LynneD

We (mom age 70 and sister and I) leave in 6 weeks, and I am panicky about prices in London regarding dollar V. pound. I have compulsivly planned the trip as follows:

hotels and B & B's are booked

train tickets bought far in advance for London to York and York to Edinburgh for lowest fare.

Ordered British Heritage passes while on sale, printed out 2 for 1 vouchers for everything not on the pass.

Ordered theatre tickets for COmplete Shakespere and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang on sale thru Mayor of London offer

7 day travel cards ordered

I feel I may be ridiculed for so much obsessive planning but I'm willing to take the chance. Is there anything else I should do in advance? I want to get things from here in US dollars so that by the time we arrive in London I will have forgotten what I spent.

Anonymous

I don't think your planning is obsessive at all; I'd have done all the same things, except perhaps the advance travel card, but it's 6-of-one half a dozen of the other. All you have to do now is put all that stuff in one place, with your passports.

Make sure you have good, broken-in walking shoes and new bouncy socks.

Be sure you have more than enough of each of your presecriptions and any thing else you take that might not be readily available.

And please don't panic, your vacation trip is supposed to be fun! Have a few "picnic" meals, either outdoors or in your hotel room, that savings will more than make up for anything that happens to the exchange rate in the next few weeks.

epi

I have no other ideas about pre-purchasing, but as a planner myself, I suggest you do restaurant research. The price of eating out is also very high, but you can do it less expensively if you go with some ideas. Timeout and Timeout.com have some good restaurant info. If you like ethnic food, it will be easier. Some restaurants in London we liked last year that were pretty reasonable are:
1. Maroush, Beauchamp Place
Lebanese www.maroush.com
Excellent food, pleasant atmosphere,7 in chain ?with different names
2. Porters English, Henrietta street
3.Melati Great Windmill street
malaysian, very good
4. Livebait?s fish café Rupert st
excellent kedgeree, good fish and chips
5. Daquise, Polish restuarnt
6. Sofia Bistro, Shepherds market
Sorry I don't have all the street addresses. Of course, where you eat depends partly on what section of London you are in. For reasonable quick breakfast and/or lunch, a chain called Pret a manger has good pastry and sandwiches.
Have a wonderful time.

mclaurie

Someone recently posted about an article called 50 best free activities in London. Do a text search to find the link. There are also some threads on money saving tips you might read.

Have you figured out how you'll get to & from the airport?

Now rent some videos, read some books & relax! Have a great trip.

Anonymous

Ths isn't the article mclaurie was referring to, but it's also handy:

http://www.londonfreelist.com/home.asp

jenifer

If you haven't yet, try to familiarize yourself with an overall map of London, and the tube map. I don't mean memorizing stops/lines, of course, just get comfortable reading it. Maybe think about tube trip planning from your hotel to one or two locations, just to get comfortable with that (if you're not already comfortable with tubing it).

And then relax, and as mclaurie suggested, rent some movies based in the areas you'll be visiting, and count down the days till your trip! You'll have a fabulous vacation.

bettyk

Since I saved over $300 on airfare by catching the November sales to London, I'm not as worried about the money I might lose to the exchange rate. I still think I'll be on or under my budget.

I also got the British Heritage passes in January on sale and have booked all my hotels. I think I got good rates at most of my hotels and excellent rates at a few. I know that most of the rates have already gone up and a few of the hotels are already fully booked.

Now, the only thing left to do is have a great time!

Marsha

Some great ideas here. In terms of expenses, arrange and pre-pay any guided tours ahead of time. Also, make a list of museums and attractions you want to see and check the hours and days these places are open. Some places might be closed and you will waste valuable time and may be disappointed if you cannot get in. I like the restaurant planning suggestion - this is something I have often neglected and consequently, we end up eating in mediocre places.

You are not obsessive - we are visiting England in July and I have already started to plan activities by morning, afternoon and evening on each day.

crob

When visiting London, we've often saved money by eating a late hot lunch (much cheaper)and then buying food at the grocery for dinner in our room. You can use an ATM or VISA card at most stores; many have sandwiches, deli, or hotfood. It's also helpful to know where they're located for any small item you might have forgotten.
Sainsbury's has a store locator at their website:
http://www.sainsburys.co.uk/storelocator/

sandykins

My family of four (2 adults, 2 small kids) are spending spring break this April in London, and I, too, get a queasy feeling at the continuing fall of the dollar. My strategies are:

(1) I bought airplane tickets three months ago, in dollars.

(2) I booked a hotel room two months ago, also in dollars, through United Vacations, which had some great deals for families.

(3) I plan to buy 7-day Visitor Travelcards for the Tube at www.raileurope.com, which sells them at a good price in dollars. (But I will do last-minute calculations just before purchase and see whether the price is still better in dollars than in pounds through the Tube's website.)

(4) I will use for all credit card purchases in London a MBNA-issued Visa card that charges no fee for currency conversion other than the 1 percent that Visa charges. My Bank-One issued Visa charges an additional 2 percent on top of Visa's 1 percent.

(5) Based on what I have read in this forum, I am cutting out sights like Kensington Palace that charge a fee and do not sound ultra- compelling to me (and sound outright dull to some other family members).

(6) I am, however, not pre-paying for coach tickets to Oxford and Windsor Castle because we want the flexibility of changing our itinerary on a whim.

(7) Our hotel offers a full English-breakfast buffet that we plan to stoke up on, to last us until early dinners, when we will have substantial high teas or take advantage of pre-theatre specials.

(8) To get us over any hunger before dinner, I am making and bringing a bag of protein-calorie-and-fiber-packed granola bars. (Any other ideas out there for filling snacks to bring along? Anyone?)

(9) As I always do, I plan and price everything obsessively down to the penny, then at the start of the trip put money all out of my mind and just enjoy myself! The falling dollar won't sway us from enjoying teas and dinners at the pricey places we have already booked; my stomach leads the way when I travel!

Any other strategies out there for beating the exchange rate?

starspinners

Years ago when I was planning my first trip to the UK a friend gave me this tip: take along a coin purse.

You'll be surprised how many £1 coins you'll end up collecting in change each day. (These days you can end up with a collection of £2 coins, too.)

Now instead of the coin purse I take a 'wrist wallet' when I go to London , it has a zippered coin compartment and another zippered section that's tall enough to hold £5 /10/ 20 notes. British notes don't fit well into a "regular sized " US wallet.
Wrist wallets were in vogue a few years ago when I bought mine but I think you should still be able to find one in TJ Max, or even on clearance in some department stores.

LynnieD

Wow-thanks for all of the great ideas. I will start looking around and planning restaraunts. We all like ethnic foods of any and all kinds. We are staying in the Victoria area for London and I notice thanks to Crob there is a Salisbury nearby.

Thanks for the tips, keep them coming.

itsmlf

we just returned......high teas are hard to find in the city anymore but lots of places to eat that are just average price. always have a 20P coin for entrance to a lot of latrines....
Kensington Palace is delightful I wouldnt have missed it for the world, have seen all the others in the past years......have fun!!!

pipsil

Another suggestion for "typically english " food. Fish and Chips. There is a very good fish and chips restaurant in the Victoria neighborhood. The Seafresh Fish Restaurant 80, Wilton Road. Not cheap but really good. The the quality can probably vary depending on the catch. I have never had a bad meal there.

sandykins

itsmlf, please talk me back into Kensington Palace. What wonderful things would I be missing? I myself am a great fan of the late Diana, Princess of Wales, and would love to see her dresses as well as the Queen's hats that are currently on display in a special exhibit. My 3-year-old daughter says she would like to see "princess dresses." Problem is, my husband and 7-year-old son thinks this sounds boring, and I would have to carve out a time when my daughter and I could visit KP alone at the expense of missing some other sight, and I can't think of a single sight I would want to forgo! If you talk me into it, maybe I'll give up some shopping time I had set aside for our last day in London.

vcl

Perhaps your son and his dad would enjoy just wandering around the palace grounds and gardens. Great swan ponds to marvel at, lots of running room for a small boy. I've seen lots of parents and their children just enjoying playing in the park. Then maybe for a treat, lunch or tea at The Orangerie, a grand space but not too grand for children.

Have a great trip.

BigRedFlash71

Here's another money saving tip for you, Lynne: if you're taking travelers checks, exchange them at the post office! That's right, the post office!

Maybe I was out of the loop and this might be common knowledge, but I didn't discover it until my third trip to London (I did it in Paris, too). You can go to the post office (beware of business hours, though) and exchange your money for free! No commissions, no fees, current market rates. There is no catch. Don't mess with those exchange bureaus. I don't think Americans realize you can do this because if you wanted to exchange money at the P.O. in the U.S. they'd think you're crazy. Plus, our P.O.'s would have to charge you. My advise is find a P.O. close to your hotel, and use it religiously.

bettyk

Kensington Palace is covered under the Great Britain Heritage Pass. Otherwise, if you plan to visit Hampton Court Palace or the Tower of London, look into getting a "combination" ticket that includes Kensington Palace for a cheaper price than the two tickets would cost if purchased separately. These combination tickets must be purchased at the ticket counter of one of the covered properties.

highledge

sanykins-
Is there a museum that your husband and son would like to visit- and you'd rather not? Why not split up for a morning and meet up for lunch? You could go to Kennsington palace for some girl time and meet up with your husband and son at the V and A or British museum.
The basement of the science museum has a kids area that's great for hands on and running around. The transport meseum in covent garden is also wonderful for kids.
Food for the kids really adds up- do you really need four bottles of water or will two suffice? Cookies are relatively cheap in England- have some handy for the daytime. Pack granola bars and some quick pick-me-up/high sugar candy for when times get tough and whines get loud!

sandykins

Thanks, vcl, bettyk, and highledge, for these great ideas on how to fit Kensington Palace into the itinerary. Vcl's tip about combination tickets is great. I just checked on-line and found that a Tower-and-Kensington-Palace combo ticket for me would be only £4.70 more than the price of a Tower ticket alone, whereas admission to KP is usually £10.50. At that low price (and 3-year-old daughter gets in free), we girls almost can't afford to pass up KP. Maybe when my husband knows the marginal cost is so low, he'll want to go to KP, too! I just salivate at the thought of the Royal Dress Collection there and Diana's dress collection.

Highledge, I have racked my brain for some sight I could let the boys see alone while daughter and I go off alone to KP, such as the Imperial War Museum that my daughter says she's not keen on (but can a 3-year-old really know that?), but when I read up on the war museum, it sounds so great, I don't want to miss it! I can't even pass up the dinosaurs at the Natural History Museum, I am such a kid at heart.

Looks like I will either, as bettyk suggested, ask husband and son to play in Kensington Park, or even go on ahead to nearby Portobello Road market in Notting Hill, while daughter and I pop into KP for a bit. Or maybe, as I said, I'll give up shopping time of my own to go to KP. The falling dollar is dampening my desire to shop in London, anyway. Sigh.

Okay, you all have convinced me that I shouldn't have to miss KP, and where there's a will, there's a way.

I'm with you, Highledge, on the granola bars and water bottles. You obviously have experience traveling with children! I bake and pack a bunch of these bars as a money-saving snack we carry with us. One water bottle does it for our whole family; we refill often and save money by never buying sodas or mineral water.

On the availabilty of high tea (with warm savory dishes) in London: two places we have booked for high tea are Fortnum & Mason 's St James's Restaurant (on the fourth floor), and the Dorchester Hotel in the Promenade between 5 pm and 8pm. Both places are pricey, but I scrimp and save on some things precisely so I can splurge on others.

Seems that Porter's English Restaurants might be a good place to order dishes to make up a high tea. Although a chain, I have heard good things about the food (both quality and quantity) and the prices. I, personlly, want to try Porter's, but my kids want to go to a chippy any night that I have not already booked a restaurant.