London in 5 Days: A Day-by-Day Itinerary

United Kingdom · 5 days

The whole trip in one city: five days, each one a different piece of London, with no transfers and no day trips out of town.

Day by day

Day 1 · 7 placesLanding and a first evening in the West End

airport → center: by train or Tube, 15 to 60 minutes

Heathrow Airport (LHR)
London’s main airport. Three ways into town: the Piccadilly line (cheap and slow, about 50 minutes), the Elizabeth line to Paddington (about 30), and the Heathrow Express (15 minutes, the priciest). All three leave from under the terminals.
Piccadilly Circus
The glowing screens and the fountain with the winged statue — London’s answer to Times Square. Five minutes to stand there and know you have arrived.
Leicester Square
The square of film premieres: giant screens, lights, crowds. The TKTS booth is here too, selling discounted seats for tonight’s shows.
Chinatown
Two streets under red lanterns, bakeries with buns in the window and ducks hanging in the glass. The best place in the center to eat late and cheaply.
Soho
A quarter of bars, old cafés and stage doors. In the evening it is the loudest corner of the city, and that is exactly why people come.
Seven Dials
Seven little streets meeting at a sundial column. Small shops and cafés, lamps in the evening — the coziest piece of the West End.

Day 2 · 9 placesThe City, the Thames and the Tower

from the cathedral to the Tower, over Tower Bridge to the south bank, then west along the river to Tate Modern

Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament
The city’s symbol: the neo-Gothic palace on the riverbank and the tower with the bell that is the real Big Ben. Everyone sees it from outside; going in is by separate booking.
Westminster Abbey
A thousand years of coronations and burials in one building: the tombs of kings, Poets’ Corner, Newton’s grave. The audio guide comes with the ticket and is worth it.
National Gallery
Van Eyck, Titian, Velázquez, Turner and Van Gogh’s Sunflowers — all of it free. With an hour, go straight to the west wing for the Impressionists.
Buckingham Palace
The King’s residence. In October you cannot go in — the State Rooms open only in summer — but the façade, the gates and the guard change are outside.
Westminster Bridge
From the middle of the bridge you get the shot: Parliament, the clock tower and the river. In the morning it is empty and the light falls on the building, not in your eyes.
Churchill War Rooms
The underground headquarters the war was run from, left exactly as it was locked in 1945: maps with pins, telephones, Churchill’s bedroom.

Day 3 · 6 placesWestminster and royal London

the whole day on foot in one quarter

St Paul's Cathedral
Christopher Wren’s dome, which survived the bombing. 528 steps go up: first the Whispering Gallery, where a whisper carries across the dome, then two open galleries with the city below.
Tower of London
Fortress, prison and treasury in one: William the Conqueror’s White Tower, the Crown Jewels, the ravens, and a tour led by a Beefeater — free with the ticket and better than any audio guide.
Tower Bridge
The drawbridge with the two towers. Crossing the lower deck is free; a ticket takes you up to the glass-floored walkways and down into the engine rooms.
Borough Market
A food market under the railway arches, going for close to a thousand years: cheese, oysters, lamb sandwiches, grilled cheese. Come hungry, and before 3 p.m.
Millennium Bridge
A footbridge across the Thames: the cathedral behind you, the power-station museum ahead. The best way over to the south bank.
Tate Modern
A former power station with a turbine hall seven stories high. The main collection is free, and the viewing level on top looks over half the river.

Day 4 · 6 placesThe British Museum and the shopping streets

Bloomsbury → Oxford Street → the theater district

British Museum
The Rosetta Stone, the Parthenon marbles, the Assyrian lions and the glass roof of the Great Court. Entry is free; two and a half hours covers the highlights without the rush.
Sir John Soane's Museum
An architect’s house left as he kept it: a pharaoh’s sarcophagus in the basement, Hogarth paintings on walls that swing open, mirrors and light from above. Small, free, and unlike any other museum in town.
Oxford Street
The country’s main shopping street: a mile of shop windows and department stores. Walk it in daylight, when everything is open, and not at rush hour.
Regent Street
A smooth curve of early-19th-century façades — London’s most beautiful shopping street, built as one building over half a mile.
Carnaby Street
The pedestrian street where the Sixties began: small shops, signs, banners overhead. Liberty, the half-timbered department store, is right next door.
West End theatre
An evening in the West End is something people fly to London for on its own: a musical or a play in a house three hundred years older than you. The address depends on the show you pick.

Day 5 · 6 placesKensington and the flight home

center → airport

Victoria and Albert Museum
A museum of things made by hand: four hundred years of fashion, stained glass, the casts of David and Trajan’s Column at full size. Free, and the cast courts alone would be worth a ticket.
Natural History Museum
A terracotta cathedral with a blue whale skeleton under the ceiling of the main hall. On a Saturday it is full of children with a line at the door — with little time, at least step into the hall.
Albert Memorial
A gilded prince under a carved canopy, facing the round Royal Albert Hall — the most lavish monument of Victorian Britain.
Kensington Gardens
The Round Pond, avenues of plane trees and the Peter Pan statue. From here you can carry on into Hyde Park along the Serpentine, or turn toward Knightsbridge.
Harrods
A department store the size of a block: tiled food halls, the Egyptian escalator and window displays people visit like a museum. Buying is optional.
Heathrow Airport (LHR)
The flight home. For a long-haul departure leave three hours ahead: Heathrow security is slow, and the terminal is a walk from the station.