21 Things I Wish I Knew Before Visiting London

I used to run my own travel agency where I customized trips to London. I've now shut the agency down to focus on this very YouTube channel, so here are some things and travel tips that you need to know before coming to London. Tipping isn't really a thing in London. If you're really happy with the service at a restaurant, you could tip your waiter, but just know that almost all restaurants have started adding a 12.5% service charge to your bill. This is, in my opinion, such an annoying move, but you can actually just ask the staff to remove the service charge from the bill, because as far as I understand, the service charge just goes straight to the business, whereas if you actually tip your waiter, that person will get the money or the staff will share it. Cars don't stop for silly tourists. London has some very pretty parts, and you may be on your holiday, but this is a functioning city and not a Disney World. The drivers in London don't stop if you try and rush over the street, so please be careful, especially because, as you know, they drive on the left-hand side, and it just tends to confuse tourists so much. Be aware of your surroundings on the tube. Again, people use the tube to get to work, and the trains are actually tiny, so don't stand right in front of the doors with your big backpack. Take it off and let people get on and off the tube. Take a moment to figure out airport transportation. Heathrow and London City Airport are easy enough, but Stansted, Gatwick and London Luton Airport aren't actually located in London, so it's a good idea to spend a few minutes figuring out how to get from the airport to your hotel so you don't walk out of the plane and don't have a clue. The cheap hotels are cheap for a reason. Hotels in London are expensive, there's just no way around it, so if you see a Hilton or another nice four-star hotel at a very cheap rate, there's something fishy going on here, and usually it's because they are located in Croydon or Tottenham. No disrespect to Croydon or Tottenham, but trust me, you're gonna hate spending a lot of your time in London by commuting into town. Don't stay in Croydon, just check out my other video on where to stay in London. Stand on the left, walk on the right. Look, people in London are busy, so whenever you get on an escalator, especially in train stations, stand on the right, walk on the left. And just a heads up, sometimes the escalators from the underground and up to the ground level are long, so maybe start by standing on the right and then have a look up and see if you wanna commit to walking up. Just take your card. There's no point in taking out cash, I haven't used cash in London since 2019 or something like that. I just use my phone to pay for everything, even the tube and the bus. First of all, the Brits are big on standing in line, and it's incredibly rude to skip the line, but you don't line up in a queue in the pub. You just stand along the bar and have a sense of the room. So if the barman turns to you, but there were already people waiting to be served around you, you'll politely tell the barman that it was their turn first. Also, in most pubs, you need to walk up to the bar and order your food, and then you'll pay and they'll take your table number or see where you're seated in the pub and then they'll bring your food. Don't assume it's always raining. I've had some incredible summer holidays in London with over 25 degrees and well sunny days. I also just looked it up and apparently Paris gets more rain than London, so you can't just assume that the weather will be grey and miserable at time. Level8 sent me this suitcase to test out and I agreed to share it with you guys if I liked it. And boy, do I like this one. I go on quite a few weekend breaks where I usually only take a carry-on suitcase and one thing I always find super annoying is how hard it is to reach stuff in the suitcase. For example, when you need to take out your liquids in the security check or when you found your seat in the airplane and want to take out your laptop. But this bad boy, the Grace expandable suitcase from Level8 eliminates that annoyance. I can just tell that the suitcase is of really great quality and that's also what over 6,000 reviews on Amazon say. So check the link in the description. In addition, they're having a massive Black Friday and Cyber Monday sale at the moment and if you use my code, you'll get an even bigger discount. Add over. You can pay for public transport with your phone. Back in the day, you needed to buy an Oyster card and load credit onto it, but nowadays you can just tap in using Apple Pay or Google Pay or your contactless credit card. Just make sure you use the same phone or card though as there's a daily cap, so after spending £8.50 in central London, you ride for free for the rest of the day. Don't underestimate the British Museum. It's free, it's massive and honestly, it's just as good as all the London guidebook says. Don't underestimate the amount of time you can actually spend in the British Museum if you're interested in history. London is actually quite interesting outside of Oxford Street and Covent Garden. Don't spend all your time in Soho and Covent Garden. Get out of Zone 1 and explore some of the areas where locals are actually hanging out. Get the Uber boat to Greenwich. For example, get the Thames Clipper boat that is also called the Uber boat at the moment. It's part of the public transport network, so you can just tap in and for example, get the boat out to the stunning Greenwich area. The Harry Potter Studios in London are not in London. They're actually about an hour's drive north of London, but if you're a Harry Potter fan, it's still absolutely worth going up to the studios. Just make sure you pre-book your ticket well in advance as they always sell out. Southwark is an underrated area. Southwark is, in my opinion, that sweet spot where the hotels are a bit cheaper than in the absolute beating heart of central London. But you can still walk to a lot of interesting things and in this area, there are also quite a few cool restaurants and pubs that aren't overrun with other tourists. So you can kind of get the best of both worlds here. Borough Market is cool. Look, there's been a market in this spot for around a thousand years. So of course, the TikTokers have now found the spot and it's very, very popular on a Saturday afternoon. So try and get there as early as possible in the day or come during the week, but note that the market is closed on Mondays. London is massive, so plan accordingly. Don't underestimate how long it can take to get from one end of London to the other. So when you're sat at home and planning what to do in London, load up Google Maps on your phone. That way, you don't end up trying to squeeze in a quick visit to Greenwich Observatory in between checking out Portobello Road Market and a stroll around Hampstead Heath. The free viewing platforms need to be pre-booked well in advance. Gone are the days when you could just get a ticket for the Sky Garden a couple of days before you wanted to go. Nowadays, you need to pre-book viewing platforms like Sky Garden, Horizon 22 and the Lookout well in advance. Yes, London is expensive, but do as the locals. If you want to save a bit of cash in London, you could get lunch as the local office workers do. So head to the nearest Sainsbury's or Tesco and get a meal deal. Usually, you get a drink, a sandwich and a little bag of crisps for around £5, which is less than you'll be paying for a pint in a pub. Don't take a day trip to Edinburgh. It's a bit mad that I have to say this, but I've had quite a few people ask me about day trips from London to Edinburgh. And yes, it is possible, but just note that the train ride up to Bonny, Scotland takes over 4 hours, so don't try and squeeze in a quick visit to Edinburgh. But if you're in London for a week or so and want to experience more of England, then I'd highly recommend checking out places like Brighton, Oxford, Cambridge or Bath. Mind your phone. Sadly, there's a massive phone snatching problem in London these years. It's basically little p**** on e-bikes who will snatch your phone and be gone in a second. It happens to locals as well as tourists, so be very careful when you pull out your phone near any road. Subscribe for more travel content and give the video a like if you enjoyed it. Thank you.