What is your budget? Staying 40 minutes outside of London means the train travel will cost more than the saving you get by staying there.

If your budget is reasonable/doable, staying IN London is best for seeing London.

But another option would be to stay in the city for a couple of weeks and then pick an entirely different area to stay/explore. Out in the countryside or another city.

Hi janisj - I was hoping you'd be the one to reply as I've had great advice from you before about a trip to Scotland.

I've found apartments in London for around $900 a week. There are a couple I've seen around Wembley for around $3000 a month and a few in Greenwich for about $4000 a month. So that's the starting point I guess. I also stayed in an apartment in Marylebone last year for $180 a night. So in London is not impossible.

However I am expecting to pay about $15 a day in train fares and imagined that rentals out of the city might be at least that much cheaper. Do you have any suggestions about pleasant places a little way out that I could investigate?

If this were my first trip to the UK I'd happily spend some time in a different area. But I've travelled extensively around the country and the idea this time is to really focus on the city.

Whereabouts in Wembley is the apartment? It's not a particularly nice area, in parts.

These apartments are in a lovely area, right by Hampton Court Palace and a short walk over the bridge to Hampton Court station. Currently it costs £8.90 for a daily travel card covering the train and tube zones 1-6 from Hampton Court (travel after 9.30am and there are 2 trains an hour to Waterloo). You could buy a weekly travelcard. Some of the apartments are pricey but the studio might be ok?

http://www.cravenhouse.net/

St Albans - 20 minutes to St Pancras and Farrringdon

cathedral, park, affluent (supposedly!), lots of restaurants, good transport links

heck, I sound like a blinking estate agent

http://www.enjoystalbans.com/where-to-stay/index.html

Thank you odin and sofarsogood - even if the apartments don't turn out to be the right ones, I have a couple of areas in which to start looking. I've been to St Albans about five years ago and thought it was a pretty place, but didn't think of it in this context.

You can check out transit prices here: http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tickets/14416.aspx If you are in zone 1-6 a monthly travel pass would work best.

What about areas like Clapham, Wimbledon, Stratford etc...

You can stay outside the city (I live about 30 mins from London by train) and regularly travel in) - however your $15 a day budget for travel is not realistic. These relatively short hops on the overground are expensive - best part of £30 from where I live on a weekday, non-discounted fare.

If you position yourself at the end of one of the tubes lines however, the travel becomes much more affordeable and will be doable within your budget. You just have to be sure you are ok with the travel times - Epping to the west end is about 45 mins - and that's a straightforward journey with no changes...

Looks like a weekly or even a monthly travel pass is the way to go, as well as ensuring I'm on a tube line rather than overland. Travel times really aren't an issue as we'll have a whole month and don't mind getting started a bit earlier.

I'll investigate Clapham, Wimbledon and Stratford as suggested. Thanks!

You don't have to be on a tube line, you need to be on a line where the tfl travel cards from zone 1-6 ate valid. Here is the map which includes the Overground line plus the train lines http://www.tfl.gov.uk/assets/downloads/london-rail-and-tube-services-map.pdf

Fantastic. Thank you.