Ride a double-becker bus ★★★
Riding the famous double-decker buses of London
Those red two-story buses are an icon of London—and a fabulous way to take a quick sightseeing tour, a bird's-eye tour of the city at the price of a bus ticket.
Besides, sometimes in London you end up feeling like a gopher, taking the Tube everywhere, popping above ground just long enough to see some sight then scurrying back down to tunnel off aboard the Underground to your next stop. Instead, take a few of those rides on a bus—a bit slower, perhaps, but you'll get to see more of London this way.
When you do, try your best to ride up top in the front seat. The view from here can be slightly panicky or vertigo inducing, as an odd effect of parallax often makes it look as if you are about to shave off the corners of buildings as the bus wends its way through London's gnarl of streets. But once you get used to that, it's great fun.
There are four kinds of double-deckers plying the streets of London these days.
You will mostly see the late 20th century boxy models, the sleek, rounded New Buses, and of course the ubiquitous topless double-deckers converted into hop-on/hop-off sightseeing buses.
The fourth kind, whuch you will rarely see the classic old 1950s Routemaster—at least on public routes.
Most of those you will see have been repurposed as sightseeing tour buses—save on "Heritage Route" 15H.
Where to ride a double-decker in London
- Heritage Route 15H (classic Routemaster bus): Trafalgar Square–Charing Cross–Aldwych–City Thameslink–St Paul's Churchyard–Mansion House–Cannon Street–Tower Hill
- Route 8 - Oxford Circus to Bow Church
- Route 9 - Hammersmith to Aldwych
- Route 10 - Hammersmith bus station to King's Cross St. Pancras
- Route 11 - Liverpool Street station to Fulham Broadway
- Route 12 - Dulwich to Oxford Circus
- Route 15 - Trafalgar Square to Blackwall DLR
- Route 16 - Victoria station to Longley Way
- Route 24 - Hampstead Heath to Pimlico
- Route 38 - Victoria to Hackney
- Route 55 - Oxford Circus to Leyton
- Route 73 - Victoria to Stoke Newington
- Route 88 - Camden to Clapham
- Route 137 - Oxford Circus to Streatham Hill
- Route 148 - Camberwell Green to White City bus station
- Route 390 - Notting Hill Gate to Archway
- Route 453 - Marylebone station to Deptford Bridge
How to pay for your ride
If you are using a hop-on/hop-off bus, just flash your pass when you board.
If you are using a public bus, you can use your Oyster Card at the little scanners just inside each door.
If you happen to have a Day Travelcard or paper ticket, board at the front to flash this to the driver.
By the way, the open back platform on the New Bus is only available during the day, when there is a conductor on board to assist back there. It's closed behind perspex at night, though the driver can open it, as he does the other doors, after he comes to a stop.
ToursDouble Decker Buses Tours
These might include Double decker buses
More toursActivities, walks, & excursions
- Viator.com - Best one-stop shopping site for all sorts of activities, walking tours, bus tours, escorted day trips, and other excursions. It is actually a clearinghouse for many local tour companies and outfitters, and since it gets a bulk-rate deal on pricing (and takes only a token fee for itself), you can actually sometimes book an activity through Viator for less than it would cost to buy the same exact tour from the tour company itself. (I once booked a Dublin pub crawl via Viator and later discovered that I saved about $1.50; also, the tour turned out to be sold-out, and they were turning away the folks in front of me in line, but since I had a pre-booked voucher I got in.)Partner
- Londonwalks.com - Since the 1970s, the gold standard in city walking tours and museum tours—and cheap, to boot. Just meet your guide at the appointed time and place (usually a Tube stop), pay your £10 (students or over 65s are £8; under 15 free), and prepare for a good two hours of amazing cultural insight and historic anecdotes. If you plan on taking three or more walks, buy a "Frequent London Walker" card for £2 from your first guide, then each subsequent walk costs £8. They also run popular excursions outside London for £18. Note that the fee just covers the guided tour; you pay for any admissions (or, for excursions, travel expenses) yourself.
- Contexttravel.com - This bespoke walking tour company doesn't even call its 200 tour leaders "guides." It calls them "docents"—perhaps because most guides are academics and specialists in their fields: history professors, archeologists, PhDs, art historians, artists, etc. Groups are miniscule (often six people maximum), and most docents can be booked for private guiding sessions as well. They aren't always the cheapest tours, but they are invariably the best. People rave about Context.Partner
- City-discovery.com - Chief rival to Viator (though with a less spiffy interface and often sub-par text descriptions), representing many of the same tours (at the same prices). However, it also seems to cover more destinations, especially secondary ones. When it comes down to it, City-Discovery and Viator have maybe 70% the same inventory, but then 30% will be completely different (some Viator has City-Discovery does not, other vice-versa) so it pays to check through the offerings from both.Partner
Public transit
- Tfl.gov.uk - Covers pretty much all London transportation, including the Tube and buses but also taxis, the DLR and other local light rail systems, trams, the London bike share program, and other one-off transport options.
- Nationalrail.co.uk - Covers all of the lines once operated by the (since-privitized) old British Rail. This includes most major British railways, but notably does not cover many urban area light rail systems (such as London, Glasgow, Manchester, Blackpool, Sheffield, and Midland Metro), nor does it cover the Eurostar, Heathrow Express, nor a handful of heritage or privately owned railways. Still, it's the closest thing to one-stop shopping for finding train connections across the mainland U.K. (though not Northern Ireland).