London is huge! When you first get here, it may be intimidating to move through the city without any prior knowledge of a city with a 607 square mile area. But there are tricks to the trade. Let us give you a tourist guide to getting through central London.
Now if it’s just in terms of getting from A to B, we recommend downloading the Citymapper app. Google maps works well but there is no competition for Citymapper. This app will not only tell you when the next tube (our subway) or bus is coming, it’ll even tell you which train car to get on to so you’re closest to the exit when you get off. It has live updating and won’t route you on any cancelled transport, unless the cancellation happens within 15 minutes of your travel. Just to be clear, we don’t get any commission from Citymapper, we use it ourselves and we know it’s the best way to get around massive London with no unexpected interruptions.
However, if you want to get somewhere, but you also have time to enjoy yourself, well that’s a different story! We’ve got some great ways to travel that don’t include being smashed in between sweaty commuters (no judgement, we’ve all been there). Why not hire some of the best private tour guides in London to show you around whichever borough you want to see, and then grab a Thames river boat down to another part of London altogether?
If you take a private tour with us, we can walk around Trafalgar Square, around some jaunty king’s horse guards, past 10 Downing Street – where the prime minister lives- and then grab some photos at Big Ben (not the clock tower’s real name), and then we can grab the boat from the Westminster pier to Greenwich. The boat will take us right under the iconic Tower Bridge and some of London’s other historic bridges. We’ll tell you all about them as we go, and then we’ll hop off at Greenwich! Greenwich is often overlooked by travellers but it’s a great spot to explore. It has an immense history, a beautiful market, the Prime Meridian (where time starts!), and some historic pubs as well.
There’s more than just one way to cut a pie though. London used to be known for its smog and smoke. Just 20 years ago, the smell of gasoline buses would’ve made the city feel like the inside of an oil drum! Today the air is, for the most part, clean and occasionally rainy. But we are still in touch with our roots. If you’re by the Tower of London on the eastern side of central London or Trafalgar Square on the western side, there’s a great way to traverse between. There’s a bus called the T15. This is an iconic bus (from before we went electric), and the bus driver and the conductor still wear the old uniforms. For just £7.50, you can sweep through the streets on an old bus on which the driver still yells out the stops, and get to keep your bus ticket as a souvenir. London is always working to preserve what hasn’t been destroyed by fire or bombs in its tumultuous past, and this is just one example of how we’re keeping our history alive.
The best private tour guides in London can show you even more while also getting you to where you need to be next. There’s a very good chance that we won’t just get you from point a to point b, but will help you have an unforgettable experience with Londunnit instead.
