London a Weekend at a time . . .
 

We are ex-pats (family of 4, kids 12 & 9) living about 2 hours from London. So far, I've focused on planning school breaks and bank holidays at various other destinations but it's time to focus on London. Though some will day trip from where we are, I think we are most likely to make a weekend out of it (say 10 am Saturday arrival to ~6 pm Sunday departure -- flexible of course). As you might expect, I have a few questions.

We've not been to London since we moved to the UK but we did have a short visit 2 years ago when staying with friends in Windsor (day trip to Tower of London and caught a show).

Part 1:
I've got my spreadsheet going and a decent map and have tried to look at good weekend blocks so we aren't zig-zagging too much. A few ideas:

A) Natural History, Science and V&A Museums, Harrods
B) St. Paul's, British Museum, British Library
C) Westminster, Churchill, Buckingham Palace State Rooms, National Gallery, National Portrait Gallery, Tate Britain (mix/match over 2 weekends--might be a little art heavy)
D) Tower of London, Globe, London Eye, Greenwich

Rough ideas as we will obviously have the flexibility to come back another time. We'll mix in parks and shopping depending on the mood (and weather). Would also like to see a show or 2 as well. That should keep us busy for awhile. Thoughts?

Part 2:
I've got some Holiday Inn points and London is actually a good place to use them (value wise). The best options with quad, rewards rooms are:

1) Holiday Inn Mayfair (3 Berkley Street)
2) Crown Plaza Kensington (100 Cromwell Road)
3) Holiday Inn Bloomsbury (Coram Street)
4) Holiday Inn Oxford Circus (57-59 Welbeck Street)
5) HI Express Victoria (106-110 Belgrave Road)

I was thinking of matching weekend A with 2; B with 3; C with 1 and then going from there. Overthinking or a decent plan? Note: we will likely be coming in via East Coast Trains to St. Pancras. I haven't figured out the logistics of what to bring and how. Personal day packs maybe . . .

Part 3:
For those last minute plans when the train tickets might be a little high, are there any park and ride Tube stops that allow overnight parking? I've not researched this yet. I've heard of the day trippers parking at Wembley Park for very little but I don't know about overnight.

Sorry for the length and thanks for your time!

don't know about tube station park and ride, but even if you are booking the night before you may be able to get reasonable discounts on rail tickets - recently i got a 1st class single from Redruth to Plymouth [a 90 min journey] for £6!.

also, have you thought about a family railcard?

it costs £28 [10% off that at the moment] and you get 1/3 off all fares. Here's the link:

http://www.familyandfriends-railcard.co.uk/online

Bought a 3-year railcard. I'm ready to go. :D

For your Plan A schedule, obviously the Crowne Plaza in Kensington would be the best location. You can walk to all those sights (Nat Hist museum, V&A, and even Harrods).

What do you mean by a "quad" room? A suite, or just a room with 2 double beds? I stayed at the Crowne Plaza Kensington last year with my friend and we had a regular double-bedded room. All I can say is the room is small - barely enough for the 2 of us. It'll be tight quarters for a family of 4 though I guess it'll be okay if you're only there for 1 night.

If space/comfort is a concern, you may want to call up each hotel to find out the square footage of all their double rooms and book the one that is the largest.

Having said that, I'd say that my stay at the Crowne Plaza was fine and I would stay there again.

Bought a 3-year railcard. I'm ready to go>>

great minds, indydad.

Anyone else? I think I should have posted what's there to do in London and where's the best place to stay? Those get all the action. :)

I'd do the City of London Museum from St Pauls , rather than the British Museum and Library.

Also from St Paul's you can walk across the Milleniumm Bridge to SOuthbank for the Globe and there is always something going on there. From There you can take a boat across the river to the Tate or just a cruise down the Thames

The Tate Modern is on Southbank. ANd you can get the boat to Greenwich from there too. The Eye is also there

I've stayed at the Holiday Inn Bloomsbury and thought it was great, but we had "double" rooms with two twin beds and you'd be hard pressed to get all four of you in there. Not sure if they have a true quad room or not. Obviously you know it's in a good location for your B plans, but I wouldn't hesitate to stay there for the C plans either - it's not far and transport is good, and as you'll be coming into St Pancras, the hotel itself is a good location for you. However, I really like Bloomsbury in general. If you want to experience different parts of the city with different hotels, you've got a good plan to do that.

I've had good luck using lastminute.com for West End tickets, but I haven't tried it on a weekend.

"<i>Over thinking or a decent plan?</i>"

Over thinking just a bit. If you can get the specific properties for the weekends you want --sure. But transport is so easy -- I'd personally go for the ones w/ the best deal, least points, best upgrade option -- whatever.

@janisj -- I figured. But the points, etc. are the same in this case. I'll probably try a few to see different parts of the city.

@jent103 -- thanks, I'll give lastminute a try as well as TKTS. I'm only assuming the rooms are big enough for 4 since I put in 4 people for 1 room and they show availability. We'll see how tight it is.

Appreciate all the input.

indy_dad,
You might want to experiment with hotel locations to begin with but as a rule if I find an hotel I like I tend to stick with it as a base. If the points are the same see if there's a bigger room or free breakfast (HI Express?).

You probably know that many museums are free in London and you can pop in and out easily so you don't have to rigidly stick to your plan if one of the museums is besieged on a particular day.
I'd sign up for emails from the the various art galleries etc as then you'll know if there's something on that you'd particularly like to see (and it might give you some idea if it'll be busy on not).
My kids like the Tate Modern too.

Weekend C .. to dilute the art you could fit in a visit to Covent Garden and watch the street performances.

The Barbican is another venue you might want to add to your list. Plenty of free stuff and child friendly events (music/art etc) going on .. again sign up for the emails for current events.

We did a very similar thing for a couple of years. We were living in Bedford, about an hour from St Pancras, and spent a lot of weekends in London. Leaving straight from work on Fridays worked well for us, as we dropped our luggage (small bag each) straight off at the hotel then went out for a meal. Then we had a whole day on Saturday and most of Sunday, getting back to the flat in Bedford by around 8pm.

I think you have some good ideas of what to see and do but need to play it by ear a bit. You don't want to be inside a museum on a sunny day as they are so rare ;-) and if there is a special parade or festival then you could do that. The Lord Mayor's Parade was great to see, I think it's on in November and we watched it right by St Paul's. You might want to get half price theatre tickets at Leicester Square for Saturday night but if there's nothing of interest then you have a night free to do something else.

One of the best things to come from our London weekends was getting to know different neighborhoods. We specifically tried to stay in different areas and it meant we got a reasonably good grasp on what was where.

If you haven't seen it, the www.londontown.com website has some great info on things to do and I used to book hotels via their website too. We didn't have to pay a deposit, just a credit card for guarantee and paid the hotel on arrival.

Once I knew where the hotel was located, I used this website to research places to eat - www.squaremeal.co.uk you can search by location or by cuisine.

Something else I just remembered was the tourist office in Bedford sold cheap train tickets to London. It would be worthwhile checking that out in your town as we saved a huge amount of money buying them that way.

Enjoy!
Kay

Thanks sassy_cat and Kay. Just the type of input I was looking for.