London Travel Guide: what to see, prices and tickets (2026)
How to plan London in 2, 3 or 4 days: itineraries, the Tower of London, St Paul's and the London Eye with 2026 prices, the transport cap, what to book ahead and what a day costs.
London in an afternoon: the summary that decides the trip
London is huge, and on a first visit you feel it. The good news is that the city clicks into place fast if you accept one thing: you do not visit it, you spread it out by area. Everything that matters sits within a ten-minute walk of Westminster, the South Bank and the City, and the best plan of all is the free museums.
The bad news is the price. London uses the pound sterling (£) and it is one of the most expensive cities in Europe, especially for hotels and restaurants. Transport is reasonable though, as long as you know two things: you pay by contactless card, and there is a daily cap, so from the fourth or fifth journey of the day you stop paying.
One number to keep in mind: the daily cap in zones 1 and 2 is £8.90, so if you make three or four journeys a day, transport ends up costing about the price of a single ticket. With that sorted, the two expensive things you actually want, the London Eye and a proper afternoon tea, stop feeling painful.
What to book before you leave home
| Attraction | 2026 price | How to book |
|---|---|---|
| Tower of London | Adults £37, ages 5 to 15 £18.50, under 5s free | Online at hrp.org.uk. The Yeoman Warder tour is included and runs every 45 minutes |
| St Paul’s Cathedral | Adults £27, ages 5 to 17 £10.50 | Online at stpauls.co.uk, with date and time. Monday to Saturday; no sightseeing on Sundays |
| London Eye | From £29 per adult. Under 3s free | Online at londoneye.com, which is cheaper and allows date changes |
| Westminster Abbey | Around £31 per adult | Timed entry only, at westminster-abbey.org |
| Royal Observatory, Greenwich | Adults £24, ages 4 to 15 £12, students £18 | Online at rmg.co.uk. Booking ahead is recommended to guarantee entry |
| Sky Garden | Free | Timed slot, bookable several weeks ahead at skygarden.london. Slots go quickly |
| London Pass | From £99 for 1 day, £139 for 2, £169 for 3, up to £259 for 10 | Digital, in the Go City app. Over a hundred attractions, with the two-day bus and 24-hour river boat included |
One detail about the Tower of London that saves time: the Yeoman Warder tour, the uniformed custodian who takes you around, is included in the ticket and leaves every 45 minutes. It is the best part of the castle and costs nothing extra, but it does fill up: if you have a timed slot, take it as soon as you walk in.
Itineraries: London in 2, 3 or 4 days
The short version works if you stick to one area a day. Mixing Westminster, the City and Notting Hill into a single day is the mistake that wears people down most, because you lose an hour to the tube in between.
Two days: the essentials
- Day 1, Westminster and the river: Big Ben, the Houses of Parliament, the square in front of Westminster Abbey, lunch at Borough Market and the London Eye in the afternoon. If you still have energy, walk over Westminster Bridge.
- Day 2, the City: the Tower of London first thing, Tower Bridge next door, St Paul’s a couple of streets away and the cathedral to close the day.
Three days: the full version, comfortably
Add a day for the free museums. The British Museum and the National Gallery can both be done without rushing, but each takes half a day. Pick one for the morning and the National Gallery after lunch. If you have three and a half days, choose one big museum rather than two medium ones: at five in the afternoon, one museum done well wins.
The third day is the one for the neighbourhoods. Notting Hill and Portobello Road in the morning, Covent Garden for lunch, and the Sky Garden or the Shard in the afternoon to finish the day looking at the city from above.
Four days: with an excursion
The fourth day is for getting out of London. Windsor is half an hour away by train and you can see the whole castle in one morning, which makes it the short option. Oxford is an hour from Paddington and is best walked through, college after college, with the Ashmolean Museum free. If you would rather have open countryside, the Cotswolds need a full day.
Either one works, but do not try to combine them: trains to Windsor run every few minutes and to Oxford every half hour, so giving each its own day is what makes them enjoyable. Coming back the same evening is not optional, because sleeping outside London only makes sense if the destination is further away.
What getting around costs, and what a day costs
Transport: contactless and the daily cap
Forget paper. In London you pay by contactless card, with your phone or with a physical card, always the same one for the whole day: if you use your watch in the morning and your bank card in the evening, the system will not join them up and the cap will not work properly.
The cap is calculated over a window that starts at 04:30 and ends at 04:29 the next day, not by calendar day. And there is one detail that punishes the careless: on the tube, DLR, Overground, Elizabeth line and National Rail you must touch in and touch out on every journey. On buses and trams you only touch in, but then that cap does not combine with the tube.
| Zones you travel in | Daily cap | Monday to Sunday cap |
|---|---|---|
| Zone 1 only | £8.90 | £44.70 |
| Zones 1 and 2 | £8.90 | £44.70 |
| Zones 1 to 3 | £10.50 | £52.50 |
| Zones 1 to 4 | £12.80 | £64.20 |
| Zones 1 to 5 | £15.30 | £76.40 |
| Zones 1 to 6 | £16.30 | £81.60 |
| Buses and trams only | £1.75 | £24.70 |
With that in mind, the question of whether the London Pass is worth it has an easy answer. At £99 for one day, the pass only pays off if you plan to get into three or four paid attractions on the same day. With two paid visits, the money stops working.
London Pass and Go City
The London Pass is the classic option and it is run by Go City, the same company behind the London City Pass. The one-day version costs £99, rising to £139, £169, £189, £209, £229 and £239 for two, three, four, five, six and seven days; the ten-day pass reaches £259. Children aged 5 to 15 start at £69. It includes more than a hundred attractions and, in practice, two things that are worth the money on their own: the Big Bus sightseeing bus for two days and a 24-hour Thames river boat ticket.
If you only want two or three attractions and already know which ones, buy the tickets separately. If you like the idea of everything unlocked and nothing to keep track of, the Go City app with the pass is convenient, though on some days it does not pay and it is worth checking before you commit.
From the airport to the centre
| Option from Heathrow | Price | What to expect |
|---|---|---|
| Elizabeth line | £13.90 to zone 1 | The fastest into the centre: direct to Paddington and with no peak-time changes |
| Piccadilly line | From £5.50 | The cheapest, with a journey of close to an hour to the centre. One stretch has no signal, so your phone may lose data |
| Heathrow Express | From £10 in advance | To Paddington in a single stretch. Children under 15 travel free and only adults pay the fare |
| Bus | From £10 | The slowest and the worst in traffic, but the only one that drops you at several points across the city |
A typical day, as a reference point
These are not quoted prices but a way to calculate. It helps you see which days stay inside the £8.90 transport cap and which ones need extra budget.
| Item | Budget | Comfortable |
|---|---|---|
| Transport for the day | £8.90 | £8.90, that is the cap |
| Museum of the day | £0 | £0, permanent collections are free |
| Breakfast and lunch | £15 | £35 |
| Dinner | £25 | £60 |
| One paid attraction | £27, St Paul’s | £37, the Tower of London |
| Afternoon tea | £0 | £25 |
| Indicative total | £76 | £164 |
The London Pass starts to earn its place from the third day of heavy sightseeing, not before. And the most expensive mistake is food: eating at two in the afternoon, at markets rather than in the tourist centre, is the difference between £25 and £70 a day without changing country.
What to see, area by area
This is the part that gets planned worst, so it runs by area rather than as a loose list of points. The idea is to pick one or two a day and stop running between them.
Westminster and the South Bank
Start early, because this is the area with the longest queues. Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament are best seen from the other side of the river, on the South Bank, and that is the picture everyone wants. In the morning, Westminster Abbey, around £31 and timed entry only, is the first stop of the day. On the river side, the terrace at Parliament Hill gives the best free view of the city: do not just walk past it.
The London Eye is on the South Bank, a step away, and from the capsule you see the whole river and the City at once. It costs from £29 and going higher does not improve much, so if the day is grey and the price matters, there is an alternative: Westminster Bridge is free and gives a fairly similar view. The Sky Garden, in the City, is also free, though the slot books out weeks ahead.
For food here, Borough Market is five minutes’ walk south: street food, stalls from everywhere and market prices. Eat early, before two, or you will queue and pay the area’s price premium.
The City and the Tower
The City is the oldest area and the one that keeps the most of medieval London, with narrow streets against the skyscrapers. At its centre is the Tower of London, which opens around 10:00, last entry at 16:30, and not until 11:00 on Sundays. £37 gets you into the fortress, the Crown Jewels and the custodian tour, which leaves every 45 minutes and is included.
Next door is Tower Bridge, with its two towers over the water. You cross the bridge on foot for free; what you pay for, around £18, is the exhibition across the walkways and the view from the top. It is the perfect plan for someone who sees the London Eye and the Shard from the ground and wants the high point without the ticket price.
St Paul’s is a couple of streets away, £27 to enter. Climbing its 528 steps to the dome and the three galleries is worth it. It is open Monday to Saturday; on Sundays there is no sightseeing access, though you can still come in for a religious service.
And if the day is not over yet, Greenwich pairs naturally with this area: the tube from Westminster with no change, and the Royal Observatory costs £24 for adults and £12 for children aged 4 to 15. It closes on 24, 25 and 26 December.
The free museums
This is the great advantage of London: the permanent collections of the national museums are free and need no booking. The British Museum, the National Gallery, Tate Modern, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Natural History Museum and the Science Museum are all free, and between them they cover art, history, science and industry without costing a penny.
The British Museum is the largest and also the one that tires you out fastest if you try to see all of it. Two hours leaves you with the essentials, which is a lot. The National Gallery, on Trafalgar Square, is better in the afternoon, when the light falls across the paintings. And the Natural History Museum, in South Kensington, is the easiest family option: the collection is free, though it is worth booking a free timed ticket online.
One practical note: the free museums fill up rainy days, and in London rain is not rare. When it rains, change the order of your day rather than cancelling it.
Markets and neighbourhoods
Covent Garden is the easy stop: flower, fruit and street food stalls next to the square. It fills up at midday, so go at nine or after four.
Notting Hill and Portobello Road work best in the morning. The antique street is long and narrow, and Saturday morning is when the stalls are really trading. The area is made for a slow walk, with the coloured houses of Notting Hill between stops.
The biggest draw here is how you eat. The Portobello Road market and Borough Market are the two places where you eat like a Londoner at market prices. In the tourist centre, by contrast, you pay three times as much for the same thing.
Day trips from London
With four days or more, give one day to getting out. These are one to two hours away by train and all of them are done without a car, which is the real constraint in this region: neither Oxford nor Windsor is a place where hiring a car is worth it.
Windsor Castle: the shortest option
This is the choice if you only have half a day. Windsor is half an hour by train from Paddington, and the castle, one of the largest still in use in the world, covers an enormous site you walk around. St George’s Chapel is the highlight, with the royal burials, and the Changing of the Guard in the courtyard is visible from the street.
The combination that works best is the castle in the morning and lunch in Windsor, where the restaurants do not carry the central London mark-up. You come back on the same train and keep it simple. Admission is around £36 per adult and it is worth buying online, because at weekends and on bank holidays the queue gets much longer.
Oxford: colleges and free museums
Oxford is an hour from Paddington and it is the easiest day trip to organise. The city is walked through, and the centre is pedestrian streets with a college around every corner. The Radcliffe Camera, England’s most famous library, is seen from outside unless you buy entry, and the Ashmolean Museum, the university’s museum, is free.
Christ Church, the college founded by Henry VIII and where scenes from the Harry Potter films were shot, charges separately. If you are travelling with children, the Castle Visitor Centre has free entry days for them and their adult companion, which can be the short option if the rest of the group is not in the mood for museums.
Bath and the Cotswolds: two different days
Bath is the classic long excursion: a long train journey, and an entire city of eighteenth-century buildings with the River Avon and the Roman baths. It is doable in a day, though the visit stretches if you also want a walk through the Avon Gorge.
The Cotswolds are the opposite: a day of villages with no single attraction, made up of stone lanes, sheep and thatched cottages. From Paddington, Broadway is the village with the most atmosphere. From November the days are shorter, so leave early and get back before it gets dark.
Greenwich: the one inside London
And the third option is easy to overlook at first: Greenwich is part of London, the tube from Westminster with no change, and it deserves a day as much as anywhere outside the city. The Royal Observatory costs £24 for adults and £12 for children aged 4 to 15, the meridian marks zero degrees longitude for the world, and in good weather the river boat from Westminster is the most beautiful way back. It closes on 24, 25 and 26 December, which is worth checking if you are travelling then.
Frequently asked questions
How many days does London need?
Two days for the essentials, three to see it without rushing, four if you want to add an excursion. Two days covers the core but leaves no room for a big museum. If you only have one, choose between Westminster and the City in the morning and one museum in the afternoon: fitting in more just turns the day into travel.
Is the London Pass worth it?
It depends on how many days and how many paid attractions you do. It costs £99 for one day, £139 for two and £169 for three. The break-even point is about three or four paid visits a day; with two, separate tickets are cheaper. If your trip includes Westminster Abbey, the Tower of London and the London Eye, the pass starts to earn its keep.
How do you pay for transport?
By contactless card, with your phone or with a physical Oyster card, always the same one for the whole day so the cap applies. The cap in zones 1 and 2 is £8.90 per day. On buses and trams you touch in only, with no touch out, but that £1.75 cap does not combine with the tube.
What can you see for free?
The permanent museum collections are the city’s great gift: the British Museum, the National Gallery, Tate Modern, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Natural History Museum and the Science Museum. Also Borough Market, Covent Garden market and Portobello Road, where you only pay for what you eat. And two viewpoints with advance booking: the Sky Garden, which is free, and the Shard, which is not.
When is the best time to go?
May, June and September are the most pleasant months, with shorter queues and long light. July and August are hot and full of tourists. Winter is cheaper and the museums are calm, but it rains more and the sun sets by four in the afternoon.
Save this guide for the trip
Prices here were checked in September 2026 and can change, especially London Pass rates and Sky Garden availability. Always check the official site before you buy, and book the Tower of London, the London Eye and Westminster Abbey ahead if you are travelling in summer or at the weekend.