A BREAK IN LONDON – WITHOUT BREAKING THE BANK

Camden Markets, Camden Town

Catch the famous red double decker bus or catch the tube to Camden Market where you will find a maze of markets stalls and restaurants located in the historic former Pickfords stables and horse hospital. I had visited on a Sunday evening which was buzzing with life and catch good deals on unique items and yummy street food (which defiantly is bank friendly) but be careful on not getting lost and it is truely a massive maze with stalls everywhere or find yourself on ‘Little Venice’ located on the canal located right next to the markets or stroll down Camden High street to find Souvenir after Souvenir shop

Changing of the Guards, Buckingham Palace

Buckingham Palace is no doubt one of the top attractions in London and with that you can watch the Changing of the Guards happen every day (depending of the month) starting at 11am but be there early to bag a good spot (or even earlier like 8:30am in the morning to get photos with no one) but if you rock up early, this is an attraction that can take up most of your day! so don’t plan too much!

You can easily get here by either the tube, bus (Green Park for both) and walk through the park or even if you have a ticket for a double decker bus tour.

Saint Paul’s Cathedral

Whilst we had wanted to go into the Cathedral, a steep entry price of 20 pounds per person had turned us away (but by doing your research, you may find deals that include an entry ticket such as the London Pass) so instead I took my group to a shopping centre ‘One New Change’ that is located behind the Cathedral and went up to the 6th floor to the rooftop bar and viewing area of the Cathedral and London skyline for free! now thats something your bank will like. The photo shows the view from the area and there was no one else there! (Doesn’t help it was starting to rain) and the glass elevator provides a good video as well!

Platform 9 3/4 at Kings Cross Station

Perhaps one of the main attractions in London is the famous Platform 9 3/4 at Kings Cross also means long queues! but luckily when I went there around 6pm on a Monday we had only waited less than 20 minutes till it was our turn to have the popular photo opportunity. So plan this activity well as we also when school was back in term therefore it meant less tourists wanting to take photos! This activity is also for free as you can have a friend or another solo person in the line behind you to take photos on your phone or have one of the staff to take photos which then can be printed out and put into a nice frame (20 pounds for 3 photos plus 7 pounds off your wand when you buy any photo when you walk into the gift shop adjacent to it)

M&M World

A place that you have to visit at-least once in your life where there are around 4 levels of literally anything that has the famous m&m’s on it! plus you can even smell the chocolate from outside the store! There are only 5 of these stores around the world with London having the largest chocolate wall in the world with a variety of colour mixes and flavours that simply cannot be purchased in a normal store. Nothing truely beats yummy m&m’s!

The Original Tour – double decker bus

Whilst double decker bus tours always scream out ‘tourist’ to locals, it’s an efficient way to quickly see London in a short amount of time and handy if you are not keen on taking public transport. The Original Tour company provides 3 -4 different routes taking you across to all of the main tourist attraction stops for a low cost, free wifi and provides information you would not of heard of before such as the changing of the Eurostar station because the original station at Waterloo was offensive to the French! We had gotten 48 hours for the 24 hour price because we visited in winter so ensure you are looking for deals as it also included a free river cruise with City Cruises that was so good it deserves its own paragraph!

City River Cruises

One thing I would highly recommend is hoping on the City River Cruises starting from Westminster Pier down to Greenwich! It allows you to see London from the famous Thames River and provides amazing photo opportunities as you pass under the Tower Bridge! When we booked through the Original Tour double decker bus we had gained free tickets to hop on the cruise and was so glad that we did as one of our captains provided a live commentary and joked about London as well as providing more unknown information such as what ‘poms’ really mean (what us Aussies call British people) which I did not know myself. So when asked for the live or recored commentary, please choose the live commentary as trust me the recorded one was so boring!