Raven01, I use a book called The London Mapguide. It's in its fifth edition (last I looked) and edited by Michael Middleditch (Penguin Publishing). There's lots of detailed maps in it, and you can see precisely how far from your London hotel the tube stop will be. (You might find a used copy on Amazon Marketplace.)

Remember that as long as you're near a tube stop, you can find your way around London. It's a huge city, but the tube makes it very manageable. You might want to choose a hotel within the Circle (yellow) Line. That's the most central part of the city.

Raven: You don't tell us where you're flying from. While I agree generally it's a good idea to fly "open jaw" to save time, I think you might save considerable airfare if you fly roundtrip in and out of London because there is so much competition flying to London. Generally, it's more expensive from the U.S. to fly in and out of Paris.

And even if you buy an advanced purchase Eurostar fare London - Paris, it's a pretty expensive ticket. Perhaps you might want to consider giving up on Paris this time around.

You might save even more money by splitting your time between London and Edinburgh, and just seeing York for a few hours en route. You might be able to rent apartments for less than a week, and save money on lodging and hotels.

I think that people also underestimate how much they will spend on food when they are eating all their meals out. Figure you will spend at least twice as much for restaurant food in Britain. Have you set a budget for meals and other incidentals?

On such a tight budget, you might want to limit yourselves to one destination, renting an apartment in that one place, and taking day trips on public transportation. It really cuts down on both trasportation and food costs.

I agree with lovisa, you should stay in only one location. I don't know the prices in Edinburgh, but i experienced myself how london is an expensive city, so if you are on a tight budget, it may not be a good choice....

When researching a trip last year to York I was able to find several lovely B&B's for that price. If you are interested I could list a few.

I am interested can you post those please?