London, I think, is the first international city any American traveler should visit, particularly since its history often overlaps with ours. We owe it for our language, many of our place names (New York and Dover, OK), the Magna Carta, pingpong, the ground zero of time zones and a reason to rebel in 1776! There are icons to see — Big Ben, the lions of Trafalgar Square, double-decker buses and the bobbies’ funny hats — and unlike a summer in Tuscany, it’s all accessed without subtitles.
What many don’t realize is how affordable it can be. Though the British pound is up 10 percent on the dollar in the past two years, and a flight is roughly double a ticket to New York (I found $775 fares from Will Rogers in May, about $380 to New York), a visit to London can cost about the same as one to the Big Apple.
For one thing, London is the world’s greatest free city. I recently compiled a list of 20 free London attractions for Lonely Planet and found that it includes many of London’s prime-time attractions, among them the Rosetta Stone at the British Museum and riverside power plant-turned-museum of Tate Modern. There also are wonderful off-the-radar gems such as the Sir John Soane Museum, a look into an early 19th-century aristocrat’s quirky knickknacks, virtually unchanged since he lived there. You can spend a memorable week in London without paying an admission charge.
A hotel in cities such as New York or London can be your biggest on-the-ground travel expense. So don’t stay in one.
I recently booked a wonderful private room/bathroom on AirBnb.com in a Londoner’s home in the hilly north London neighborhood of Muswell Hill — popularized by the 1971 Kinks album. For $100, it came with a palace view, a giant English breakfast and plenty of teatime chats that gave a real local insight to my London stay. It also gave me more elbow room. You can find other flats for as little as $50 a night.
