kateh717

I have an overnight layover in London on the returning leg of a trip to Prague and Budapest.

I'll be getting into LHR at 10:40 pm and have a flight leaving at 11 am the next day. I know it's not a lot of time, but I'm determined to take the opportunity to go out in London for a little bit at least!

I am planning to either take the tube if I can catch the last one or a taxi to a hotel in London and go out in the same neighborhood.

What district should I plan to go out in? I am traveling with my boyfriend and we are more into bars/pubs than clubs, we don't want anything too pretentious. But I have heard that most pubs close around 11. What neighborhood should we go out in that will be fun and have bars open, but not have long lines and high cover charges?

Also, I would like to book a hotel in whichever neighborhood we go out in and will be returning to LHR via the tube the next morning, so I want to be sure it's accessible to LHR.

Thank you!

janisj

A hotel anywhere along the Piccadilly line (Piccadilly Circus, Leicester Sq., Covent Garden, etc) will be on the tube line from LHR.

But you probably won't be to your hotel and checked in til after 1AM and probably 01:30 or later to any club. Then you have to be back on the tube to LHR by a little after 7AM. I just don't think it makes sense.

mscleo

IMHO, you don't won't have time to really do anything. By the time you deplane, get thru customs, and travel and check in to your hotel, it will be, as janisj stated, well after 1:00am. You'll then have to be back on the train very early to get to the airport to go thru the check in and boarding process. That would leave you, at best, 6 hours to visit the pubs and sleep in a hotel, and with the cost of London hotels, for me personally, that wouldn't be worth it.

If you really want to leave the airport, I would do so and just do a wander about without checking into a hotel. The downside to that is that, from what I understand, the left luggage facilities at LHR will be closed by time you deplane, so you would have to take your gear with you, which, if you have a lot of bags, wouldn't be practical. Personally speaking, I probably would just stay at the airport.

If you do choose to follow thru on your plans, however, a hotel along the Piccadilly line (also as janisj) would be your best bet.

Apres_Londee

Most bars close between midnight-2am, depending on the night of the week. If you rushed you might make it in somewhere for a drink. You'll have to expect that some places will be full though, or turn away new customers when it gets close to last call.

You should take a look through Time Out.

http://www.timeout.com/london/bars/

I agree that it doesn't make much sense. You might think you have 12 hours but you really only have 6 at the very most.

Loco2

First of all I do think you're mental for trying to get to London and back on a night time layover, but preconceptions aside you should definitely be realistic about what you can achieve. If your plane lands at 1040pm, then you most likely won't be done with baggage reclaim until gone midnight. If you do make the tube then it is about an hour on the Piccadilly line into central London. If you don't then a taxi will be fairly extortionate by comparison. Let's say optimistically you get to London by 1am, there are some places that may be open. For example Cafe Fiore in Leicester Square, which while not the most ambient of places, was open all night last time I checked - and in the thick of it. There is another discussion on Quora I contributed to a while back on this topic: http://www.quora.com/What-bars-etc-a...ours-in-London

However, if your flight the next day is at 11am then you'll need to be back at Heathrow at 9am (thus leaving not long after 7am) so as … notes, you only really have 6hrs, so you can forget sleeping altogether. If you're packing lightly and can handle an all-nighter, by all means go for it!