First time in London

kininski

Hi..Any help on this will be gratefully received, Me and my wife is heading to Thorpe park with the sun tickets on the 23rd September, We have booked a night in a Travelodge Its the Heathrow T5 hotel. Booked in for Sunday night the 22nd September for one night, Monday it's onto Thorpe park. But as we have never been into London before, We are planning to go and spend the whole day there on Sunday 22nd September, I do not really want to drive into London, So what options do i have of getting into and back out of London on the same day. Is there a tube that goes into London near my hotel? Or do i have to use the bus, I did see the Heathrow Express but that is very very expensive. So what is going to be my best option to get into London. And once we are in London what's the best way of getting around to different places, Is there a travel card or something smiler, I did read about a travel card and an oyster card, Are these good value and easy to use? Where is the best place for a tourist to start from in London doing the normal tourist run around...Sorry to drone on so much but i am easily confused and i really want to do this right, And with it being our first time in London i really want to maximize my time there.
Thanks in advance on any advice you can offer me.....Jay

Stompa

Take a look at the journey planner here:

http://journeyplanner.tfl.gov.uk/user/XSLT_TRIP_REQUEST2?language=en

susancs

It seems that your hotel is 2 miles from Heathrow Terminal and you would need to get the hotel shuttle bus which seems to cost £9 per person for a return journey. You would then get the piccadilly tube line from terminal 5 into London. As you are only going to be using London transport for the one day it would be easier to just get an off peak (Sunday is off peak all day) zone 1-6 Travelcard from the ticket office or machines. This would cost £8.90 and give you unlimited travel on all tubes, buses in those zones. It would be a 45 minute direct journey from T5 to South Kensington for the Natural History, Science and V&A Museums if you wanted to visit any of those (especially if raining!) or you could change there onto the circle or district line to get a tube to Westminster to view The House of Parliament and Big Ben and walk to the London Eye. You could get a boat from there to the Tower of London or continue on using the tube.

You could do a tour using London buses and use your travelcard to do so. You can get the tube direct from Terminal to Piccadilly Cirucs and it would take approx 50 minutes. Details here.
http://www.londonforfree.net/outdoors/bustour/bustour.shtml

In my opininion as you are only in London for the day I would probably use a hop on and off tour bus with commentary to see and do as much as possible. Relaives who have vistied us have used the Orginal London tour bus and found it good, but there are probably others that are just as good and may be cheaper .
http://www.theoriginaltour.com/

kininski

Thanks that's great advice you gave me, It will certainly help me out, Thanks very much.....