London, England-5-day-itinerary

London charges entry to its best-known landmarks and gives its finest museums away for free. Get that logic sorted early, and the whole trip becomes more rewarding: the British Museum, the National Gallery, Tate Modern, the V&A, and the Natural History Museum all have free general admission, while the Tower of London (£37 adults in 2025), Westminster Abbey (around £27), and Kew Gardens ask for real money. Five days is enough to do both categories justice, provided you plan around queues and do not make the mistake of trying to cover everything.

Getting There: From the Airport

Most transatlantic flights land at Heathrow. The cheapest option into central London is the Piccadilly line: a contactless or Oyster card tap costs £5.90 (zones 1-6), and the journey to central London takes 45-55 minutes. The Elizabeth line from Heathrow to Paddington is faster (25-30 minutes) but more expensive, around £12.80 with contactless. The Heathrow Express to Paddington is fastest at 15 minutes but costs £26 single. There is no compelling reason to take a taxi from Heathrow unless you have too much luggage for public transport; it costs £50-80 depending on traffic and can take 90 minutes in rush hour.

Pick up an Oyster card at the airport station (the card itself costs £7, top up as needed) or simply use a contactless debit or credit card for the same fares, with an automatic daily spending cap of £16.30.

Where to Stay

The most efficient base for a five-day visit is somewhere between Southwark and the City, which puts you within reasonable reach of both South Bank culture and the East End. The Hoxton Southwark (moderate, from around £160-200 per night) is particularly well placed, walking distance from Tate Modern, Borough Market, and the Jubilee line. For a splurge in a central West End location, One Aldwych (from around £300) has a strong food and spa offer and is walking distance from Covent Garden and the Strand. Budget travellers do well at Z Hotels, a chain of small-room-done-well properties with locations near Soho and Victoria.

Day 1: South Bank and the East End

Start with Borough Market on a Friday or Saturday morning. The market opens at 10am on weekdays (from 8am Saturdays), and the Saturday rush between 11am and 1pm can make it nearly impassable. Get there early. The core of the market is on Stoney Street and Park Street; the best individual stalls change but consistently include Neal’s Yard Dairy (a useful introduction to British cheese) and a rotating cast of hot food vendors serving everything from Ethiopian stews to Iberian charcuterie on bread.

Padella, directly opposite the market on Borough High Street, is one of the best pasta restaurants in the city and costs a fraction of what comparable quality would run in West London. The pici cacio e pepe is the order. It is walk-in only; arrive when they open at noon to avoid the queue that builds quickly.

In the afternoon, cross the Millennium Bridge to Tate Modern, which is free and houses one of the stronger permanent collections of 20th-century art in Europe. Allow two hours minimum. The Turbine Hall installation changes annually and is usually worth pausing for.

Head east in the evening to Shoreditch. Dishoom on Shoreditch High Street serves Bombay-style comfort food in a space styled after the old Irani cafes of 1950s Mumbai. The house black daal is slow-cooked for 24 hours and is the reason most regulars return. Book ahead; queues without a reservation run 45-60 minutes on weekends.

Day 2: Westminster and Mayfair

Westminster is best done in the morning before the coach-tour crowds arrive. Walk across Waterloo Bridge (one of the best free views of the city, across both St Paul’s and the Parliament end of the river) and approach Parliament Square on foot.

Westminster Abbey charges around £27 for adult entry. It is worth it precisely once: the building covers 900 years of English history and holds the tombs of monarchs, poets, and scientists in a density you will not find elsewhere. Book timed entry online in advance, as walk-up queues are long and sometimes closed out entirely.

Buckingham Palace’s Changing of the Guard is free to watch from the railings, but it happens on alternate days (check the official schedule before going), takes about 45 minutes, and involves substantial crowds. The better strategy is to walk through St James’s Park, which is free, long, and genuinely one of the nicer parks in central London, with a view toward the palace and the Horse Guards from the bridge over the lake.

Lunch in Mayfair: The Wolseley on Piccadilly is the kind of Viennese grand cafe that London does better than almost anywhere outside Vienna, with a menu that runs from wiener schnitzel to eggs Benedict, at prices that are high but not absurd for the postcode. Reservations are sensible for weekend lunch.

Spend the afternoon in the National Gallery on Trafalgar Square. Free admission, world-class collection. The Sainsbury Wing holds the Early Renaissance work (including van Eyck’s Arnolfini Portrait) and is often quieter than the Impressionist rooms.

Evening dinner at Brat in Shoreditch, a Basque-influenced restaurant built around wood-fire cooking. The turbot is the signature dish and is frequently cited as one of the best pieces of fish served in London. Book well ahead; tables go quickly.

Day 3: The British Museum and Bloomsbury

The British Museum holds approximately eight million objects of which roughly 80,000 are on public display at any given time, all free. The Egyptian collection, the Elgin Marbles (now called the Parthenon sculptures, a naming distinction that reflects an ongoing dispute with Greece), and the Sutton Hoo helmet are the headline objects, but the museum is large enough that most visitors discover at least one entirely unanticipated room that absorbs an hour they had not planned to spend.

Arrive when it opens at 10am (last entry 5pm). The main entrance on Great Russell Street builds a queue by 10:30; the Queen Elizabeth II Great Court is enormous and disperses crowds quickly once inside.

Afternoon: walk south through Bloomsbury into Covent Garden, which is more enjoyable on weekdays than weekends. The street performers at the West Piazza are skilled and free. Monmouth Coffee on Monmouth Street is arguably the best coffee in central London, with a space that is small and perpetually full.

Maltby Street Market in Bermondsey (Saturday and Sunday only, 9am-4pm Saturday, 11am-4pm Sunday) is worth a detour if your schedule allows: tucked under railway arches, it is where chefs shop and eat on their days off. If you are visiting mid-week, Bermondsey Street itself, a 10-minute walk from London Bridge station, has independent galleries and cafes that reward slow exploration.

Evening: Padella has a second location in Shoreditch that takes bookings (unlike Borough), which is useful for planning. Alternatively, try St John in Clerkenwell, the restaurant credited with reviving nose-to-tail cooking in British cuisine. The bone marrow and parsley salad has been on the menu since 1994 and still justifies its place.

Day 4: Kew, Camden, and the Columbia Road Area

Leave central London for the morning. The Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, in southwest London (zone 3-4, accessible on Overground), charge adult entry but it is genuine value: 130 hectares of gardens, glasshouses including the Victorian Palm House, and more species of plant than you are likely to see in most other places in Europe. Best in spring and early summer when the temperate house is at full colour, but worth visiting any time of year.

Return to east London in the afternoon. Columbia Road Flower Market runs on Sunday mornings only, from about 8am until the flowers run out (typically by noon). The street is narrow and becomes extremely crowded by 10am; the vendors are good-humoured about the chaos and prices drop sharply in the last 30 minutes before close. The streets off Columbia Road (Ezra Street, the Broadway Market area nearby) have some of the better independent shops in London.

Camden Market is the more familiar name, and it draws considerable tourist traffic, but the food section (specifically the market stalls along the canal in the Stables area) is genuinely good. The Korean and Japanese counters are consistently among the better cheap-eat options in the neighbourhood.

Evening: if you want live music, the Jazz Cafe in Camden books credible acts and has reasonable drink prices by London standards. Alternatively, the National Theatre on the South Bank runs a broad programme that often includes free outdoor events and performances in the front-of-house spaces.

Day 5: The Tower of London and East London

The Tower of London is expensive at £37 per adult, but it is one of the more immersive historic sites in the city. The Crown Jewels are the headline draw, and the queue to see them can be 45-60 minutes on peak days; arrive early or use the timed-entry tickets available online. The Beefeater tours (included with entry) are given by Yeoman Warders who have genuinely served in the British armed forces, and the commentary is sharper than you would expect from a formal institution.

Walk across Tower Bridge (free to cross, paid entry to the glass walkways and the engine rooms below). The view downstream toward Canary Wharf from the bridge is one of the defining London sights.

Lunch nearby at Padella Borough (if you have not already been) or at one of the Borough Market stalls for a final round of British cheese and charcuterie. The market’s covered section has indoor seating and is quieter after 2pm.

Spend the last afternoon in the Victoria and Albert Museum in South Kensington, free to enter and containing the best collection of applied arts and design in the world. The Islamic art rooms and the Cast Courts (plaster reproductions of major European sculptures and architectural details, assembled in the Victorian era) are particularly good and usually less crowded than the fashion and jewellery galleries.

Transportation

The Tube is the backbone of London travel. Buy an Oyster card at any station or use contactless; never buy a paper single ticket (it costs significantly more for the same journey). The daily cap means you cannot overpay past a set limit regardless of how many journeys you take. Avoid the Tube between 8-9am and 5:30-6:30pm if you have heavy luggage. Black cabs are licensed and metered; Uber is widely available and usually cheaper. The red double-decker buses are a slower but pleasant way to see the city, and they accept Oyster and contactless with no surcharge.

One Practical Warning

Avoid buying combination “attraction passes” unless you have mapped out exactly what you intend to visit. Free museums make up the majority of the best things in London, and the passes only cover paid attractions. Do the maths before spending.

The city is dense enough that five days still requires choices. The one most visitors regret not making: go to a neighbourhood that is not on the central tourist map for at least one afternoon. Bermondsey, Peckham, and Hackney Wick each have a texture that the sanitised tourist corridor between Westminster and the Tower does not.