London travel guide - when to go, what to see, what it costs

Two nights works, but only if you accept the limit. In a weekend you can do the Westminster and south bank corridor properly, with one big museum and one evening somewhere else. What does not work is the version where you also want Greenwich, the markets in the east, a West End show and the Tower of London. The distances defeat it, and you spend Saturday on the Central line.

Three or four nights is the right length for a first visit. The extra days buy you a second and third area: the East End around Brick Lane and Columbia Road, Greenwich down the river, or a morning in South Kensington with the museums. Four nights is also enough to take one whole day slowly.

A week is only worth it if you have a reason beyond sightseeing, such as day trips out to Oxford, Cambridge or Brighton. Otherwise the value tails off, because each additional night in London is expensive and there is nothing you can only see on day six.

Take the weather honestly. London is mild and grey rather than dramatic, and rain falls in every month. Met Office averages for the London area put the wettest months in autumn, around October and November, and the driest in March, but the gap is smaller than people expect: even the driest month has about eight days with measurable rain, and the summer months have roughly the same. There is no dry season. Carry a jacket in July.

Summer, June to August, averages afternoon highs of around 22 to 24 degrees, which is comfortable rather than hot, and it is the busiest and most crowded stretch of the year. Winter is not severe, with December and January highs averaging around 8 to 9 degrees, but it is very dark: on the shortest day the sun rises after eight in the morning and sets before four in the afternoon, giving under eight hours of daylight. April, May and September are the best compromise. Highs run from the mid-teens in April to around 18 in May and 20 in September, the parks are at their best, and the museum queues are shorter than in August.

December is the exception worth making. The Christmas lights across the West End and the seasonal markets are a genuine reason to accept the dark, and Borough Market opens seven days a week in December instead of its usual six. Book early, because the first three weeks of December are busy.

On price, our own measurements say something more useful than the seasonal story. The floor we see on the Vilnius route is low and remarkably steady from September right through to spring, and it rises only slightly for summer. The number that really moves is not a season at all: it is what you pay when you book at the last minute. The tall bar on the chart below is the month we are standing in as it was measured, so it shows the cost of a seat bought days before departure, not what August normally costs.

Two dated events are worth planning around, in either direction. Notting Hill Carnival runs over the August bank holiday weekend: in 2026 that is the Panorama steel band competition on Saturday 29 August and the two free street days on Sunday 30 and Monday 31 August. It shuts down a large part of west London, so it is either the reason for your trip or the weekend to avoid. The RHS Chelsea Flower Show takes five days in late May at the Royal Hospital Chelsea, 18 to 22 May in 2027, and fills central hotels with it.

The most important practical fact about flying to London cheaply from the Baltics is that your plane does not land in London. Low-cost flights from Vilnius, Kaunas and Riga go to Stansted or Luton, and both sit well outside the city. From Stansted, the Stansted Express runs to Liverpool Street in about 47 minutes, every 15 minutes through the day, with one stop at Tottenham Hale for the Victoria line. From Luton, an automated shuttle called the DART links the terminal to Luton Airport Parkway station in under four minutes, and Thameslink trains run from there to St Pancras International in around 35 minutes. Coaches run from both airports around the clock and cost less than the train, but they take longer and depend on traffic.

Neither airport is inside the Transport for London zone system, so neither transfer is covered by the daily fare cap that makes travel inside London cheap. Treat the ride in and out as a real line in the budget and a real hour in each direction. If you are landing late, check what time the last train runs before you book the flight.

Inside London it gets much easier, and the rule is simple: do not buy tickets. Tap in and out with the same contactless bank card or phone on the Underground, the buses, the DLR, the Overground, the trams and the Elizabeth line. The system charges the pay as you go fare and then stops charging once you reach the daily cap, and using the same card all week adds a Monday to Sunday cap on top. Paper single tickets are the most expensive way to travel here. Buses have not taken cash since 2014.

The bus is also the cheap sightseeing tour. Bus and tram fares have their own separate, lower daily cap, and the Hopper fare gives you unlimited bus and tram changes within an hour of touching in. Above all, walk. The Underground map lies about distance, and stations that look far apart on it are often five minutes apart on the ground.

The honest position first: restaurant meals in central London add up faster than anything else in this guide, and two sit-down dinners can cost more than the flight. The good news is that the cheap tiers here are genuinely good rather than a compromise.

Start with the markets. Borough Market is the obvious one, and the stalls there are a full lunch rather than a snack, but it is also the busiest and the stalls in the East End around Brick Lane do the same job with fewer tourists. Then the curry houses. Brick Lane is the historic centre of London's Bangladeshi community and is still lined with them, and Whitechapel next door serves the same food without the hard sell on the pavement. Chinatown, around Gerrard Street in Soho, is the other reliable cheap dinner in the middle of town and it is open late.

Two more things are worth knowing. Every supermarket and pharmacy chain sells a meal deal, a fixed-price bundle of a sandwich or salad, a snack and a drink, and it is what a large share of London eats at lunchtime. And the Sunday roast is a real institution: pubs serve it from around midday on Sundays until it runs out, and it is the best value proper meal in the city.

The module below prices Stansted specifically, because that is where most low-cost flights into London land. London has several airports, so a cheaper fare into another one is always worth checking against the transfer time and cost, which is what we did in which London airport is cheapest from Vilnius. Each figure shows the day we saw it, so you can judge how fresh it is. If you are open on destination rather than on dates, start with the cheapest flights from Vilnius instead.