Frequently Asked Questions

Yes! Just about all of the attractions included in the itinerary are either free or can be experienced “as a taste” from the outside, therefore there’s no need to buy entrance tickets if that’s not in your budget. We’ve also included budget-friendly food options (they’re the ones marked with a single “£”) or if you don’t want to spend money on food, just bring your own and only follow the sightseeing elements of the itinerary.

Yes, with all orders of our 2024 itineraries, we will be giving you the 2025 version for free when it launches.

It features famous landmarks like Piccadilly Circus, Buckingham Palace, Borough Market, London Fields, Tower Bridge, Columbia Road Flower Market, Covent Garden, London Eye, Southbank, Shoreditch, Street Art, Spitalfields Market, Notting Hill, Kensington, King's Cross, Peckham, Brixton, Greenwich, Hampstead, Camden and more…

No, that'd be impossible. We include a large range of activities, sights, and food and drink recommendations to suit different tastes and budgets. You'll then choose which of our recommendations you'll want to do each day, we usually recommend 3-6 sights and activities plus breakfast, lunch, dinner and drinks. You can keep track of your "must-dos" in the included Notion template and/or printable worksheets.

The itinerary was made with the intention that users would never need to get on public transportation because the days are laid out in small enough areas. Walking distance will vary greatly by the user, and what you choose to do or not do, but the Digital Map will show you how much walking you might end up doing.

There are some points at which you can hop on a bus or a taxi if you’re tired. We’ve pointed this out in the itinerary, and it’s also easy to figure out on your own via the Digital Map.

Buy it at least a week in advance, if you can. We recommend reading over the PDF before you arrive in London so that you can familiarise yourself with our recommendations, and some attractions and restaurants require advance booking.

London’s food spots are generally pretty good at accommodating for this, and I’ve included a variety of options that should suit just about everyone. Markets are especially good for this, by the way! For a few years now, we include icons indicating restaurants that are veggie-friendly, vegan-friendly and gluten-free friendly.

That being said, you should always check the menu online yourself, and you can also phone up a restaurant before you go to ask what they can do for any requirements, as they might have a hidden menu you can choose from, or they can create something special for you if you give enough notice.

Jess is vegetarian, so if you are too, you’ll find plenty of food options in the itinerary.

Our itinerary has indicators telling you whether or not each recommendation is wheelchair accessible and there are plenty of options for those who need to avoid stairs. You'll cover a fairly good amount of ground each day, but how much depends on how you choose to use the itinerary.

If you have any further questions on this, message us on our shop's Live Chat or email us at hello@loveandlondon.com.

If you go for the Bonus Package you'll find several suggestions in the London Spending Guide.

While London is a super expensive city, there are plenty of accommodation options no matter what your budget is. From a bed at a hostel up to a luxury hotel suite, we’ve got it all in there.

We’ve created this itinerary to cover what most people who visit London for the first time typically like to see. Of course, we can’t cover everything! If you have really specific or unique tastes, or don’t want to experience any classic London attractions (even just to see them from the outside), then this probably isn’t for you.

You might find that our Casual Tourist Guides will be better for you as they cover strictly hidden gems. Underrated museums, gin-making experiences, locally-loved restaurants, interesting historic elements that people often miss, cool underground cocktail bars. Think super cool and local, to the point that we have even had lots of Londoners buy these guides to help them better explore their own city. There's also a Digital Map included with each Casual Tourist Guide but it's up to you to decide your plan of action.

We've had lots of families with kids use our guides, however we haven't made them with kids under 16 in mind.

It doesn’t, because everyone who purchases the itinerary will be arriving from different parts of London. But it gives you a concrete starting point, and when you’re at your hotel ready to start your day, just pull up the map, select the starting point, then click “Directions” to see all of your options for getting there. It’s really easy!

The itineraries include lots of the major attractions alongside some local spots and hidden gems. You'll find everything from sights, points of interest, activities, tours, coffee shops, some great spots to do some shopping, restaurants and street food markets, pubs and bars. The itineraries also include an Attraction Pass Guide and a robust digital map, with a designated route to follow which includes all the spots mentioned in the itinerary.

By contrast, The Casual Tourist Guides are strictly hidden gems. Underrated museums, gin-making experiences, locally-loved restaurants, interesting historic elements that people often miss, cool underground cocktail bars. Think super cool and local, to the point that we have even had lots of Londoners buy these guides to help them better explore their own city. There's also a Digital Map included with each Casual Tourist Guide but it's up to you to decide your plan of action.

Well, we’ve never seen any itinerary that includes a digital map for your phone, which allows you to get real-time transportation and walking directions as well as makes it super easy to follow the itinerary. Also, many “itineraries” you can find online are created by people who’ve only visited London, not LIVED here. They aren’t able to provide alternative food options for diet restrictions, public toilets along the route, or more crucially, tips that only someone who has done this route themselves for years would know.

There are a couple of reasons. It took us years to create the itineraries, starting with hours of researching and planning the perfect route, to multiple days of on-the-ground testing, to writing the 100+ page guide and creating the map. If we didn’t charge for the itinerary, we simply couldn’t provide it to our community as it takes up so much time to create. We also spend anywhere from £25-200 per week trying out new things around London, some of which is included in the itinerary, some of which is not worthy. Of course, all of those meals, drinks, and tickets cost a lot of money. But by Jess testing them out and only telling you about the best, you won’t have to waste your time and money too, because only the best of the best goes in our guides.

If we save you from one not-so-good moderately-priced meal, you’ve already paid yourself back for your purchase, never mind the hours and hours of research and planning you won’t have to do yourself.

The map includes all recommendations mentioned in the PDF, plus indicators to help you “stay on track” with the general path of the itinerary. It integrates with Google Maps and you can easily get walking, taxi and public transport directions to any of our recommendations. This is where you’ll find all the toilets marked off too!

It absolutely works best when you have it. It will also allow you to get walking directions when needed, or transport directions when you’re planning to head back to your hotel once the day is done. In the guide, we’ve included a list of ways to have data on your phone so you can stay connected.

It’s integrated with the Google Maps app, so it’s available for all phones that use iOS or Android operating systems.

Watch this video to see:
➤ how to access the digital maps;
➤ how to use it when you are on the ground in London;
➤ where to find the map on the Google Maps app.

The Notion templates will:

➤ Help you organise which of the recommendations in our London Itineraries are a “must visit” or a “skip” (and to hide the ones you want to skip so you don’t have to look at them anymore).

➤ Give you a handy digital checklist of the things you absolutely want to do (populated based off “must-visit” labels you’ve added).

➤ Show you which of your “must-visits” we recommend booking or buying tickets for in advance, and a place for you to keep track of which you’ve done and which you still need to book/reserve.

1️⃣  My Must-Do’s database
Includes all the recommendations mentioned in the guide. You can use it to label each place with "must-visit" or "might visit" if you want to do them, or "skip" or "already visited" and the system will filter them out, keeping your list nice and clean. You can also filter your list to only see places in a certain category, or only the restaurants that are veggie-friendly, GF-friendly, etc.

2️⃣  To-Do Checklist
This digital checklist is automatically populated based on the places that you selected as a must-visit or might visit in the My Must-Do’s database. Use it when you’re on the ground in London to keep track of what you’ve hit and what you still have yet to explore.

3️⃣  Bookings and Tickets Tracker
Keep track of which of your must-do’s and might-do’s need to be booked or reserved in advance (and we only show you which ones do!) Includes the direct link to book tickets or make reservations so it’s easy to get everything done in one go.

You'll find the Notion template linked on page 9 of your Info PDF; click the link and it'll open a separate Notion page. To be able to use the template yourself, you will need to duplicate the template to your own Notion account. Just click "Duplicate" on the top right corner and it's done.

*If you don't already have a Notion account, you can sign up for free here.

Watch this video to see how to use the Notion templates with our London Itineraries:

The Bonus Package includes the London Packing Guide, the London Spending Guide and the London Travel Facebook Group.

The London Packing Guide will help you figure out what you need to pack for your London trip. 

It's written by a local, so we know exactly what you'll need depending on the season. You’ll also get a printable packing list (for all the  seasons), help with packing for London’s unpredictable weather, and info on what you absolutely must bring in order to be prepared for your trip.

The digital guide includes:

- Printable packing lists by season

- London weather guide, broken down by months

- Jacket and shoes purchasing guide

- “Items everyone should pack for London” list

London is SUCH an expensive city, so it’s really easy to crush your budget without even noticing, especially when you’re also dealing with trying to do currency conversions in your head on the fly.

It’s also really hard to get a good idea of how much every part of your trip is going to cost, thinking about food, drinks, and little things like a late-night Uber ride after emerging from the club at 3am…

The London Spending Guide is a tool that does just that. It comes with:

1. London Cost Guide - a PDF filled with advice about getting and spending money in London, plus guides for how much you can expect to pay for certain parts of your trip, and recommendations for hotels, food, drink and activities for every budget level.

and...

2. London Budget Tracker - an easy-to-use but incredibly comprehensive Google Sheets template. Calculate how much money you need to save each month to pay for your trip, figure out the total amount you can spend, play with your numbers to see where you want to splurge and where you want to save, and keep track of your daily spending while in London so you can stay on budget. It's available for 30+ different currencies (see which ones below.)

You'll get a link to download the Google Sheets template within your files.

We also provide you with plenty of instructions on how to use the sheet, both in the document and via a video tutorial.

You'll want to know the basics of how Google Sheets works, but otherwise we provide you with plenty of instructions and all of the formulas are protected so it's almost impossible you to mess anything up.

Of course if you have any problems or questions, you can email us at hello@loveandlondon.com and we'd be happy to help.

Yes! We have a "budget" category for each section and we also recommend some hostels.

While the Cost Guide doesn't have a family-specific section, we included a few notes about which recommendations are kid-friendly (up to 13 years old). The Budget Tracker has a spot where you enter how many people you're travelling with and then the spreadsheet does all the math for you, when relevant.

It works with British Pounds (as you'll pay for most of your London things in ££) and it converts the following currencies:
United States dollar - US$
Euro - €
Japanese yen - 円 / ¥
Pound sterling £
Australian dollar - A$
Canadian dollar - C$
Swiss franc - CHF
Renminbi - 元 / ¥
Hong Kong dollar - HK$
New Zealand dollar - NZ$
Swedish krona - kr
South Korean won - ₩
Singapore dollar - S$
Norwegian krone - kr
Mexican peso - mex$
Indian rupee - ₹
Russian ruble - ₽
South African rand - R
Turkish lira - ₺
Brazilian real - R$
New Taiwan dollar - NT$
Danish krone - kr
Polish złoty - zł
Thai baht - ฿
Indonesian rupiah - Rp
Hungarian forint - Ft
Czech koruna - Kč
Israeli new shekel - ₪
Chilean peso - CLP$
Philippine peso - ₱
UAE dirham - د.إ
Colombian peso - COL$
Saudi riyal - ﷼
Malaysian ringgit - RM
Romanian leu - L

Our London Travel Facebook Group is a curated space that doesn’t have thousands of people just asking the same silly questions OVER and OVER.

You'll get quality, top-notch advice and conversations, as the group it’s invite-only and has expert moderators, you can connect with others visiting at the same time so you don’t have to experience the city by yourself and can make new friends from around the world (great for solo travellers!).

Plus, you'll get first access to new Love and London guides and events.

Love and London team members are in the group to help guide conversations and to share where on the Love and London site we’ve answered your questions. We aren’t able to give bespoke advice or things like specific hotel recommendations, but your fellow members will share their experiences and help answer your questions and concerns.

This is a community-led Facebook group where you can connect with fellow travellers and ask them questions about their own research and past trips.

YES! Feel free to add your travel dates to a post, plus some info about yourself and some things you’d like to do around the city, and see if anyone would like to connect with you.

The itineraries include lots of the major attractions and also give you a designated route to follow which include both attractions and more local bits.

By contrast, The Casual Tourist Guides are strictly hidden gems. Underrated museums, gin-making experiences, locally-loved restaurants, interesting historic elements that people often miss, cool underground cocktail bars. Think super cool and local, to the point that we have even had lots of Londoners buy these guides to help them better explore their own city.

The Digital Maps for the Casual Tourist Guides don’t include a plan for how to hit up everything in the guide like the itineraries have, they are just general pins to show you where the recommendations are in relation to each other and to easily get transport directions to them.

Yes, there is some overlap depending on the itinerary.

For the 3-Day Itinerary, The Casual Tourist Guide to Central and East London overlap with days 2 and 3, and South London slightly overlaps with day 1. The best additions to this itinerary are West London and North London, both of which cover different areas.

For the 4-Day Itinerary, The Casual Tourist Guide to Central, East, and West London overlaps with days 2, 3, and 4. South London slightly overlaps with day 1. The best additions to this itinerary are North London, which covers different areas, and South London, if you want to explore Peckham and Brixton. However, note that the Bermondsey area will overlap.

For the 5-Day Itinerary, there is almost complete overlap. If you want to explore Peckham and Brixton, you can add the Casual Tourist Guide to South London. However, note that Bermondsey will feature in both guides.

For the 6-Day Itinerary, all of the Casual Tourist Guides overlap with it.

Don’t worry; we’ve got you covered! You can use this map to understand the London areas before or after you book your stay. Then, once you have decided on which area to book your hotel room in, or if you’d like to explore a particular area more in-depth, you can decide on which Casual Tourist Guide you’d like to purchase.

The cool thing about London is that many things during the daytime, work for families with kids, if your children are fairly well-behaved. That being said, we’ve not specifically made these guides with kids under 16 in mind.

With the guides we simply provide you with a list of the best local places to explore, eat, drink etc. You then decide which options sounds the best to you!

Our guides have indicators telling you whether or not each recommendation is wheelchair accessible and there are plenty of options for those who need to avoid stairs. But if you have any questions or worries please don't hesitate to reach out to us at hello@loveandlondon.com.

London’s food spots are generally pretty good at accommodating this, and we’ve included a variety of options that should suit just about everyone. But even still in the guides we include icons indicating restaurants that are veggie-friendly, vegan-friendly and GF friendly.

That being said, you should always check the menu online yourself, and you can also phone up a restaurant before you go to ask what they can do for any requirements, as they might have a hidden menu you can choose from, or they can create something special for you if you give enough notice.

Jess is vegetarian, so if you are too, you’ll find plenty of food options in the guides. She also eats vegan very often and has close friends who need gluten-free so she knows how it goes :)

Buy it at least a week in advance, if you can. We recommend reading over the guide before you arrive to London, so you can familiarise yourself with our recommendations, and some attractions and restaurants require advance booking.

Well, we’ve never seen any guides that include such a comprehensive digital map for your phone, which allows you to get real-time transportation and walking directions. Also, many “guides” you can find online are created by people who’ve only visited London, not LIVED here. They aren’t able to provide alternative food options for diet restrictions, where to find public toilets, or more crucially, tips that only someone who has lived here for years would know.

Also, why spend hours gathering info of things you think might be interesting to do, and trying to map everything out, when we’ve already done that for you?

There are a couple of reasons. It took weeks to create the guides, starting with multiple days of on-the-ground testing, to writing the 50 or so recommendations for each guide and creating the map. If we didn’t charge for the guides, we simply couldn’t provide it to our community as it takes up so much time to create. Plus, as we're a business, there is a ton of overhead costs that we cover with the sale of our guides.

Jess also spends anywhere from £25-200 per week trying out new things around London, some of which is included in the guide, some of which is not worthy. Of course, all of those meals, drinks, and tickets cost a lot of money. But by Jess testing them out and only telling you about the best, you won’t have to waste your time and money too, because only the best of the best goes in our guides.

If we save you from one not-so-good moderately-priced meal, you’ve already paid yourself back for your purchase, never mind the hours and hours of research and planning you won’t have to do yourself.

Yes, with all orders of our 2024 guides, we will be giving you the 2025 version for free when it launches.

The map includes all the recommendations mentioned in the PDF. It integrates with Google Maps and you can easily get walking, taxi and public transport directions to any of our recommendations. This is where you’ll find all the toilets marked off too!

It absolutely works best when you have it. It will also allow you to get walking directions when needed, or transport directions when you’re planning to head back to your hotel once the day is done.

Here’s an article where we explain how to use your phone in the UK.

It’s integrated with the Google Maps app, so it’s available for all phones that use iOS or Android operating systems.

Here's how to access and use our digital maps.

The Notion templates will:

➤ Help you organise which of the recommendations in our Casual Tourist Guides are a “must visit” or a “skip” (and to hide the ones you want to skip so you don’t have to look at them anymore).

➤ Give you a handy digital checklist of the things you absolutely want to do (populated based off “must-visit” labels you’ve added).

➤ Show you which of your “must-visits” we recommend booking or buying tickets for in advance, and a place for you to keep track of which you’ve done and which you still need to book/reserve.

1️⃣ My Must-Do’s Database
Includes all the recommendations mentioned in the guide. You can use it to label each place with "must-visit" or "might visit" if you want to do them, or "skip" or "already visited" and the system will filter them out, keeping your list nice and clean. You can also filter your list to only see places in a certain category, or only the restaurants that are veggie-friendly, GF-friendly, etc.

2️⃣ To-Do Checklist
This digital checklist is automatically populated based on the places that you selected as a must-visit or might visit in the My Must-Do’s database. Use it when you’re on the ground in London to keep track of what you’ve hit and what you still have yet to explore.

3️⃣ Bookings and Tickets Tracker
Keep track of which of your must-do’s and might-do’s need to be booked or reserved in advance (and we only show you which ones do!) Includes the direct link to book tickets or make reservations so it’s easy to get everything done in one go.

You'll find the Notion template linked on page 7 of your PDF; click the link and it'll open a separate Notion page. To be able to use the template yourself, you will need to duplicate the template to your own Notion account. Follow the step-by-step instructions on this page.

*If you don't already have a Notion account, you can sign up for free here.

Watch this video to see how to use the Notion templates with our Casual Tourist Guides:

The Bonus Package includes the London Packing Guide and the London Spending Guide.

The London Packing Guide will help you figure out what you need to pack for your London trip. 

It's written by a local, so we know exactly what you'll need depending on the season. You’ll also get a printable packing list (for all the  seasons), help with packing for London’s unpredictable weather, and info on what you absolutely must bring in order to be prepared for your trip.

The digital guide includes:

- Printable packing lists by season

- London weather guide, broken down by months

- Jacket and shoes purchasing guide

- “Items everyone should pack for London” list

London is SUCH an expensive city, so it’s really easy to crush your budget without even noticing, especially when you’re also dealing with trying to do currency conversions in your head on the fly.

It’s also really hard to get a good idea of how much every part of your trip is going to cost, thinking about food, drinks, and little things like a late-night Uber ride after emerging from the club at 3am…

The London Spending Guide is a tool that does just that. It comes with:

1. London Cost Guide - a PDF filled with advice about getting and spending money in London, plus guides for how much you can expect to pay for certain parts of your trip, and recommendations for hotels, food, drink and activities for every budget level.

and...

2. London Budget Tracker - an easy-to-use but incredibly comprehensive Google Sheets template. Calculate how much money you need to save each month to pay for your trip, figure out the total amount you can spend, play with your numbers to see where you want to splurge and where you want to save, and keep track of your daily spending while in London so you can stay on budget. It's available for 30+ different currencies (see which ones below.)

You'll get a link to download the Google Sheets template within your files.

We also provide you with plenty of instructions on how to use the sheet, both in the document and via a video tutorial.

You'll want to know the basics of how Google Sheets works, but otherwise we provide you with plenty of instructions and all of the formulas are protected so it's almost impossible you to mess anything up.

Of course if you have any problems or questions, you can email us at hello@loveandlondon.com and we'd be happy to help.

Yes! We have a "budget" category for each section and we also recommend some hostels.

While the Cost Guide doesn't have a family-specific section, we included a few notes about which recommendations are kid-friendly (up to 13 years old). The Budget Tracker has a spot where you enter how many people you're travelling with and then the spreadsheet does all the math for you, when relevant.

Copy of It works with British Pounds (as you'll pay for most of your London things in ££) and it converts the following currencies:
United States dollar - US$
Euro - €
Japanese yen - 円 / ¥
Pound sterling £
Australian dollar - A$
Canadian dollar - C$
Swiss franc - CHF
Renminbi - 元 / ¥
Hong Kong dollar - HK$
New Zealand dollar - NZ$
Swedish krona - kr
South Korean won - ₩
Singapore dollar - S$
Norwegian krone - kr
Mexican peso - mex$
Indian rupee - ₹
Russian ruble - ₽
South African rand - R
Turkish lira - ₺
Brazilian real - R$
New Taiwan dollar - NT$
Danish krone - kr
Polish złoty - zł
Thai baht - ฿
Indonesian rupiah - Rp
Hungarian forint - Ft
Czech koruna - Kč
Israeli new shekel - ₪
Chilean peso - CLP$
Philippine peso - ₱
UAE dirham - د.إ
Colombian peso - COL$
Saudi riyal - ﷼
Malaysian ringgit - RM
Romanian leu - L

Yes, we have included a section on Accessibility, written by Disabled Eliza, one of our content creators, who uses a wheelchair.

But if you have any questions or worries please don't hesitate to reach out to us at hello@loveandlondon.com.

Buy it at least a week in advance. You’ll want to read over the guide and watch the video tutorials at least a couple of times before you arrive in London.

Yes, and if there are any updates to the transport system, we’ll send you a new version for free.

You'll get a link to download the Google Sheets template within your files.

We also provide you with plenty of instructions on how to use the sheet, both in the document and via a video tutorial.

You'll want to know the basics of how Google Sheets works, but otherwise we provide you with plenty of instructions and all of the formulas are protected so it's almost impossible you to mess anything up.

Of course if you have any problems or questions you can email us at hello@loveandlondon.com and we'd be happy to help.

We'd prefer if you didn't, it has lots of links in it which obviously won't work if you print it, plus it'll be a waste of paper and ink. It's designed to be used digitally so try to keep it that way :)

Yes, you just need a Google Docs account via Gmail to save your file to.

Yes! We have a "budget" category for each section and we also recommend some hostels.

While the Cost Guide doesn't have a family-specific section, we included a few notes about which recommendations are kid-friendly (up to 13 years old). The Budget Tracker has a spot where you enter how many people you're traveling with and then the spreadsheet does all the math for you, when relevant.

It works with British Pounds (as you'll pay for most of your London things in ££) and it converts the following currencies:

• United States dollar - US$
• Euro - €
• Japanese yen - 円 / ¥
• Pound sterling - £
• Australian dollar - A$
• Canadian dollar - C$
  
• Swiss franc - CHF
• Renminbi - 元 / ¥
• Hong Kong dollar - HK$
  
• New Zealand dollar - NZ$
  
• Swedish krona - kr
  
• South Korean won - ₩
  
• Singapore dollar - S$
  
• Norwegian krone - kr
  
• Mexican peso - $
  
• Indian rupee - ₹
  
• Russian ruble - ₽
  
• South African rand - R
  
• Turkish lira - ₺
  
• Brazilian real - R$
  
• New Taiwan dollar - NT$
  
• Danish krone - kr
  
• Polish złoty - zł
  
• Thai baht - ฿
  
• Indonesian rupiah - Rp
  
• Hungarian forint - Ft
  
• Czech koruna - Kč
  
• Israeli new shekel - ₪
  
• Chilean peso - CLP$
  
• Philippine peso - ₱
  
• UAE dirham - د.إ
  
• Colombian peso - COL$
  
• Saudi riyal - ﷼
  
• Malaysian ringgit - RM
  
• Romanian leu - L

Inside the PDF you’ll find all the instructions on how to access it. Adding them to your own Notion account only takes 30 seconds, it’s super easy.

Just click the button below to get your lifetime membership.

Love and London team members are in the group to help guide conversations and to share where on the Love and London site we’ve answered your questions. We aren’t able to give bespoke advice or things like specific hotel recommendations, but your fellow members will share their experiences and help answer your questions and concerns.

This is a community-led Facebook group where you can connect with fellow travellers and ask them questions about their own research and past trips.

YES! Feel free to add your travel dates to a post, plus some info about yourself and some things you’d like to do around the city, and see if anyone would like to connect with you.

Lifetime access to the Facebook group (as long as you stick to our group rules). The fee also includes the cost for daily moderators who help keep conversations relevant and helpful.