Memorable Visit to London
If you’re planning a trip to London, you’ve come to the right place. I’ve done my fair share of traveling through the years, and every time I travel to a new city, I like to look up a blog of tips and tricks from locals or other travelers to find the best places to visit, things to do, and travel hacks to make it all a little easier.
A quick Google search for “luggage storage London” will give you everything you need. Hundreds of locations offer luggage storage in London for a small fee, usually around $5 to $10 for the day.
1. Find Luggage Storage
When I arrive in a new city in the morning, or if I’m just spending the day there while passing through, one of the first things I do is locate luggage storage and ditch my bags. It’s one of the most underrated travel hacks. No one wants to walk around a city wheeling a suitcase, or carrying a duffel bag or backpack. If you arrive by train and don’t even want to leave the station with your bags, there are luggage storage spaces in most major train stations, though the fee is typically closer to $15 for the day (but that’s the price of convenience, right?).
So from finding the best and cheapest luggage storage in London to avoiding city-burnout after a week in the nation’s capital, here are some of my tips to make your trip to London as easy and memorable as possible.
Through my favorite luggage storage website, I can book a spot at a luggage storage space before arriving. This ensures I don’t waste my time dragging my bags there, because they do fill up. And that $5 to $10 dollars also gets you insurance on your luggage, on the off chance anything happens to it. So find your London luggage storage, and go enjoy the city without the hassle.
2. Get a London Pass & an Oyster Card
My next logistical tip is to get the London Pass and an Oyster Card. These two will make your visit much more enjoyable while reducing the stress and cost of traveling. If you plan on seeing the city’s major attractions, the London Pass will cost you a fee upfront but will save you money in the long run. Once you pay the fee and choose the duration for which you want the pass to last, you’ll have access to over 80 attractions in the city for free (though technically you already paid for them). So the more you see, the more you save.
The Oyster Card is for those who plan to use public transportation – which you should, as London’s is quite good. But like everything else, the cost can add up if you’re buying paper tickets for each individual trip. Save yourself time and money by getting an Oyster Card, loading money onto it, and using that to ride around the city at a discounted rate. Plus, once you hit a certain amount of rides for the day, the rest are free. Again, the more you use it, the more you save. Check https://www.bestluggagestorage.com/ for more detail.
3. Consider Staying in a Hostel
In my travels through Europe and beyond, by far my favorite places to stay have all been hostels. If you’re traveling alone or with just a couple of friends, I can’t recommend hostels enough. They’re cheap, they’re unique, and best of all, they’re social. The atmosphere of hostels is much different than those of hotels; it’s not every guest for themselves, but rather, most guests are open to meeting people, learning about where they’re from, and hanging out or going out together. It’s an amazing way to meet people from around the world and possibly even make a new travel buddy while you’re at it.
Hostels aren’t always just dorm rooms, either. Most hostels these days offer private rooms at a higher price that are still significantly cheaper than almost any hotel. You can find rooms for two people or reserve a room for a small group and guarantee that it’s only your group staying there. That’s my preferred way to stay; you get the privacy of keeping things within your group, but also get to experience the social atmosphere that the hostels have to offer.
Most hostels have a bar in the common area that sells extremely cheap drinks (cheaper than you’ll find them at most restaurants) and sometimes gives them out for free. If you’re looking for an extremely unique hostel in London, try Clink 78. It’s a gorgeous, historic former courthouse and former jail that can house hundreds of travelers in dorm rooms, private rooms, or even former jail cells with many of the original features still there. So you can call home and tell your family that you’re spending the night in jail. They don’t need to know the rest of the details.
4. Visit a London Pub
This one should be obvious, but it’s worthy of its own point anyway. If you ask a local, they’ll tell you that it’s not merely a stereotype that British folks love their “Ye Olde Pubs.” Sure, you can visit a pub in any city, but in Britain, it takes on a different meaning. Over 3,500 pubs line the streets of London, from gastropubs to Irish pubs to the old watering holes hidden in alleyways. The British love their beers and their gin, so check your schedule for the next football match, head to the nearest pub, and have yourself an authentic British pub crawl.
5. Get out of the City (While in the City)
Confused? We’re talking gardens and conservatories. If you’re spending multiple days in London, it can be nice to get out of the chaos and back into nature – or to at least feel like you’re in nature. This is one of my favorite ways to break up my stay in a major city. Shopping, exploring the streets, and going museum hopping is amazing, but you can only do it so many days in a row. Give yourself a break by wandering over to one of the city’s gardens for the afternoon.
One of the most popular in London (for good reason) is Sky Garden, a garden and restaurant and bar atop a skyscraper. It offers beautiful views of the city, beautiful plants, and you can sip on a drink or enjoy a snack while you’re there. There are also more traditional nature spots, like the Barbican Conservatory, a massive indoor botanical garden that’s known not only for the plants and greenery, but also the brutalist architecture that hosts it all.
These are just two of many options to see some greenery while in London. And did I mention most of them are free?
