Geotagged Map
How to get to London for £1
I travelled on the mega bus for £20 return. It only took 4 hours and we arrived half and hour earlier than scheduled. You can get a ticket for £1.00 if you don't mind compromising on the time and date of travel. The bus arrives at Victoria Coach Station which is just opposite Victoria Tube Station which makes it easy to get to wherever you're staying.
Both National Express and Megabus offer services from Leeds to London for £1 each way! To make sure can get hold of these bargains:
- Book your tickets way in advance
- Be prepared to travel at unsocial hours
- Keep checking their websites for the cheapest deals
Alternatively...
Take the Train.
You will have to pay slightly more, but the on the up side:
- It cuts travel time in half
- Trains are much more comfortable for long journeys
- You can use a young persons rail card to get a discount
From Leeds to London-
- National Rail.co.uk - £15.00 one way
- Virgin Trains - £8.25 one way
- MegaTrain - £5.00 one way
www.megatrain.com/uk/
www.nationalexpress.com/
www.nationalrail.co.uk/
www.virgintrains.co.uk/
If you're determined not spend a penny on travel then you could always try hitch hiking. It may take you a whole day to get to London but at least it's free! Make sure you don't travel on your own and stay on main roads and big roundabouts. Heres a useful wiki page with some hitch hiking safety tips.
- Students can get a 'zip card' (free) which offers discounts and sometimes free travel!
- Oyster cards single fares are cheaper than normal ones
- Its works on a pay as you go system which means you just top up whatever you need to and don't have to pay monthly/yearly etc.
- As well the tube you can use Oyster cards on buses, trams, London Overground and some National Rail services.
DONT....
- Use black cabs unless you really have to as they cost a fortune
- Go on a open-top sight-seeing bus - you can pay up to £25 for a ticket that'll take you nowhere!
Accommodation for Less!
You may think it's expensive to find accommodation in London and if you stay in a hotel or even a poxy Travel Lodge, it will be; but there are many cheaper alternatives-you can even camp in Central London!
Smart Russel Square
This is the hostel I stayed in when I visited London. I shared a room with 7 other people for £13.00 a night. It has really good showers, communal kitchen and lounge area, Internet and a gym which is free to use! Overall it was a good place to stay as breakfast was included (which is unusual for a hostel) and it's in an ideal location just seconds from Russel Square tube station.If you book online there is no booking fee; shared rooms start at £7.99.
Smart Back Packers (.com) has hostels all over London:
- Hyde Park
- Kensington
- Camden
There are hundreds of hostels in London, all of them offering great prices. Their main benefit is that they all have communal kitchen's which saves you having to eat out for breakfast, lunch and tea, which can be expensive. Here's a list of some of the most central hostels:
Journey's London Eye
Situated close to the Thames, its ideal location leaves you a short walk away from many of London's attractions. Rooms start at £9.00 and they have a bar, kitchen and a communal area with pool and fussball. Journey have other hostels in Kings Cross, Waterloo, Greenwich and London Bridge.
Piccadilly Backpackers
This hostel looks right onto Piccadilly Circus so you can't get more central than that, and it's party ethos really appeals to students, as they organise group outings to all the best clubs. Their rooms are really cool, with 100% privacy pods and intricate illustrations covering every wall, starting at £12.00.
http://www.piccadillyhotel.net/
St Christopher's Inn
They have hostels in Shepards Bush, Hammersmith, London Bridge, Camden and Greenwich but if you like the party atmosphere The Village, London Bridge is the place to go. They have a belushi bar open till 4am on weekends, cheap drinks, live DJ's, roof terrace and wide screen TV with free DVD hire. They also have events on every night:
- Sundays are quiz night - with acoustic bands in the bar too.
- Mondays are karaoke!
- Tuesdays are fun filled, stand up comedy nights.
- Wednesdays are another karaoke night!
- Thursdays are Latin lovers night in the bar.
- Fridays are pub crawls!
- Saturdays is our very own Shiny Disco Balls - where you can party in the club all night long!
http://www.st-christophers.co.uk/
Camping
Suprisingly there are many campsites in the outskirts of London and with great transport facilities it only takes half and hour to get to the Centre. Bring a tent or hire a caravan - a trip to London can cost you next to nothing!
Crystal Palace Caravan Club
This five star campsite offers pitches for tents and caravans and is open all year round with prices starting at just £4.90 a night! The number 3 bus takes you straight to Piccadilly Circus and you can buy travel card from the camp site. It has good facilities with showers, toilets, running water and a laundrette.
Accommodation for FREE!
Couch Surfing
Couch surfing is an organisation that enables people from all around the world offer their couch to host travellers - totally free. It works by using a rating system (like ebay) so you know what your getting. Arrangements are made between the traveller and the host before you arrive, mostly by email, to make it convenient for both parties.
Free Days Out- The Britsh Museum and Camden Town
You could spend your entire visit to London in the British Museum alone so I suggest that you pick up a map when you arrive and choose the rooms that most interest you. There are free half an hour tours conducted regularly throughout the day and also free talks held in some of the galleries. It is an amazing place to visit even if its just for the brilliant architecture inside and out. It holds the largest collection of international artefacts in the UK so there is so many interesting things to see, I think it would be a crime to go to London and not visit the Bitish Museum! It is open sat-wed - 10am - 17.30 and thurs-fri - 10.00 - 20.30, so theres no excuse not to see what this amazing museum has to offer.
I found the Mexican room really interesting, as it was full of decorative skulls that originally belonged to human sacrifices. The Mayans believed that human sacrifice was the only way to please the Gods and keep the sun in the sky. They decorated the skulls afterwards in a mosaic and placed them outside the temples to show the Gods how many people they had sacrificed.
Another really interesting part of the British Museum was the room full of Chinese artifacts. It was full of enormous deity statues and really intricate decorative stoneware which I could have looked at all day they were so pretty! Here I learnt about some of the Buddist teachings. They literally have a God for everything!
Camden Town *****star
Camden Market is made up of 5 main areas - Camden Lock, Camden Buck St, Inverness Street, Camden Stables and the main street so it is pretty huge! You can find everything here, from alternative fashion and vintage clothing, to foreign food and world music. Even if you don't buy anything its great to just wander round and soak up the buzzing, colourful atmosphere of one of the biggest most popular markets in London.
Alternatively...
Check out the smaller markets. If the size of Camden is daunting, then head over to Shoreditch where you'll find a good selection of smaller markets to peruse.
- Start at Liverpool St Station
- Go left down Bishopgate
- Turn right onto Middlesex St
- This is Petticoat Lane Market
- Make your way through it till you reach Commercial St.
- Turn left and you will find Spitalfields Market
- Opposite here there is a road called Hanbury Street.
- This will take you to Brick Lane
- Here you will find curry mile and Backyard Market.
Backyard Market ***star
A smaller version of Camden really, Backyard Market is a compact little market with ethnic food and arts and crafts. A lot of art students have stalls here selling slogan T-shirts they have made. So if you're looking for an individual one off find, you'll definately get something here. Open saturdays and sundays.
Look out for the Gherkin!
Free Days Out- Oxford Street/Hyde Park
Speaker's Corner is located in the south east corner of Hyde Park opposite Marble Arch. Every Sunday, though because of it's popularity, speakers can be found every day of the week, people flock here to voice their opinion on anything and everything. Even Karl Marx and George Orwell once used this as a platform to express thier ideals and beliefs! When I went I saw a man who thought he could live forever, so the things you will hear really are extremely varied! Well worth a look, as anyone is free to get up there and pontificate and heckling is welcomed which makes it a hilarious place to visit!
Hyde Park is a great place to visit if the hectic bustle of London is getting a bit too much to handle. Here you can amble through the park which has a meadow and a lake and pack yourself a picnic, or participate in numerous activities including, rollerblading, horse riding, boating, cycling. frisbee, tennis, basketball and even swimming!
Hyde park offers loads of activites but one of my favourites and it seems like one of the popular is in-line skating. There are various places you can hire skates from and you can get lessons from £12 - or just bring your own, which makes for a really cheap day out!
The Serpentine Lake in Hyde Park is open to the public 7 days a week from May to September. You can hire out boats and pedalos and there is a paddling pool!
The Queen's Horse Guards *****star
With lots of sights to take in and photographs to be taken, a stroll down the the river can be very pleasant.
- Start at Westminster Tube Station
- You can't miss the Houses of Parliament!
- Walk over the Westminster Bridge and follow the river
- You will see the London Eye and Jubilee Gardens
- Turn right here till you get to Waterloo Station
- Take the tube to St Paul's.
- Take the Waterloo line East to Bank, change onto the Central line and go west to St Pauls
- From here St Paul's Cathedral is straight in front of you.
- Walk towards the river and take the Millenium Bridge
- On the other side of the river you will find the Tate Modern and Shakespeare's Globe Theatre.
Free Days Out- Covent Garden/Trafalgar Square
- Start at Covent Garden Tube Station
- Here you will find the covered market and many street performers
- Opposite the station is Neal Street
- At the end of Neal St go back on yourself down Marmouth Street
- Neals Yard is on your right
- When you get to the end of this road turn right onto Cranbourn Street
- This will take you to Leicester Square
- Make your way to Charing Cross Road
- You will see the galleries and Trafalgar Square
- Cross Trafalgar Square and walk up Haymarket till you reach Piccadilly Circus
- Go up Shaftbury Avenue till you find Rupet Street
- Up here is Burwick Street Market
- Further up is Soho Square
- The nearest tube station from here is Tottenham Court Road.
The National Portrait Gallery ****star
Trafalgar Square **star
You can get away from the manic hustle and bustle of London life by taking a walk around Soho Square - just off Oxford Street. It's a really pretty, peaceful square and would be great to bring a picnic here.
Neal Street, Covent Garden ****star
Covent garden is a hive of activity - one of it's highlights is the various street performers it attracts. This picture shows the 'dogman' who would bark insults at anyone that walked past - very amusing to watch just make sure you don't catch his eye!
Not only can you find barmy street performers in Covent Garden but now you can see them in abundance in Camden! Also you find a lot of people randomly dancing to hardcore dance music - I don't think they are doing it for money but it's still really funny to watch! Think Techno Viking (YouTube him!)