London — Sights
Free museums, a pint at the pub, hood up for the drizzle
- Sir John Soane’s Museum — A compact house museum packed with antiquities and paintings
- Foundling Museum — A quiet museum tracing Handel and London’s foundling history
- The Wallace Collection — A free collection of painting, furniture and armour in a townhouse
- Leighton House — A Victorian artist’s home with a tile-lined Arab Hall
- The Postal Museum & Mail Rail — Ride the underground postal railway and trace London through the mail
- Tate Modern — Modern art in a former power station.
- Victoria and Albert Museum — A museum of design and decorative arts.
- Kew Gardens — Royal botanic gardens with glasshouses and woodland.
- Barbican Centre — Brutalist complex for art, film and performance.
- Churchill War Rooms — Wartime underground headquarters museum.
- The Courtauld Gallery — Impressionist art in Somerset House.
- Royal Academy of Arts — An exhibition-led art institution on Piccadilly.
- Dulwich Picture Gallery — A gallery of old masters beside gardens.
- Hampstead Heath — A broad heath with views over the city.
- Design Museum — A museum exploring design in everyday objects and spaces
- Big Ben & Westminster Abbey — Big Ben from the bridge, then the coronation church
- Tower of London & Tower Bridge — See the Crown Jewels, then walk over Tower Bridge
- British Museum — Free entry to world history, Rosetta Stone to mummies
- National Gallery & Trafalgar Square — Van Gogh's Sunflowers for free, then the lions outside
- London Eye — A 30-minute loop looking down on Big Ben
- Changing of the Guard, Buckingham Palace — Bearskin hats and a marching band, for free
- Covent Garden — Street acts, the Apple Market, a stroll before the show
- Notting Hill & Portobello Road Market — Antiques between pastel houses, and the film's bookshop
- Sky Garden — Free with booking: London from a glass greenhouse
- Warner Bros. Studio Tour London – The Making of Harry Potter — The real Great Hall and Diagon Alley sets
- A West End musical — The Lion King, Les Mis, and how to get cheap day seats
- Camden Market — Punk shopfronts and canal-side street food
- Greenwich (Royal Observatory & Greenwich Park) — Stand on 0° longitude, then look back at London
- Natural History Museum — A blue whale in a cathedral-like hall, free
- St Paul's Cathedral — Wren's dome, whispering gallery, top view
- Shakespeare's Globe — Open-roof Elizabethan theatre, tours or standing
- Tate Britain — Turner to Hockney, British art without the crowds
- Kensington Palace — Victoria's childhood palace beside the park
- Science Museum — Apollo to steam engines, free
- Imperial War Museum London — Naval guns out front, Holocaust Galleries inside, free
- The View from The Shard — 244 m up, the highest viewing deck in the city
- Primrose Hill — A free hilltop with the skyline in front
- Hyde Park & Serpentine Lake — Pedalos and a lake walk in the middle of town
- Hampton Court Palace — Henry VIII's palace, Tudor kitchens, hedge maze