Many thanks,
Marissa
p-s – I’m hopefully moving to Kensington within the forseeable future, so oen of the reason’s I’m doing this is so that I can get my bearings in London. I will also hopefully be visiting places like the British Museum etc.

Hi Marissa, I live in Islington and I travel to the West End on my own or with my daughter quite often. I would say it is generally safe. Just take care of your purse, like you would anywhere.

Generally speaking, most acts of violence are committed by people already known to the victim, so on your own in a crowd, statistically you have small chance of being attacked.

I hope you get to love London as much as I do!

Take it easy, E x

Must sees:
London Eye
Harrod’s
The Tower of London
Buckingham Palace
The British Museum

The first thing I must WARN you of is check your airline luggage limits!!!

Most flights that are either ‘to’ or ‘from’ the U.S. have double the luggage limit, you have flying overseas. Double check your limit between Paris & London. You don’t want to get hit with overage on that short flight.

The U.K. is very expensive and London is the highest. Be ready for sticker shock.
Paris, while a bit higher than the U.S. is cheaper than the U.K.

Both have heavy taxes, however if you read up on the rules, you can get most of it back at the airport when you are leaving. Make sure you read up on the VAT.

The cool thing is both countries have great public transit systems.

Do you like to use wash cloths? If you arn’t staying at a 4 star hotel or above, pack one! Wash cloths are an American item.

My one special tip about Paris… the tower twinkles for 15 minutes on the hour from 10 pm until about 1am. Make sure you see it at night.

As for culture, I was shocked to find the people in Paris to be much friendlier than the Britts. Traveling alone, and only knew one word of French, didn’t affect my trip at all. Stores, shops, and tourist places all have people who speak very good english. Many locals also speak english however may be broken. The trick is to remember you are a guest, smile, and speak slowly.

To learn more about these places I would suggest visiting the Virtual Tourist website. I’ve used if for years. There you can get information from locals as well as other tourists.

http://forum.virtualtourist.com/

The plan is to travel from Edinburgh to London by Virgin train, where I will then spend 2 nights in London, cramming as much touring into that one day, before departing (by train) for Portsmouth where I will meet up with my aunt and uncle.

I choose to go by train, so at least with my limited time in the fabulous UK, I can at least see a something more of the beautiful countryside as it whizzes by.

Firstly I’ll pull into Kings Cross: Is this an alright area?
Where is a nice place to stay near central London?
Then I’ll depart at Waterloo for Portsmouth.

Any advice for my time there?
Generally speaking…

First of all don’t at all worry about being in the UK alone. The transportation facility is just amazing and you will have no trouble getting around. Edinburgh is an amazing place and is very scenic, so you’ll enjoy your tour there and it should be no problem to get to London from there. Don’t roam around alone too late in the night in any of the places other than London.

London is well connected by tube (subway). Just buy a 3 day unlimited pass and you could get around the city without any hassle. Sight seeing in London is very stressful and tiring and you need to walk everywhere and there are tons of places to see. Buy a good map and do some research on what all you want to see (Oxford, piccadilly, buckingham palace, museums, stores such as Harrods, London bridge, Trafalgar square, London eye, etc). Spend some time (may be on the way to London) understanding which place is near a particular station and how far is one station from another in that area. Another good way to see London is to go to Oxford street or something and just walk around in any direction you feel like. There are tons of places to see and you can spend 3-4 hours in each of the store on Oxford. Also, there are a lot of sight seeing offers. Like, if you travel to London from a different city and show your ticket at the sightseeing ticket counter, you’ll get 25 to 50% off on your ticket. Note that it is pretty expensive to see all the places in London (average 20 pounds per place – London eye, Madame Tussauds, all paid museums, etc).

As far as the hotel is concerned, find something online which is cheap and in a decent area as you can travel to central London within half hour. A nice place to stay would be Wimbledon, it’s decent and is about 35 to 45 minutes by tube. Just remember to pick a tube map and a city map as soon as you get there. Have fun and enjoy your trip!

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Technorati Tags: carmel, homescapes, lange, London, shopping, thompson, travel

From London Victoria coach station walk north up Buckingham Palace Rd, and about 500 meters from the coach station is the mainline National Rail station. From there, you can buy yourself a single Tube ticket for £4, and go down the escalators following signs for the "Victoria line" (light blue). Take that to Oxford Circus, and change there for the Central line, going eastbound towards Epping and Hainaut.

Once your at Liverpool St Central line station, leave the station following signs for "National Rail". Then buy a ticket and take an overground train to Enfield Town. Total journey cost will be £8.40 and will take you about 45 minutes.

Edit:
Good advice carina. Find out which station your suppose to be meeting them at before you start your journey. Forgot to mention the other stations.. lol

I appreciate it SO much!

They haven´t given you a list, yet? Ask the chaperon.

It will be cold in the winter! It IS a northern country. Bring winter clothing.

Anything that is electrical needs to have a converter (for the voltage) and an adaptor (for the plug) DON’T bother with your cell phone, because it probably won’t work there. Check first, with your service, but then, I found that the battery was lessened by using their electricity…shorter lifespan.

DON’T FORGET YOUR CAMERA (I don’t know whether you term that a no brainer, it is for me…) and extra memory! You will want more than you think you will.

Travel light. don’t carry a whole bunch of unnecessary stuff. You’re only going to be there for, what? a week or two? You can do without a lot of stuff.

OH! and some sort of handheld games are fun for the flight…it’s going to be LONG!

And Ipods are good, too, especially for the flight.

Do the London Eye, a river tour, bus tour (even better, combine them – http://www.ducktours.co.uk/), walk along the Southbank from Waterloo and the Eye to London bridge to see the view of the skyline and St Pauls…

Go the the theatre – get a last minute ticket in Leicester Sq to save.

Go Waxy’s – unique archeitecture for a pub – http://www.waxyoconnors.co.uk/london/index.asp and use http://www.timeout.com/ for pubs and eating out.

Get an A to Z and print the London map here http://www.enjoyengland.com/ideas/inspirational-ideas/city-breaks/city-maps.aspx

Get the tube from the airport, not an expensive taxi, if you can.