Our boys’ first trip to England happened when they were both too young to remember. We squeezed in SO many incredible sights (Stonehenge, Bath, lots of charming countryside). But we did it at the expense of seeing anything in London. While London wasn’t initially on our radar for summer travel this year, we had the opportunity to spend a day there and thought, why not? We worked out an itinerary that ticked the most boxes for our short time there. Twenty-four hours in London with kids is a whirlwind of jet lag and excitement, but so worth doing if you ever have the chance.
Getting There
Travel hacking long-haul flights to Europe usually requires some creativity and flexibility. We had a summer trip planned for Spain, but Iberia’s lack of award availability had me checking other ways to cross the Atlantic. I don’t love (read: I despise) the taxes on British Airways. However, they were the only airline available for the four of us in business class during the summer.
The flight was from San Diego direct to Heathrow, and I snagged these for 90,000 British Airways Avios and $450 per person (see what I mean about the taxes?!). The good thing about Avios is that you can transfer from Chase, Amex, and Capital One. Also, there are frequently pretty great transfer bonuses (sometimes 50% through Amex!).
Landing at Heathrow
Heathrow, to be honest, is not my favorite. It is an enormously intense airport that I find challenging to transition through, and it is about an hour’s drive outside London. One of the most popular modes of transport from the airport to the city is the Heathrow Express. The Heathrow Express is, well, an express train that runs from terminals 2,3,4, and 5 into Paddington Station.
The train leaves every 15 minutes and takes an average of 20 minutes (depending on which terminal you are departing from). A one-way ticket into London costs £22, and kids under 15 ride for free. One pro tip here is if you purchase your Heathrow Express ticket at least 90 days in advance AND on the app, you will receive a 75% discount which drops the ticket cost to £5.50.
Remember that if your hotel is closer to the major sights (Buckingham Palace, Big Ben, etc.), you will still need transport from Paddington Station to your hotel. Once we get into a city and drop our bags, sign me up for all the public transport. After a long flight, however, we are usually entirely exhausted, and the kids have amped up their complaints about their suitcase wheels, backpack straps, you name it. This is the point in our travel day where I would be willing to pay upwards of a million dollars to be out of the airport and at our hotel. This is precisely what we did at Heathrow: we hopped in an Uber, and we were off. Our Uber bill ran us £90 (yikes!!) (still worth it).
Where to Stay
Thanks to a stash of Hyatt points, we opted for the Great Scotland Yard Hotel at 25,000 Hyatt points per night per room. Remember that in Europe, the rooms are TINY, and a spacious two-queen bedroom is almost non-existent. Therefore, we needed to book two rooms. It can be pretty challenging to find adjoining rooms in Europe (ours were not adjoining, which is also a bit of a pain).
Also note that with award bookings, you are often stuck with a room with just one king bed (this was the case for us), and since the rooms weren’t adjoining, we needed to split up and have one adult and one kid per room. If you are wondering how this went – 0/10 stars, do not recommend it. But, as I mentioned, this was a whirlwind trip, so we made it work. Could we have swung this setup for an extended period? Most likely not.
What We Saw
The Great Scotland Yard Hotel location is GREAT for sightseeing, and we could do most of it on foot.
WESTMINSTER ABBEY
We started the day with a tour of Westminster Abbey. The walk to Westminster Abbey from our hotel brought us by 10 Downing Street (stop for a quick pic), Big Ben (another quick pic), and numerous red telephone booths (more quick pics). You’ll need to book tickets for Westminster Abbey ahead of time here: https://www.westminster-abbey.org
Plan on spending about an hour to an hour and a half wandering around the Abbey. After leaving, we continued walking to Buckingham Palace. There are certain times during the year that Buckingham Palace is open to visitors (July-October) (purchase tickets here: https://www.rct.uk/visit/buckingham-palace), but unfortunately, we missed the visitors’ time by a few weeks. Don’t forget to plan to spend some time in St. James’s Park across the street from Buckingham Palace. It is sprawling and lovely and a much-needed reset for our kids after a morning of London sightseeing.
PLATFORM 9 AND 3/4
We wanted to see so much that we opted to eat lunch as we walked. Don’t sleep on the super affordable and pretty delicious prepackaged sandwiches that come as a meal with chips and drinks. These are at Tesco Express Markets, Pret a Manger, M&S, etc. We scooped a few of these up and ate as we walked first to Trafalgar Square for a quick peek en route to the Charing Cross metro station. We took the underground from Charing Cross to King’s Cross and beelined it for the Harry Potter 9 3/4 platform.
TOWER OF LONDON
From the King’s Cross station, we grabbed another metro to the Tower of London (purchase tickets ahead of time here: https://www.hrp.org.uk/tower-of-london/visit/tickets-and-prices/ ). Between the castle, the prison, the museum of torture, and the displays of weapons and knights armor – the Tower of London was my kids’ favorite sightseeing stop.
The Tower of London also houses the Crown Jewels, which was one of my favorite things I saw during our time in London. We opted to pay the additional £14.00 for the four of us to have audio guides. One of my sons loved it, and the other swung his around like a weapon the whole time, so your mileage may vary whether you find the audioguides worth the extra money.
I debated trying to squeeze in a trip to the London Eye and decided at the last minute to skip it. I think that was the right call, as we were all exhausted by this point, and I don’t know if I could have gotten us all to walk a step more. We took one last metro ride back to Charing Cross and dragged ourselves into the first pub we could find for some fish & chips (well-deserved cold beer for me!) And then straight to bed.
In the End
Our alarm went off early the following day for our flight to Spain. There’s a lot we would still like to see – but for 24 hours and two kids in tow, we managed to squeeze in quite a bit of lovely London.
