London is the capital of the UK and is a busy, exciting, diverse and entertaining city. There are many resources for finding hotels, restaurants, shopping and things to do while visiting London. This brief article about the last time we visited London and it includes advice, tips and ideas on some aspects when visiting London.
Getting There By Train
We live in the UK so the best option to get into London is by train. We booked our train tickets a few weeks before we planned to go, which I would highly recommend. We decided to go 1st class because the tickets cost £10 more each way, which is not saving money, however it is a more pleasant journey and you get additional free extras, while travelling this includes drinks (tea, coffee or mineral water) and snacks (crisps and biscuits). If you purchase these from a shop they could cost close to £10. Also if you travel 1st class, you have the advantage that if you are early arriving at the train station you can use the 1st class lounge which includes free drinks and a more pleasant quiet surroundings.
London Underground
London has a large underground network, which gets very busy round the rush hours, is usually on-time with trains every few minutes. It is not cheap if you buy individual tickets, the best way is to either buy a travel card or to use an Oyster card. The Oyster is much cheaper than buying individual tickets and is quick and easy to use, you simply swipe the card across detection pads at the entrance and exit stalls at the stations.
Last time we visited London we stayed at the 5 star hotel The Grange, which is located next to St Pauls Cathedral. We managed to book the hotel using a well known web site which gives the option to blind book, where you do not know where you are staying but it gives a good description and doing some research using search engines you can find which hotel you will be staying in.
We stayed in a double room where you could see St Pauls from the window . The cost of the room on a Sunday night was £99, which we think for a 5 star hotel in London was great value for money. The Hotel is large and has good facilities including a spa and swimming pool.
The breakfast at the hotel is expensive and £20 per person, so we went to a pub opposite, The Centre Page Pub (picture above) which served a full English breakfast for under £5.
Our Evening Meal
In the evening we found it a little hard to find a restaurant which was near and open, this is because the area of St Pauls is near the business centre of London, which is mostly closed at weekends. We found a restaurant called Cotes, which is a medium chain French restaurant along the main road about 150 yards from the main entrance to St Pauls Cathedral. The food was good, but I would not say it was great value for money with 2 courses and a bottle of wine costing over £30 each, they also automatically add a service charge of 12.5% to the bill.
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