Even though I’m from the UK, I’ve never lived in London but I love to visit. It has a much more relaxed vibe than many other cities and huge variations in neighborhoods from the tourist areas of Trafalgar Square and Buckingham Palace to relaxed, more suburban areas like Richmond and Eel Pie Island.
Many flights fly overnight from the US to London, but you can sometimes get a day flight, like the 8.30 am flight out of Newark to Heathrow. With little kids, flying overnight can sometimes be a god-send as they will typically sleep most of the time, but it can then be difficult to get them to adjust to UK time. A day flight if you can keep them amused gets you arriving in London at 8.30 pm local time, which is only 3.30 EST US time, allowing you to get to your accommodation, unpack, decompress and aim for a 1 am bedtime, getting up around 9 am the next morning. The latter was my tactic on this most recent trip and the first time we did a day flight, but made us far more productive for our first day.
Where to stay?
If you plan to hit major tourist attractions, stay somewhere on the central and district tube (underground/ subway) lines. This trip we stayed in Westminster in a gated apartment complex called Lux St James. These apartments only accommodate 4-6 people but are well-appointed and a less than 10 minute walk from the St James’ Park subway station, with plenty of restaurants and shops a short stroll away. This apartment building also has free parking in an underground garage, although be warned that the access ramp is very tight and difficult to navigate.
How long to stay for?
There is so much to see and do in London, but you could can get a good sense of the city in 3-4 days. If this will be your only trip to the UK, I highly advise going to see some other areas of the UK such as Stratford, the Cotswolds or head further North to York or Edinburgh. Below I outline our more recent 2 day trip to London, perfect for all ages:
Day 1; Natural History Museum and Buckingham Palace
I got everyone up around 9 am and had us heading out the door just after 10.15 am. We took the leisurely stroll to St James’ park subway station. Buy a return ticket to South Kensington or a one day travel pass if you intend to do more than a couple of subway rides that same day. Kids travel for free so no need to get a ticket for them. Just go through the disabled/ family gates that are at one end of the turnstiles as a group. Subway trains run every few minutes. Make sure you take the District/ Circle line in the correct direction. Once you get off at South Kensington, follow the signs to the museums which will take you down an underground tunnel and exit when you see the Natural History Museum exit. This museum, along with most others, is free, although they appreciate a donation. Grab a guide map and identify which areas are most appealing. The museum is very popular and gets very busy from lunchtime onwards. I therefore highly recommend getting there in the morning to avoid having to queue to get in. Head to the dinosaur exhibition first as that is highly popular. You can easily spend a few hours here; we arrived around 11 and left around 1. We headed back to Westminster and grabbed lunch at Pizza Express before going back to the apartment for a quick rest.
Outside the Natural History Museum
I had reservations for a state room tour at Buckingham Palace at 4.15 pm. The state rooms are only open to the general public in the summer when the Queen is not residing at the palace. If you wish to do the tour, book tickets in advance. You can however take a chance to see if there are any tickets available at the palace on the day. We walked to the Palace from the apartment, which took about 30 minutes. We arrived at about 3.45 and spent some leisurely time observing the Palace guards and the fountains and grounds at the front of the Palace before heading round the corner to the state rooms.
There is a security screen at the palace consisting of a bag check and body X-ray screen. Once through there, you are given a self-guiding audio tour. The family version is great and includes ‘find the object’ hunts for each of the rooms as well as a few engaging games such as how many buses can fit in the ballroom. My two kids were fully entertained by it, which was a pleasant surprise. It ends with a fun dress-up area. Allow about 1.5 hours for the Palace tour.
Dress up at the castle 
After the Palace tour we walked to the Rainforest café for dinner. We had a 7 pm reservation and we arrived about 10 minutes early. We sat near the elephants and had a great time before taking an Uber back to our apartment.
Day 2; Tower of London, Tower Bridge, Shrek and the London Eye
The next morning we headed out slightly earlier, and walked to the St James’ Park tube station again, this time going in the opposite direction on the District and Central line to Tower Hill. From there it’s a short walk across the street to the Tower of London. You can book tickets to the Tower of London in advance, which saves a bit of money and time queuing. Like the Natural History museum, the Tower of London gets very busy, especially the line to view the crown jewels. We arrived at about 10.30 and went straight to the crown jewels exhibit. There was a short line to get in, but it continues for quite a way inside before you get to the jewels, By the time we were out, the queue had filled up the complete outside queuing area which would mean at least a 15 minute wait before you even get inside.
If you can get your party up and out early in the morning, you might want to consider the early access VIP experience.
You can spend a whole day at the Tower of London if you want to catch everything, but after the Crown Jewels, we focused on the White tower where all the armor is, the torture chamber, which is quick and small to do, and the tower where the prisoners were kept. We left the tower around 12.30 and took the short walk along the river to Tower Bridge. We also bought tickets in advance for the bridge, but it wasn’t very busy the day we arrived and so would not have been a long wait to get tickets. Allow about 45 minutes to an hour for the Bridge. You can take an elevator, but if you don’t mind climbing a few hundred steps, there are a few exhibits along the way. Once at the top, there are viewing platforms on each side of the bridge and glass floors that everyone wants a picture of themselves lying over the road and river below.
Lie on the glass floor if you dare!
Once out of the Tower, there is a nice selection of restaurants along the river for a late lunch.
After re-fueling, we took the Circle and District line back from Tower Hill to Embankment and then switched to the Northern line to go one more stop to Waterloo. From there, follow the signs to the London eye. All the riverbank attractions are in the same vicinity; Shrek, Madame Tussauds, The London Dungeon and London SeaLife center. You can buy tickets in advance that are packages of one or more of each of these attractions with or without the London eye. We had a 4.00 pm reservation for Shrek. We did queue for about 30 minutes to get to the start of the attraction, yet when we came out there was no line at all, so it may just have been bad timing. There are pictures with the characters multiple times which takes time to get everyone through and started to get highly irritating for me. Once inside the attraction, it starts with the magic bus ride, a 4-D bus ride experience that lasts about 10 minutes. From there you go through various ‘scenes’ with actors. Overall, the Laulings thought the experience was ‘OK’. But definitely not a ‘must do’.
From there we grabbed a slushie break before heading to our 5.45 London Eye reservation. In the past I have done the fast pass, but it didn’t take more than about 10 minutes with a regular ticket to ride, so I’m not sure it’s necessary any more, and we were there in August during school holidays. I don’t know if it’s still part of the fast pass ticket, but we did have a narrator with us for that trip, which was a great way to understand everything you can see from the eye. This time, we were on our own. It was a ‘thumbs’ up’ from the Laulings.
From there we reversed our tube ride from Waterloo, heading back to Embankment on the Northern line and then to St James’ Park on the District/Circle. There are plenty of nice restaurant opportunities along the river at South Bank, but we chose to head back to Westminster to go to the Ma La Sichuan Chinese. I love UK Chinese food, especially the crispy duck with pancakes. I haven’t been able to find anything that’s quite the same in the US so I highly recommend you try it!
While my husband warned me it was too packed an itinerary, the variety I think kept the boys entertained. They didn’t complain once, and seemed to have a really enjoyable day. I had everyone in bed before midnight (I don’t transition them fully to the UK timezone as it’s tough to get them back otherwise), with a plan to be on the road the next morning by 9 am to head to Legoland Windsor (reviewed in a separate blog).