London Stuff

Interesting article here.  Basically thoughts on doing London on the cheap.  I'd only disagree with the idea of the 7 day travel card.  Get an Oyster card with the same amount of credit, it's easier to use, you won't accidentally demagnetize the strip, it won't crumple up in your pocket and get stuck in the machines by day 3, and you can use it without taking it out of your pocket/wallet/bag pocket.

Other things I recommend are the hop-on/hop-off bus tours.  Usually good fun, you get to see a lot and then you can decide to get off where you like.

If it is a first trip to London my personal must sees would be Big Ben, Parliament, Westminster Abbey.  Trafalgar Square, and walk/drive down the Mall to Buckingham Palace.  Horseguards parade.  Then over the city for St Pauls, the Tower and Tower Bridge.

General stuff: Science Museum, Natural History Museum, British Museum (where you can see the world's treasures thoughtfully taken and 'looked' after by a range of batshit crazy Victorians), National Gallery, Tate Modern.

Of interest to SF fans: HMS Belfast (next door to Tower Bridge) WW2 ship decked out as a museum, excellent one too.  Cutty Sark - now pretty much rebuilt and near Greenwich.  Imperial War Museum. Churchill's War Room (part of the IWM but in a different place), RAF Museum at Hendon,

For eating on the cheap - Weatherspoon's Pubs are cheap and cheerful and serve decent portions for little money and usually have beer and wine specials.

On the whole, Americans who live in large cities will be pleasantly surprised by the price of a pint of beer in the UK, even London.  Pints are Imperial 20oz pints and based on my last trip, you'd expect to pay $6/$6.50 a pint...  which is better than what I find myself paying in Seattle for a non-Happy Hour 16oz pint in Seattle.   In SF I'm seeing $8/$9+ for a Guiness and similar.  In Vegas at the weekend, a 12oz bottle of beer was $7...  And there's no expected tip on the price, so it's cheaper than you think.  Likewise, wine is MUCH cheaper in bars and restaurants than any city I've spent time in in the US.  You should have no trouble finding a decent bottle of wine for $25 or less, and in many places, two 250ml glasses will get the rest of the bottle for free.

One cautionary note.  Spirits.  They have to be served in exact measures of 25ml, and believe me, 25ml of spirits in the bottom of a glass is a very very sorry looking pour indeed :(

Generally speaking, as has been the case for decades, the best deal for a sit down meal with alcoholic beverages will always be a curry where for $40 a head, you'll have multiple courses with side dishes and drinks... probably lots of drinks... and if you pick the right restaurant a complementary after dinner drink.

I'll think more about tips for travel and what I'd do if I was seeing London for the first time.

Nowhere to Roam...

A few people have posted on some of my London stuff about apps and travel planning stuff.  I wanted to flag a potential issue and suggest some thoughts based on what I do.

The core problem, especially for US visitors to the UK, is that the cost of international data roaming is insane and, unless things have dramatically improved in the last year, and you don't have a UK cellphone account, access to free WiFi is highly spotty, at best.

The second problem is that the US carriers are under no obligation to unlock your phone, so it's not a matter of buying a PAYG SIM card and popping it into your phone.  That's assuming you're on T-Mobile or AT&T - Sprint and Verizon are CDMA based networks and don't have SIM cards so while modern devices will work on UK networks it will be as roaming devices complete with US roaming charges.

Have I mentioned that the Roaming Charges are FUCKING INSANE?

I can pre-pay 300MB of data for $60USD - which based on my standard use patterns is about a week and half/two weeks - 800MB is $120...  if you go over that it's $5 a MB...  It's amazing how many apps and websites use that kind of data just starting these days.  So a LOT of people coming from the US are going to have Data Roaming set firmly in the off position.

So options:
Ideally you have a spare unlocked GSM phone - given what we do I've about 6 lying around my office so I'll probably take a handful for everybody in our party and buy PAYG SIMs when I land from which ever carrier gives me the best deal.

If you don't have an unlocked phone, you can ask your carrier to unlock the device ahead of a trip to Europe.  If you're a post-pay customer in good standing the might do this.  I've heard mixed reports.  I'm planning to do this with my Lumia.

You could get the phone unlocked yourself, but be warned, that will void most US carrier warranties so you'd want to think twice if it's on contract.

I'd be interested in hearing from UK friends on best WiFi options.  Most of what I have seen is "The Cloud" and without an O2 account either I've had to really shop around for free hotspots or pay per day.