rncheryl

The first of many questions, I'm sure.

Planning a 10 day trip to London next year. DH and myself, possibly a friend. Will be renting an apartment. We are 60ish and fit and healthy/

1. Would you consider May, June, or Sept. Doesn't look like much difference in temps, how about rain, daylight hours, crowds.

2. When do you start following air fares, where do you check? What would you expect fares to be? (Miami-London)?

Thats it for now, will post more later.

RM67

1. All 3 months are outside the longish school summer holiday period (usually mid July to very early Sept). So you should hopefully be avoiding the worst of the crowds whichever you pick. (though May has some bank holiday weekends).

2. Temps will be similar for all three, with June (theoretically) being slightly warmer. And June will also have longer daylight hours. You cannot predict the rain. It might come, it might not. None of those months will be cold. It may be grey and drizzly and there may or may not be as much sun as you hope, but the weather will likely be very mild, even if not bright.

3. Don't know about airfares.

Micheline

We go to London every year to visit our daughter. We have had best weather in late June and early September. It's too early to check for fares but try kayak.com

janisj

Those 3 (plus December) are my favorite months in London.

All three are wonderful for different reasons. May has Chelsea Flower show, June has the extremely long daylight hours. But otherwise they are about equal-- so go when you can get the lowest fare.

djkbooks

You can hardly go wrong with any of those months, though there are plusses/minuses that don't matter much.

If it were me, I'd choose based on airfares and hotel rates.

All three trips we made to London, I booked awesome hotels at ridiculously low rates (one with a package including air fare) with Priceline.

I check air fares all the time. There is no best time. There are no constants, only variables (and same goes for the weather). But, in the overall, I've been the luckiest booking in November.

Since then, however, Aer Lingus has had some amazing sales. We just keep going back to Paris.

alanRow

I generally find that early September has the best weather. It also has less crowds than June

ribeirasacra

The weather forecasters in the UK have given up long term forecasts because they could not get tit right. So I doubt if anyone here can give you an answer to any weather question if the professionals cannot.
You could look at what has happened in the past, but those statistics do not predict what is going to happen in the future either.
This May has been very cold.

Ackislander

There was a period in latish May when all the tourist sites (Tower, National Gallery, etc) seemed to be overrun with foreign high school on end-of-year trips. London is never uncrowded, but this was exceptional.

Perhaps someone else can let you know if this is still an issue.

Earlier in May is terrific not only because of the Chelsea Flower show but because many private gardens in London are open under the National Gardens scheme. We took a couple of fascinating tours from the Museum of Garden History in Lambeth. I loved them even though I am not the gardener in our family.

flanneruk

"London is never uncrowded, but this was exceptional."

London has just about the highest population of any city in the developed world - and over 200 million more people within a 2 hr flight. So the only time there aren't crowds is Christmas Day, when the Euroids are at Mass and we're all watching Morcambe & Wise TV reruns.

Some tourist sights we're not very interested in - like the Tower - get especially crowded in July and August, but the Tube and most shops are correspondingly emptier, because many of us are away. When our schools are functioning, museums are getting close to dangerously crowded these days, as they're a free day out for schools within 100 mile radius. School holidays actually mean SMALLER crowds in the British Museum

The worst time this year (and any year when the pound is weak compared to the euro) is probably May: we're all here, but all month our European neighbours are on a near permanent series of holiday weekends (either Christian or neo-Marxist or both), and see London as a great place for their teenagers to misbehave in for a few days, for parents to stock up on cheapo clothes and for them all to suck up further subsidies from the overgenerous British taxpayer by getting free entrance to our museums that their far cannier governments wouldn't dream of extending to their own. When the pound's strong, that influx finds somewhere else to go.

Of your dates, the one window when our Eurofriends aren't likely to come, our schools are still on holiday and many of us are still keeping the Florida economy ticking over is the first two weeks of September. It's not unusual to get an Indian summer then, too.

Echnaton

>>>and see London as a great place for their teenagers to misbehave in for a few days

Mimar

Obviously the days are longer in May and June. Also the London parks will be full of spring flowers.

I find London too humid when it gets warm. The tube is not airconditioned nor are many smaller shops and restaurants. So I'd prefer May.

Mimar, just back from Shanghai, highly developed and with a population of 20 million.

tod

rncheryl - You mentioned an apartment. Have you see this one?
In a VERY nice area. We are seriously thinking of renting it in 2011. I see there is already a booking for part of May 2011!
http://www.londonapartmentvacation.com/

sap

England can definitely be lovely in June.

As to airfare, my MO is to start looking up to six months in advance of a travel date and I can usually lock in good fares about four months ahead. Then I buy travel insurance in case any problems should arise in the interim.

janisj

Ackislander: "Earlier in May is terrific not only because of the Chelsea Flower show"

Maybe a bit of confusion there. It might depend what one means by 'earlier'. Chelsea is towards the end of May (May 25-29 this year). Some years it can be a bit earlier -- the prior week -- but not in early/mid May.