10 hours in london
 

I am going from NYC to jnb in Feb. and have a 10 hour layover in london before i connect to jnb. Any suggestions what to do for that 10 hrs?

go shopping
go to lunch/dinner
go see whatever site in london you have been dying to see
you have plenty of time to take a train/tube into town
what to do depends on the time of day and what your interests are
have you ever been to london? what kind of things do you normally enjoy doing?

A LOT depends on which hours the 10 hours cover.

0700 to 1700 is one thing. 1900 to 0500 a whole different situation.

So - what time do you land at which airport, and what time do you depart from which airport?

I have never been to london, I enjoy more active things, not really thrilled by museums. what would you recommend? I also do not want to spend too much time traveling to get to a sight, as i will have been on a plane for 6hrs and will be again for 11 hrs

i land at 9am
and depart at 630pm

Depending on the day of the week you are there, there will be plenty of things open. This is a question that comes up often. For example, here is a link to a post with a lot of discussion of what to do:
http://www.fodors.com/forums/threads...p;tid=34809282

You should also search within the UK postings for London layover, and you will find a great deal of discussion of this precise issue.

After you read some of the posts, you will probably have more specific questions, and it will make it easier to give you good advice!

Bear in mind this may mean not getting to central London much before 11am and having to leave around 3.30-4pm. But that still leaves a fair bit of time.

If it weren't in February, I'd suggest a walk in the Parks, but the weather might not be conducive.

I'd get on a hop-on/hop-off bus.
It will give you an overview and you can get off if something really catches your eye.

where is this hop on hop off bus?

The hop-on-hop-off buses circle all of central London. There are many bus stops. One is at Paddington Station and so you could take the Paddington Express train and be on the bus in a few minutes. However it may be very cold or rainy and you might not want to ride around on an open top bus. You can go downsatirs to sit inside but the views aren't so good. If you take the tube in to town there is another tour bus stop neat the South Kensington tube stop.

No need to book ahead - so on the day, if the weather is decent (or semi-decent :) ) you can take the tour bus. Just have a plan B like one of the Museums, Covent Garden, National Gallery or something else indoors.

I think $30 for a few minutes' bus ride is excessive.

You can also hop on and off city buses. For £3 a day on a bus pass. If you get an Oyster Card and load it with a one-day 6-zone Travelcard for £6.20 to cover your Heathrow trips, the bus is free (included). Here's the only sightseeing map you'll ever need: http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tfl/pdfdocs/cen_bus.pdf

Download it, print it out, and go in peace.

Sorry. The Travelcard is £6.70 - the lower number is the Oyster cap for travel in zones 1-6.

So load £6.20 cash on your Oyster card, use it Pay-As-You-Go, and your expenditure will be capped at £6.20

If your main criteria is to save money, then by all means get a travel card/Oyster and travel around London on your own.

But do you really want to be learning the London bus system on a whirlwind few hours? No one ever said the hop-on-hop-off buses were an economical form of public transport. But they do have commentary telling you what you are seeing and other interesting bits of info.

I've been on more than one regular London bus where I've overheard things like - "Oh that must be Westminster Abbey" when they are pointing at Westminster (Parliament), or "There is London Bridge" (Tower Bridge), or "that must be Marble Arch" (Wellington Arch) and so on.

So if you already know London pretty well - you can take normal TFL buses. Otherwise you'd get more out of the tour buses.

Learning the London bus system? Whatever are you talking about?

You refer to your map. You hop on the bus stop with the corresponding number. You hop off at your destination. If you have used the map correctly, there should be no ambiguity about abbeys and arches. When you've finished, you go to the bus stop having the next number. The procedure is identical to hopping on and off a tour bus.

If your sole criterion is enriching the bus tour companies for the sake of having a running commentary, knock yourself out. But I suggest the <u>AAA Spiral Guide: London</u>. It has several walks and &quot;guided&quot; bus tours in it. You can get it for well under ten bucks.

From Heathrow to the centre, and a booklet
The express from Heathrow to Paddington is a good idea, but it may be out of use for engineering work, in which case the Piccadilly line may be your best choice. You can reach Paddington on the express or Hammersmith on the tube, and buy an oyster card to charge up with five pounds for ordinary London busses. Also, you should ask the tube office for a central London bus map, the kind that has main buildings marked in brown. You will see it in tiny type if you search under tfl central london bus map, which gives you www.tfl.gov.uk/buses/pdfdocs/centlond.pdf /. This you can print out at home, and enlarge in sections by 100 percent. Also at home you can copy and paste this message in a good font, such as Times New Roman at 12 point, and give it a new line for each place I name. If you can frame it to come out as A5 sheets, slice up the map to that size with a decent left hand margin and staple the results to the left, both top and bottom you will have you own and personal Ben Haines day guide to London, may Ken Livingstone forgive me.

On the bus
Now you go outside, board a bus headed from Paddington or Hammersmith to Kensington High Street, use your oyster card, go upstairs to the front of the bus, spread the map on your knees, and look to either side. In these notes I shall mark N for places to the north, or on your left, and S for places to the south.

Kensington to Tower Bridge to Kensington
At Kensington High Street you can take an eastbound bus, and look out for Kensington Gardens N, the Albert Memorial N, the Royal Albert Hall S, the Royal Geographical Society S, the Guards Barracks N, Hyde Park N, Hyde Park Corner, Apsley House N, the display gates (for Buckingham Palace) S, Piccadilly, The Royal Academy N, Piccadilly Circus, the approach to Leicester Square E, Haymarket, Trafalgar Square, the National Gallery N. Beside the National Gallery you leave that bus and take one marked for St Paul’s or the Tower, go upstairs again, and on the Strand you look for X, the bridge over to the theatres and halls of the south bank S, the Law Courts N, Prince Henry’s Room S, former newspaper offices along Fleet Street N, St Dunstan in the West N, St Paul’s N, any seventeenth century churches you pass, All Hallows by the Tower S, the Port of London Authority building N, and Tower Bridge. In the cold you step out, wait shivering, take a bus back westward, and carry on the way you came, as far as the pub called the Cheshire Cheese, which will be about right for lunch, meaning traditional food and a London beer in an old pub.

Your choice
Now you choose. I should say go by bus or tube to just one place, and wander there, taking coffee often both for warmth and for people watching.

Westminster
If you are a glutton for great sights and the sun shines (it does, you know, sometimes), ride from the Cheshire Cheese to Trafalgar Square, take the top of a bus to see to your left the Banqueting Hall, the Ministry of Defence, Scotland Yard, the Cenotaph in the middle of the road, and Big Ben. Cross Parliament Street to the western pavement and take the bus with views from the top front seats of the Foreign Office, Downing Street, the Royal Horse Guards, the Scottish Office, and Nigeria House.

Back on the plane
And so, confused and happy, you go back into the tube and the air transit system. You will sleep deeply on the plane, and you will have a diary to keep.

Other help
Please write if I can help further. If you have a choice of place to see please tell me, but of course we are cutting things fine here.

Welcome to London

Ben Haines
[email protected]

The Heritage Routes plyed by the Routemaster buses also make for interesting jaunts.

The #9 runs from Royal Albert Hall to Aldwych, and the #15 from Trafalgar Square to Tower Hill. See this page for sights they pass: http://www.tfl.gov.uk/buses/download...s-brochure.pdf

Incidentally, the bus map Ben linked is available for free on paper at every Tube station.