture of the clean plate do the talking.

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Nando’s

Address (multiple locations): 9-10 Southampton Pl, London WC1A 2EA, United Kingdom

Nando’s is a British classic — everyone from our taxi driver to YouTube stars like Beta Squad raves about it. The chain restaurant originated in South Africa, and it is a mash-up between Portuguese and African cuisine. The menu offers many options, but the most popular option is the PERi-PERi chicken combo, where you can pick a main chicken dish with the desirable spice level and one or two sides. We ordered a ½ chicken combo, a boneless chicken breast combo, and a 3 chicken thighs combo with a few different sides. The chicken thighs were by far the best, and some of our favorite sides were dirty rice, PERi mac, Halloumi Sticks & Chili Jam.

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Padella

Address (multiple locations): 6 Southwark St, London SE1 1TQ, United Kingdom

Padella is a small pasta bar serving fresh, hand-rolled pasta. We were fortunate to try it during our visit to the Borough’s market. We were seated at the bar seats and got a great view of the chefs at work. Each pasta dish is created with fresh pasta, tossed into perfection with the sauce. Their award-winning dish is the “Pici cacio e pepe”. We ordered that along with the “Tagliarini with dried chili, garlic, and pangrattato (breadcrumb)”, and the “Papperdella with 8 hours Dexter beef shin ragu”. All three were amazing! The cacio e pepe was rich and creamy, the dried chili, garlic, and pangrattato sauce was bright and tangy, and the ragu sauce was packed with flavor. Do be aware that Padella is more of a bar, so the serving sizes are not too big. But if you do visit the Borough’s market location and plan to try a few places, we highly recommend adding a stop at Padella.

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Golden Chippy

Address: 62 Greenwich High Rd, London SE10 8LF, UK

We cannot leave the UK without trying fish and chips. We decided to stop by Golden Chippy on our day in Greenwich, after seeing tons of YouTube videos featuring the store (Food Insider video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4QrSF0sb-yM). We ordered a cod and a rock. Both were thick, crunchy and crispy. The fish was served with a full plate of fried potato, salad, and a jar of tartar sauce. The tartar sauce was definitely our favorite part of the meal. The owner was really nice and greeted us warmly. We were seated by the host but later realized getting the takeout option was much cheaper. And to be honest, you really don’t need to have fish n chips sitting down.

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The Wolseley

Address: 160 Piccadilly, St. James’s, London W1J 9EB, United Kingdom

Afternoon tea is another British classic. While there are many great options in London, we ended up making a reservation at the Wolseley because of the good reviews and its reasonable pricing. The Wolseley serves classic afternoon tea sets, with tea, scones, finger sandwiches, and small pastries. The three of us ordered two full sets, and it was the perfect amount of food for us. We especially enjoyed the scones with jam and clotted cream.

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Sample Itinerary

There’s really no right or wrong way to plan out an itinerary. Our approach is to always group things by location to save time and money on commuting. European cities in general are best seen and felt on foot, so we averaged about 23k steps a day while in London. Lastly, we typically don’t make reservations (dining and attractions) ahead of time because we prefer to stay flexible and spend more time exploring. Of course, exceptions apply because there are places where you should definitely make reservations. 

Given our traveling philosophy, here is what we recommend for a 4-day itinerary in London. This is a slightly modified version of our actual itinerary. The numbering of the day is not prescriptive and can be easily rearranged. Day 3 and Day 4 are purposely scheduled loosely allowing for flexibility and can be catered to personal interests.