Travel Tips: London on the Cheap

When I tell people that I'm going to London, the response I often get is "I'd love to go, but it's such an expensive city." Sure, I say, if your travel expectations are for luxury accommodation, West End theatre and lots of tourist attractions, but that doesn't suit my style or my wallet. Over the past 15 years, I've developed a shedload of ways to have as good — or, I'd argue, better and more authentic — London travel experiences on a budget. Here are a few of my tips. 

• Before I even left, I saved myself a bundle through my credit cards. I booked my plane ticket and AirBnB with my travel rewards card (and made the down payment on the crown I need on a tooth I just broke) and got back about $150 in rewards to offset the cost of the travel and accommodation. I had let the reward points accumulate on my other credit card since my trip to Ireland last year and I'll be able to transfer about $200 to my bank account, which I'll use for walking around money in the UK. When I ordered a new raincoat and a few other things I needed for the trip from Amazon, at checkout I saw a banner advert saying I could open an Amazon credit card and immediately get $100 off my purchase. So I did. This is all free money!
• Accommodation: AirBnB or Vrbo have some good values for money, but it helps to start your search early. Forget about zone 1 — look at areas in zone 2 with excellent transport links, preferably a tube station and a couple of convenient bus routes. Two years ago, I stayed a five minute walk from Queen's Park station for $62/night. On my upcoming trip, I'll be spitting distance from the Tufnell Park station with easy access to Camden Town, King's Cross/St Pancras and beyond for $52/night. I look for a room with a private bathroom, wifi, cooking facilities and use of the washing machine. 
• Transport: Once you've settled in and walked to the tube station or bus stop, what's the best way to pay for transport? Whether you're in town for a few days or a few weeks, you need to get an Oyster card, but the type of card and what you load onto it will be different depending on the length of your visit. For less than a week, you're fine with a visitor's Oyster, which can be purchased online and mailed to you before your travel or purchased at Heathrow. If you're staying a week or longer, wait until you're in town and purchase a regular Oyster from any tube station or hundreds of news agents. What's the difference? Visitor cards function only as PAYG, so you need to pay attention to your balance and top it up when you get low. Regular Oysters have the added advantage of enabling you to load travel cards, sold in one week or one month duration, onto them. I load my Oyster with some cash and one-week zone 1-2 travel card(s). The cash will cover journeys into the farther out zones (Heathrow is in zone 6, so I always need some dosh on my card to get to/from the airport because I'm too cheap to take the Heathrow Connect or Express). 
• Food: Dining out in London can be expensive, but food is actually cheap. I rarely eat in restaurants other than to go for an Indian or a pub meal. I scope out the nearest farmers' market, street market, bakery and grocery store options. Tea and a roll or a chunk of tasty bread is all I need in the morning. For lunch, I prefer to bring something with me in my day bag or grab a Tesco Express and Sainsbury's Local meal deal — a sandwich, beverage and crisps for about £3 — and sit on a bench in a park or a churchyard to eat. Cafes are a good alternative — the ones in church crypts often serve healthy and hearty food. I often stop for an afternoon treat at a bakery or caff and then end the day with dinner on the cheap — a veggie pie, soup, salad or something else I can heat up easily at my gaff washed down with a glass or two of wine.
• Free outdoor spaces: London is full of places to walk and explore, including some of the best parks you could imagine, often with an historic home in the park or nearby. Kenwood House on Hampstead Heath is lovely, full of art and free. And the cemeteries are to die for! Highgate Cemetery is the only one of the Magnificent Seven that has an entry fee, but it's quite reasonable. It's often said that London is an amalgamation of many villages, each with its own character. I love spending time rambling around and taking it all in. And it doesn't cost a thing.
• Museums and other attractions: Most of the big-name museums, including the National Gallery, Tate Britain, Tate Modern, the Victoria & Albert, the Museum of London and the Natural History Museum, have free entry. They do, however, charge for special exhibitions and those entry fees have gone up considerably over the past few years. Some of the other museums, including the Royal Academy and the Foundling Museum, do charge entry fees. If you know that you'll be museum hopping all over London (and beyond), while soaking up a lot of art and culture, an Art Pass is a great investment, particularly if they have a three-month "taster" Art Pass on offer for 15 quid. The card gets you in free to hundreds of venues that normally charge and also gives 50% off the cost of special exhibitions. Cards need to be ordered online and sent in the post to UK addresses. I asked my AirBnB host if I could use her postal address for my Art Pass and she was fine with it. NOTE: This is different to the London Pass, which in my estimation is a total ripoff. 
• Events and performances: I've never been to West End theatre, so I can't give advice on how to score cheap tickets to those plays.  Smaller theatres away from the West End, like the Almeida (Islington), Arcola (Dalston), Hampstead (Swiss Cottage) or Kiln (Kilburn), are reasonably priced. The Hampstead has reduced-price tickets on Mondays. There are also scads of cultural events, including performances, talks and walks, that are free. Some of the churches have free noontime music performances or you can sit in on a rehearsal. I'll be in London for two fantastic free events: Open House weekend (over 800 buildings of architectural interest all across the capital city open to the public) and Totally Thames Festival, a month-long celebration of the river with exhibitions, talks and walks. I also like to check out free or reasonably-priced talks at cultural institutions such as the British Library and the Bishopsgate Institute as well as the museums. 
• Promo codes and coupons: I get a bunch of weekly email newsletters from London websites and am always on the lookout for bargains. In the past, I've had coupons for pub meals and attractions. I recently downloaded the app for a new ride-hailing company called Kapten and used a promo code from SkintLondon to put £15 in credit on my account. 
• Views: Why pay £25 to look down on London from the dizzying heights of the Shard when you can get views just as good for free? There are viewing decks on the new extension to Tate Modern and on the One New Change shopping centre in back of St Paul's Cathedral. For something a bit higher up and enclosed, there's the Sky Garden on the Walkie Talkie building (timed entry, book online up to three weeks in advance) and the new garden at 120 Fenchurch Street (no need to book ahead). I've seen great views from Primrose Hill, Parliament Hill on Hampstead Heath, Greenwich Park, Richmond Park and several places in south London. On my upcoming trip, I'm looking forward to seeing the view from Dartmouth Park Hill, about a 10 minute walk from my AirBnB.

Two great sources of info about free and cheap things to see and do are the IanVisits website (sign up for his weekly newsletter of listings) and Londonist.

Watch this space for my chronicles of my journey, with scintillating details of where I went, what I saw and how much I spent. If you know of other tips, please pop them in the comments below.