London museum/touring questions

[turkletsmom]

I wasn't sure if I should revive the London thread or start a new one for my specific questions but we booked our London & Paris trip for June. I'm so excited. First time for me and H.

Tickets are opening up for our dates for a few of the things we want to see but I'm not sure how much time to allow for some of the sites. If you've been, how long did you spend in each of these places?

Tower of London- we want to get tickets for right when it opens (I think it's 9am) and go straight to see the crown jewels. Then we want to do a Yeoman tour and see the rest of sites. How many hours for this roughly? I think I want to do a West End show that night with a casual dinner before, so just wondering if we have time for anything else near the Tower (like maybe St. Paul's) or will the Tower take all day.

I want to do Westminster Abbey first thing in the morning (9:30am) with the Churchill War Rooms right after. How much time to allow for the Abbey? Am I safe to book the time for the War Rooms for around 1-1:30pm with a quick lunch in between?

I'm sure I will have a LOT more questions as I start to book stuff- thank you!!

[RockNVoll]

There's a lot at the Tower but not everyone wants to spend hours looking at old armor and weapons so it kind of depends on your level of interest I think three hours would be enough time including the yeoman warder tour, assuming you or your H aren't like my H who likes to read every.single.placard wherever we go! Also, your plan to head straight for the crown jewels is perfect and you'll even be able to go through it a couple of times if you do that before the crowds hit (they put you on a little moveable walkway to pass the displays to literally keep folks moving).

Westminster Abbey: do you plan to do the guided tour, which looks to be 90 mins. long? I remember enjoying the tour, and you might want another 30 mins. to wander yourself afterwards so I'd probably aim for a later start at the Churchill War Rooms (which are great).

If you plan to hit Hampton Court Palace and/or Kensington Palace as part of your trip too, you might want to consider becoming a Historical Royal Palaces member which could save you a bit on entrance fees. Info is on each of their websites.

[turkletsmom]

RockNVoll, this is helpful- thank you! I'd say we are "placard lite" when we go to museums. I like to read the title and year and keep it moving lol. We usually do audio guides or my favorites are the Rick Steves audio tours whenever we go anywhere, but I'll look into the guided Abbey tours. It's all overwhelming but this is my favorite part of vacation planning.

[RockNVoll]

turkletsmom, I'm a fan of the Rick Steves audio app as well and have recommended it many times for many cities!

[ellipses84]

Last June we were in London, Paris, Normandy and Scotland. We didn’t do a lot of museums in London and Paris, but I have some tips. We spent half a day at the Tower of London with 4 adults and 4 kids. We could have spent a little longer and done a guided tour but it was hot, crowded and we saw everything we wanted to. I recommend going straight to the Crown Jewels first.

In Paris we would have loved to go to the Louvre even though we didn’t have a full day for it and you could spend many days there. I would have settled for half a day to see a few specific things and skip the Mona Lisa but it was all sold out the day we had available. I didn’t want to buy tickets ahead of time because I wasn’t sure we’d have time. I recommend buying ahead for popular attractions like the Eiffel Tower and Louvre. Unfortunately it was a day most of the other museums like Musee d’Orsay and Petite Palais were closed, so also check the schedules (the Louvre was probably busier that day because of that).

We did the hop on hop off bus tours and accompanying boat tours which were great for seeing it all and stopping at things we really wanted to see. The London bus tour was the slowest due to traffic but the rest move pretty fast. We did walk around the courtyard in the Louvre and really love all the parks and gardens in London and Paris, like Hyde Park and the Luxembourg Gardens. If we’d have more time I’d like to have gone to Versailles for the day.

I feel like a lot of other museums are a half day experience but it helps if you get an early start, and I don’t book 2 things in one day because I don’t like being on such a tight schedule and want to enjoy nice meals, walking the cities and be spontaneous. We did go to Hyde park and Harrods after the Tower but it was a last minute decision.

[ellipses84]

Re-reading your thread. I think 9-2 including a yeoman tour of the Tour would be a good estimate. We self toured and left earlier because kids were hungry and we were meeting our London relatives (who do not ever want to go to the tower again 😂). You could probably fit St. Paul’s in, it just depends on travel time and meal times. Closer to the Tower is one of my favorite places, St Dunstans in the East which is an old bombed church that is now a garden that takes a few minutes to walk to and through. The monument to the Great Fire is near there and on the Way to St Paul’s. If you get done with the tower early and don’t mind walking you could walk from the Tower to St Paul’s and see all these things along the way. I’d plan for a little more of a late show in the west end. There’s lots of great restaurants there but you can get a quick bite to eat in a lot of pubs, and there’s tons of faster food places if you are tight on time.

Westminster Abbey won’t take long so you should be fine to do the war rooms in the afternoon. Maybe a little longer than any other cathedral church you would tour.

[turkletsmom]

ellipses84, thank you! I'm adding St. Dunstan's to my list!

[cheekywife]

RockNVoll , your H sounds like mine. i'm a skimmer and fast reader, i leave him in the dust at museums   

[RockNVoll]

Mar 4, 2024 18:10:17 GMT -5 cheekywife said:

RockNVoll , your H sounds like mine. i'm a skimmer and fast reader, i leave him in the dust at museums   

The problem is that then I end up waiting around for and/or losing him!  The beauty of London museums at least is that they're all free so if you lived there like we did you could go back repeatedly and not feel like you had to cover it all in one go, LOL.

[cheekywife]

RockNVoll, it's kind of better when we're abroad and things aren't in english or very little is in english, then he can't go as slowly.

[RockNVoll]

Mar 4, 2024 21:39:06 GMT -5 cheekywife said:

RockNVoll , it's kind of better when we're abroad and things aren't in english or very little is in english, then he can't go as slowly.

LOLOLOLOL, YES!

[mrsukyankee]

Mar 3, 2024 14:09:06 GMT -5 RockNVoll said:

There's a lot at the Tower but not everyone wants to spend hours looking at old armor and weapons so it kind of depends on your level of interest I think three hours would be enough time including the yeoman warder tour, assuming you or your H aren't like my H who likes to read every.single.placard wherever we go! Also, your plan to head straight for the crown jewels is perfect and you'll even be able to go through it a couple of times if you do that before the crowds hit (they put you on a little moveable walkway to pass the displays to literally keep folks moving).

Westminster Abbey: do you plan to do the guided tour, which looks to be 90 mins. long? I remember enjoying the tour, and you might want another 30 mins. to wander yourself afterwards so I'd probably aim for a later start at the Churchill War Rooms (which are great).

This. Having done this with family, I'd say the same timings would workl

Also, check out London Walks - they seriously are one of the best things in London to see stuff that you might not otherwise see and so worth the £10 per person two hour walk: walks.com

[wise_rita]

As a WWII buff I originally I planned to go to the Churchill War Rooms, but pivoted my plans to Imperial War Museum London instead.

The War Rooms had a (pretty steep) cost, and IWM did not, and it really did cover what I was looking for. So I recommend looking into that.

[mrsukyankee]

While I recognise that the tickets are expensive (considering that many museums are free), I will say that I totally enjoyed the Churchill War Rooms. I have not see the IWM, so can't compare.

[RockNVoll]

I've done both the CWR and IWM and both are excellent. I don't even remember why we went to the IWM to be honest but was pleasantly surprised by how truly excellent it was. That said, the CWR are pretty special and if I had to pick I'd probably go with that because you're in a historical site itself.

On a separate note, the National WWII Museum in New Orleans is also fantastic. I don't know when I became a WWII history buff, but I think some of it has to do with the old adage about those who don't remember the past being condemned to repeat it.

[turkletsmom]

Mar 9, 2024 22:30:37 GMT -5 RockNVoll said:

I've done both the CWR and IWM and both are excellent. I don't even remember why we went to the IWM to be honest but was pleasantly surprised by how truly excellent it was. That said, the CWR are pretty special and if I had to pick I'd probably go with that because you're in a historical site itself.

On a separate note, the National WWII Museum in New Orleans is also fantastic. I don't know when I became a WWII history buff, but I think some of it has to do with the old adage about those who don't remember the past being condemned to repeat it.

We decided on CWR for the same reason you mentioned- that the museum is the location where everything took place. I'll definitely file away the IWM if we plan another London trip since I don't think we will have time on this trip.

Oddly enough- we live in NOLA but haven't been to the WWII Museum in years since their last expansion. We were just saying we should take the kids either over spring break or this summer since they are now old enough to appreciate it. It really is a world-class museum!!

[dancingirl21]

I think your itinerary looks really doable. We did a 9am tour of the Tower of London, with the Yeoman and then the crown jewels (or maybe the other way around?) and then walked around on our own. I believe we had a 12:30 reservation for lunch in that area and made it with plenty of time. We walked to St. Paul's Cathedral after that and did the audio tour on our own. My DH climbed the tower for views but I just hung out in the main church area listening to some pretty music being played.

We did the tour at Westminster Abbey around 9am as well, and spent about 2 hours there.

We saw SIX in the West End and it was fantastic. Dinner reservation recommendation near there: Cicchetti in Covent Garden. It was wonderful - small plates that you share and lovely wine offerings.

I also want to echo mrsukyankee to do a walk with Walks.com. I wasn't aware of this group, but she recommended them to me before we were in London and they are fantastic. We did 2 walks with them - Old London and Jack the Ripper (at night). Both were wonderful and so interesting. I would imagine you can't go wrong with any of their offerings.