I will travel with my 20-year-old daughter to the UK this summer; it's our first visit. We have 10 days. I love a precise plan. Does anyone have a day-by-day itinenary that was a great trip?

No one can give you a day by day itinerary without knowing a whole lot more about you.

What are your intrerests? Budget? Are you willing to do day trips (train or bus)?

What in he various guidbookds and articles you've read made you decide to go to London? What are a few of your must sees?

As for a day by day itinerary - I'm not in favor of that at all. You need to leave time free to allow for weather (you don;t want to do outdoor stuff in the pouring rain), mood, what you've been doing the night before etc.

Also - you daughter may want to look at a couple of the college type guidebooks to get info on nightlife etc for her age group.

OK - I'll be gentle - - how on earth can anyone answer that for you?!? What sorts of things do you want to see/do? The full 10 days in London? Or are you going to stay out in the countryside for part of the trip?

(The only people who might venture to give you a full itinerary w/o at least some info from you, are those who have only been once and don't know the options.)

Start by clicking DESTINATIONS above. It will get you started.

&quot;<i>I love a precise plan</i>&quot; Precise plans often fall apart by the 1st afternoon or 2nd morning. Things will take longer than you plan and &quot;things&quot; happen.

was posting the same time as nytraveler - exactly the same advice . . . . (only she was a bit nicer )

Janis, you are a pip - I love it. I hope when I begin with all my questions (trip in Fall, 2008) I have my ducks in a row beforehand.


Linda

nytraveler and janisj, are, of course, correct that we can't give much meaningful assistance without more info. about your daughter's and your interests. London has just about anything imagineable - on our second visit my husband went to a stone carving shop and bought some hard-to-find specialty tools.

Additionally, some people's 'must sees' leave the next person cold. For example, I've no interest in the royalty/palace side of London, so haven't done the changing of the guards or visited any of the palaces. Some people really want to see Abbey Road, but it hasn't made my priority list yet.

Do you have 10 available days, or does that include travel time?

I have been to London/England three times. Here's a brief rundown, including how many actual sightseeing days we had:

-6 days with 18 year old daughter- We spent every day in London, took no day trips, and still had tons that we didn't do. We went to the theatre 3 times, and bought tickets for 2 of those, along with tickets for the London Eye, in advance. We had lists of things we wanted to see, but it was not set in stone - we juggled based on the weather and how we felt that day.

-6 days with 18.5 year old daughter - We included one overnight in York, one overnight in Salisbury, and 4 nights in London. This was after 11 days in Scotland, so we had no jet lag. We arranged Stonehenge Stone Circle Access tickets, Salisbury Cathedral Tower tour, 1 set of theatre tickets, and Tower of London Ceremony of the Keys tickets in advance. This trip was pretty planned out because our time was short and I had some specific goals based on what we missed the first time.

-8 days with 21 year old daughter - We took a day trip to Oxford, and 3 nights (2 days) in Cardiff, Wales. We bought theatre tickets for 1 night in advance. We chose our activities as we went along, but we each had a few 'must sees' that we made sure to fit in.

Will shopping be an interest for your daughter? My girls have taken 4 trips to Scotland and have favorite &quot;high street&quot; shops that they like to visit when they get to the UK, so we usually have a day or half day of shopping. We also make a point of visiting Liberty on each trip to London.

Hi, I've been to London a couple of times in the last few years. Not sure what you are interested in, what your budget is, if you like tour groups, etc..., but here are a few things I really enjoyed while I was there (in no particular order):

1) Visit the town of Bath. You can take the train there (I think it was an 1.5 hr ride). You can see the Roman Baths, visit the Jane Austen center, etc... and there are a lot of cute shops there.

2) Visit Windsor Castle and Hampton Courts. The queen was there when we visited Windsor Castle, but unfortunately, we didn't see her.

3) Take a lunch or dinner cruise down the Thames River.

4) Visit the Tower of London and Tower Bridge.

5) Westminster Abbey, Trafalger Square
Buckingham Palace (it's always been somewhat crowded when we were there), Parliament, Big Ben, Eye of London.

6) Stonehenge. We took a tour that actually allowed you to walk up to the stones and touch it! Not terribly exciting, but something that you should do once-in-your-life kind of thing.

7) Visit the white cliffs of Dover. You can see the Paris coast line on a clear day across the English Channel.

8) Leeds Castle - very cute little castle.

8) St. Paul's Cathedral - take steps to the top. I think there is 500+ steps.

9) Walk around Hyde Park and see the Prince Albert memorial.

10) Shop at Harrods

11) Afternoon Tea time!

We did all of these in 8 days. I must say it was pretty exhausting, so leave some time to relax too.

Oh yeah, besides going to Harrods, shopping at Covent Garden is a must if you like shopping/souvenir shopping.

VAgirlLoves2Travel's itinerary perfectly sums up the problem. All the things she lists obviously impressed her, and yet many would be critical of some of her choices (no offense meant, it just shows that peoples ideas of what is a &quot;must see&quot; differ.


1) Visit the town of Bath.

Yes - I love bath - one of my favourite places in the UK - but it isn't London.

8) Leeds Castle - very cute little castle.

Or overpriced tourist trap depending on your view - pretty building, great gardens but almost a travesty to call it a castle.

7) Visit the white cliffs of Dover. You can see the Paris coast line on a clear day across the English Channel.

Unless Paris has moved, I presume this should read French coastline. Want to vist a &quot;real&quot; castle, then Dover Castle is superb - but again not in London.

9) Walk around Hyde Park and see the Prince Albert memorial.

Rent the film &quot;greystoke&quot; first - then you can bemuse tourists by finding the correct tree and doing chimpanzee impressions.

but also consider the theatres, galleries, museums etc.

Other day trips away from London might include Salisbury, Winchester, Oxford , Cambridge or a host of others.

No plan, said a general I'd be able to name if my Oxford Dictionary of Quatations wasn't submerged under several weeks' unattended filing, ever survives the first minute's contact with the enemy.

So too with holidays. How can anyone want a &quot;precise plan&quot; for somwhere they've never been?

You haven't got the faintest idea whether you'll love our pubs or - after sampling the first - decide they're horrible, smelly refuges for the socially retarded. You can't know whether our theatres are the glory of Britain their boosters are always yammering on about, or the over-rated, cramped, monuments to dreadful audience facilities some of us find them.

Unless you live somewhere with the same density of world-class museums and galleries, how can you know whether prolonged exposure to them will transform you as a human being or just give you an unmanageable headache (the overwhelming majority of human beings are squarely in the second group)?

London, by the standards of Paris or Rome, has a modest number of things to see that really need to be seen by everyone: indeed, I'd go so far as to say none at all (Big Ben and Tower Bridge, like the Eiffel Tower, are of minimal importance as buildings and even less aesthetic merit. I once took a visitor to see the Changing of the Guard, and I'm still cringeing). But by the standards of anywhere on the planet, ever, it has an ENORMOUS number of things that will gobsmack some and leave many others stone cold.

Take any London (or with 10 days, any London and a bit of provincial Britain) itinerary on this or competitive sites. Ask yourself the questions &quot;do I really want to see this?&quot; and &quot;what tweaked my interest?&quot; Build in at least 30% of your net available time for spontaneously seeing things you won't have thought of till you get here. For things that tweaked your interest research what else this city has to offer in a similar vein.

Now get a copy of Time Out, and get an idea of the kinds of changing diversions we have to offer. Lastly remember this isn't a city with its best days behind it. Most of it's shabby going on ugly, and that's mainly because it's about people doing things, rather than about pointless ancient monuments that are there to be stared at. It's about what Philip Green's introduced into Top Shop, what some modish comedian's doing at a club in the outer reaches of Hackney, the choir at a charismatic West Indian church in Brixton or the banter at a proper London street market (not the tourist places like Portobello Rd but the places we buy our fruit and veg, like Chapel St Market in Islington)

Now draft an outline agenda and come back here for help with the practicalities. But don't expect anyone here but you to have the foggiest notion of what, in what's now by several light years the world's greatest city, is going to rock your boat.

Thank you flanneruk, you have summed up what I have been feeling since I first found this site a short time ago. On my first visit to London, a place I have long wanted to visit, I have only three previously arranged or planned activities that I will surely accomplish. Weather pemitting.

1. The Globe Theatre for Shakespeare

2. The British Museum for the Rossetta Stone

3. A cricket match at Lord's

Aside from that I intend to be very busy with whatever strikes our fancy once we hit the ground. Again thank you for confirming that this is how a first visit should be approached, with flexability. I love your war plan anology as well. thereyet

First trip to London? By all means, take one of the Big Bus Tours! It gives you an overview of the important sights, you can hop on and off at whim, and it's so much fun to sit on the top of the bus in the open air. You can always go back and see things you may have missed or want to spend more time with.

Another must....the British Museum!!

London is fabulous...you'll love it!

But...be very cautious crossing the street because you're not used to looking the right way for traffic.

First of all, you will have a blast! We went on our first trip last year at this time. Instead of making a day-by-day we made a list of the areas of London we wanted to see. We then listed all of the things there we'd like to see...such as museums, parks, shops, food, etc. Each morning we picked out of the pile to see where we were headed that day. It was a fun way to do it. Of course you'll want to time certain locations according to when things occur...like Notting Hill for Portbello Rd. on Saturdays.