10 Things Tourists Love and Hate About Visiting London

Hello kids, Big Ben, Parliament. Hey there fellow travelers, Mark here with Walters World and today we're here in London and today we're back to talk about five things that tourists love and might not love so much about coming to London and I'm going to talk about the biggest issue that tourists have when they come here and that is the fact that London is not a cheap place to visit. Now, there are free things you can do to take down the cost but I can't lie to you, the worst part about coming to London is just how expensive it is. Whether it's accommodation, transportation, the museums you actually have to pay for, things just happen that your money just kind of disappears and the thing is sometimes your money disappears when you don't even realize it, like when you forget to tap out after you tap in, whether you take the tube and so it's just a plain fact of life that this place is expensive and one thing I think is important to think about when we're looking at the expensive nature of London is a lot of people will spend a lot of money to get here, a thousand dollars to get here from the US and then they'll be like, oh, it's like 25 pounds to go into this museum? Ah, maybe I won't go. Like, wait, you already spent 2,000 pounds to get here, why not spend another 20 to see a site that you really want to see? So, things like paying to go up St. Paul's, yes, you gotta pay for it, but it's worth going up there. Going to the Tower of London and seeing the Crown Jewels and the Beefeaters, yes, it's worth it but it is expensive so I think it's really important before you come, you kind of plan out your budget for what you want to do so you're not like getting turned off last minute about seeing some of the sites because of the price. Because honestly, it just feels like your money disappears like doing nothing here. Okay, now the second thing you're probably not going to like when you come here is when you're trying to find accommodation. Really, I like to call it the accommodation conundrum because this is something that the locals have as well. Finding a good place to stay at a reasonable price. Look, you're not going to get anything cheap but you need to really think about where you want to be and what you want to see so you know where to plant your stuff or set up your accommodation. And the thing is, no matter where you stay, you're not going to have a ton of space so I would really recommend packing light when you come here because whether you're at a hostel or a hotel or you know, any other place, space is always at a premium here. Even if you're at a luxury hotel, space is at a premium and you're paying for that premium and you're like, wait, what am I getting for it? Not a lot. So that's something that does frustrate people and that's why what I recommend, look for a place you want to stay that's where you want to be, where you're going to spend most of your time. Are you going to spend most of your time by Victoria Station and you know, going down to Westminster Avenue down there? Okay, then maybe look for something there. Maybe you want to go to Soho and you want to stay there and have some fun there. That's what you want to think about and then realize how much time you're going to save if you're staying where you want to be versus having to take the tube and going out. That's why sometimes the trying to save money by staying farther out of the city kind of gets you in the end if you've got to take, you know, if it's too late and there's no tube available, you've got to take a cab or if you're trying to get to an airport, you know, and you don't have public transportation to it, that can really add up to it. So yeah, the accommodation conundrum is a real issue, but the thing is you're coming to London. Why? Because the first thing you're going to love, the fantastic museums and sites and experiences when you come to London. I mean, let's be honest, you want to go see the Tate Modern. You want to go see the British Museum and the Rosetta Stone. You want to go to the Tower of London and yes, it pays a lot, but you know what? It's worth it. You want to see these sites and you wanted to see since you were a kid and they really come alive when you're here because there's really so much to do for everyone. That's why if you're a kid, you can enjoy London. If you're an adult, you enjoy London. If you're a grandparent, you can enjoy London. Doesn't matter your age. It doesn't matter your gender. Doesn't matter anything. There's going to be something for you when you're here and what's great is a lot of the best sites are actually free. Change of the Guard, that's free. British Museum, that's free. Tate Modern, that's free. Walking along the Thames and taking that in, yep, that's free too because honestly, you just love all the stuff you can do in this city. That's why people come back again and again and again like myself because there's always something new to check out and know to explore when you're here. So with all the tourists that are here and all the fantastic museums and sites that you can see, there are also some tourist traps that go in there because when there's lots of tourists, there's lots of reasons why you might want to separate them from their pounds, right? And I will say this, realize there are some tourist traps here in London. I actually have a video on the tourist traps and the scams of London, but I will say this, most of the tourist traps actually here in London are worth it for a lot of people. Like, you know, some people say like myself, hey, Madame Tussauds, is it worth it? Well, for me personally, no, but when I take my kids there, they love it. So it's one of those things you got to think about is when I'm planning out my budget because of the price for things here and those tourist traps, some of those tourist traps just because the price of them, you might want to kind of debate, hey, can I offset paying for that expensive touristy, trappy kind of thing with seeing more free museums or doing things that might mitigate some of the prices or some of the costs. I just want to kind of put that out there with all those fantastic sites. There are some that might be a little more than they need to be. Though I love the sites here, I will say this isn't really a hey, just a heads up kind of thing. When you do get your picture inside the telephone box, make sure you wash your hands afterwards. You'll understand. Now, the second thing you're going to love when you come here to London is actually the pub of life. I mean, pub is life when you are here. It's not just laughing at the names of some of the places or just enjoying the atmosphere and having a few drinks or maybe a bite to eat or meeting the locals. It's all of it together because the pub is the life when you are here. When the city gets out of work about five o'clock, all of a sudden the pubs fill up and you have people just knocking down pints with their friends or co-workers. They're just out having a, having a drink and that's one of those things. When you come here, this is your opportunity to talk to the locals and it could be a local that was born and bred here in London or someone that moved here five years ago from Spain because they're all Londoners and the pub is where they all come together. So that experience of going there, ordering at the bar, you know, having a bite to eat when you're there, it's just such a fantastic experience and I do have to give you a hint. If you are getting food at the pub, um, make sure you look at your table number because you got to order at the bar, okay? They're not going to come and give you table service, right? They're going to order there and then they'll bring it to you, right? It's just, just be aware of that, but honestly the whole pub life experience and there's some great pubs, like from historical pubs to new pubs, any kind of thing you want to do or drink or whatever, they have it here because the pub life is fantastic and you're going to love it and also I could put the nightlife along with that, so, uh, yeah, you're going to have a good time in the evening when you are here. If it's going to a West End show or going to the movies or going to a concert or just going out clubbing and having fun or you know, going to the pub, you will love that when you're here. Now, I got to talk about something that's not so great when you come here and you knew it was going to come and you knew I was going to talk about the weather, but I'm going to say this. You're going to hate the fact that the weather is unpredictable because sometimes you can come here for two weeks at a time and it's sunny every day. That actually happened to me before and I actually got sunburned when I was here in the summer because, well, the sun does come out, but I will tell you if you're going to come here in the fall, the winter time, the weather isn't something you're really going to enjoy, so you've got to make sure you're bringing not just a jacket, but make sure it's a rainproof jacket. And if you need to get an umbrella, believe me, when it rains there'll be umbrellas out at all the shops. Pick one up, but that unpredictable nature of the weather here in London, you've got to make sure you check that 10-day forecast and every day before you go out, look at the hourly forecast. What is it really going to pick up? Because, for example, today I've been walking around and it's fantastic, but I saw about three o'clock it's going to start getting stormy and starting to have a little rain or at least a 57% chance of rain, so in my bag I have my umbrella and I have my jacket to keep me out of the rain, but if you've ever been here when it's raining sideways or it seems like it's raining upwards sometimes with the wind, you'll understand why the weather might not be something you like when you're here, but hey, in the summertime, usually you're actually pretty okay. See? Sunburn. It happens here. The weather. What are you going to do about it here in London? I don't know. I honestly don't know. Another thing I love about coming to London is just the fact that you can have legitimate food from around the world that really tastes like it's from where it is, and that's one thing I love about here with all the immigration that's come through here, all the tours that's come through here, how the Brits were all over the world, all that food is here and you get legit stuff. You want great dim sum? You can have great dim sum. You're missing Mexican food from home? You can get it here as well. Maybe you're banging for some Brazilian meat. You can get that here too. I mean, Portuguese food, anything what, Afghani food. You have such fantastic food here in London, but what I love about it is that it's legit. It's legitimately legit. We live in Portugal. We miss American food or we miss Mexican food. We come here to have legitimate American food, legitimate Mexican food, and it's just so awesome. It's so crazy how much great food there is from all over the world that there's actually good British food here as well. Who knew? And no, I'm not talking about Pizza Express and Spaghetti House for great Italian food. Hey, they've got these places, got their place, but I mean like legit Italian food, legit Indian food. Oh my God, it's so good here. You will have the opportunity to have real food from where it's at for people that know what they're doing, which is going to make it even more fantastic. So that's why when you come here and eat here, you get to find cuisines you've never had before, and then it inspires you to want to eat them more and more and more because the stuff I had here, and once I had it, I had to have it again and again and again. Lebanese food, fantastic. Honestly, just today I had incredible dim sum, which I just love, love, love, love, love. Just had some incredible Lebanese food, and I even had some good British fare earlier in the day. I mean, you can't go wrong with the food in this city. Now, the fourth thing you're not going to like about when you come to London is the fact that the city is just so big and just unwielding. Like, look, you're going to have to use the tube. It doesn't matter what the price is, just tap in, tap out, and go because you need that because even though there's all these sites, you want to go site to site to site, by the end of the day, your feet are going to kill, so you need to use the public transportation, and for some people, that's a little bit daunting. Here, you shouldn't have to worry about it because literally, if you have a Google Pay or a tap-and-go card, you can just tap-and-go when you come in, tap-and-go when you go out. Now, you're probably not going to like if you forget to do the tap-out part because, oops, you're going to get another little thing to make it even more expensive staying here. But I think the key thing is with that unwielding size of the city, it becomes very important that you plan your vacation, you plan where you're going to stay, you're going to plan what sites you're going to see and when you're going to see them because if you're trying to go from the Tower and then Buckingham Palace and out to Wimbledon or something like that, that's not really your best bet to do it. You want to kind of tie things together so it's a little bit easier. So see, Big Ben, Parliament, do the London Eye if you want, go see, you know, Poets' Corner and Westminster Abbey, you know, kind of put those things together and then another time, you kind of put things together in a different route because that'll make life a little bit easier because honestly, you'll just walk, walk, walk, walk, walk, and yeah, I mean, it just gets a bit much sometimes. Believe me, you won't even realize how much you're walking. I've been using the Tube today, it's 5.30 in the afternoon and I've already gone 11 miles of walking. Yeah, and it's like 5.30. Yeah, I mean, it's crazy, like you don't understand how big the city is, how many things you're going to be seeing and doing and keep going and going and going so make sure you take a break occasionally, sit down, have afternoon tea, go hit up the pub because honestly, you're going to need that because the size of this city is so much that it might be too much for your footsies. You don't want to have foot problems when you're walking around. So another thing you're going to love about coming to London is actually the fact that you can leave London so easily because the day trips are amazing and the day trips can be really anything you want. You want castles and palaces? Oh, hang out to Windsor or go to Hampton Court and see where Henry VIII hang out. I mean, that's one of the best ones you could do or maybe you want to give the old college try? Yeah, you can go visit Oxford or Cambridge or maybe you want to see Old World England. Yes, well, you can go to Canterbury when you're here or what you could do if you want to do it on your own, you can actually do tours from here which actually make it a lot easier to visit certain places around here. For example, you could do a day trip to go to Stratford to learn about Shakespeare and his history and believe me, taking the tour from here is a lot easier than getting there yourself, okay? Another great tour you could do from here is you get a tour of the Cotswolds and that is the, you know, I went back to the Hobbit times and stuff. I mean, just so beautiful when you're there and you go to multiple places when you're there. Another great day trip you can do or one you can do on your own or you can do a tour, you can head out to Stonehenge. You want to see the big rock standing there or you can get to Bath or you can actually do both but if you're going to do that one I think you need more time between those two but honestly, it can be a day trip but honestly, you can have so many things to do here and if you get tired of the hustle bust of the city you can go to the Cotswolds where it's more chilled out or you can go to, you know, heck with the trains here, you can get up to York in like an hour and a half, two hours and see that. I mean, you have so many options if you're here. I wouldn't really consider York a day trip from here but you do have a lot of options whether it's Brighton, Canterbury the Cotswolds, wherever but I think my favorite one for nearby is probably going to Hampton Court like that's a really fun one and then if you want a city I'd probably do Bath. Oh and if you want to be really crazy with your day trips from London you realize it's only a little over two hours to take the train from London to Paris yeah, go in the morning, have your croissants for breakfast, eat a great lunch, go and see the Eiffel Tower and then come back in the afternoon or evening. It's doable even on that train I think there's a fifth thing you're not going to like about coming to London. Really, I'm not going to say it's over tourism because yes, there are tons and tons of tourists that come here. I mean millions of tourists come to London but millions of tourists have been coming to London for years and I'll talk about how good they are at managing that on Love Number 5 but for me the really the hate about the tourism kind of stuff here is the inconsiderate tourists. Like London is probably the city that I see the most inconsiderate tourists in total. You know the ones that are blocking the entrance or the exit to the tube or maybe they're holding up the line or maybe they're blocking the street to try to get a picture you know but I think my personal favorite inconsiderate tourist is probably the tourists that are dragging their big luggages behind them. You know the wheeling luggage and they're just running over people's feet and whacking into them whether you're at Paddington or you're coming in on the train or you're on the tube or you're just walking around or you're walking by Buckingham Palace and you see these things that's the thing you're really not going to like. It's not the over tourism because they do a great job with that but it's just the inconsiderate tourists just how many more inconsiderate tourists you have here in London than pretty much any other city I ever go to okay and since there are so many tourists here whether they're inconsiderate or considerate another thing you might not like are the number of pickpockets you might have to deal with when you're here. Even when you're walking in front of Buckingham Palace with a change of the guard you gotta keep your eyes open and you know I alluded to the thing that was good about the way they handle the over tourism. I think that's the fifth thing you're gonna love it's just the tourism infrastructure and how well it is run here in London. Look I know I talked about expensive accommodation. I talked about fantastic museums. I talked about all kinds of stuff but what's amazing about London even with all these millions of tourists that come here it runs well. Yes you do get to go to Westminster Abbey and see it when you're here. Yes you can do the tourist traps and it's okay and it'll function yes you can see the change in the guard and they'll let you know what days they're on and they're not and that's just it. It's put together so well that no matter what budget you have what you're looking to do there's something that you can do here and it's set up for you to enjoy it. Whether it's coming in from the airports if you want to do the budget traveler tube version of it or if you want to do the Heathrow Express version of it you can do that and they have it all here for a whole gambit of tourists. That's why you'll see young people coming here on their very first vacation abroad or families coming here for their first family trip abroad. Things are set up for you to enjoy here. From the tours to the people at the policeman how they'll help you if you ask questions. The locals if you ask questions they're awesome here and that's one of the things I really think is really important for people to understand is the infrastructure they have in place here makes this a doable destination for travelers of all backgrounds all desires all levels of travel experience because even my mother can figure out the tube all by herself. I mean the tourism infrastructure is so good they actually help you not get hit by cars when you cross the street and with that infrastructure you also have the black cabs here and I gotta say the black cabs they're entertaining to take and they know everything about the city so if you do take one they'll take you around and be almost like a tour guide but also if you're not sure where something is they will know. However as I want to be helpful also the budget side of it do know that the black cabs do cost more than the Uber so if you're looking to save money and you don't want to have an educational tour of the city while you go or have your questions asked go for the Uber but that's just it. The infrastructure is here for whatever budget whatever you're trying to do you can do it. So what are the things that you love and hate about visiting London? Put it down in the comments below so we can help other travelers know some of the good and maybe not so good parts of coming to London Bye from London