On the last day of our Irish honeymoon, Rob and I flew to London to celebrate my sister’s wedding. We had a few days before anything official was scheduled and Rob, my dad, and I decided to spend a day seeing the tourist spots while my mom and sisters worked out last minute wedding details.

Having studied abroad in London, and my father having visited numerous times before, our goal was to show Rob as many of the famous sites as we could in about 5-6 hours. I think it’s safe to say we accomplished that goal!

How to Blitz London:

1. Map out your route and agree on a plan of attack. – Once you get a good map (there are plenty of free ones), trace your route for the key things you want to see. If you plan to take any tours, buy tickets online if you can and make sure the museum, or building, is open on the day you want to visit. We didn’t stop inside any paid attractions as we were on a limited amount of time.

2. Take the bus from your hotel to your starting destination. – The bus makes it so much easier to see some of the sights around town and get a feel for the city, especially when you don’t have time to walk through every neighborhood. The tube (subway) also works, but you are underground the entire time and are paying more than double for a single ride.

3. Walk through Regents Park from the bus stop. The tree-lined paths, the dimmed city noise. All completely worth a few extra steps.

4. Arrive at Buckingham Palace and the changing of the guards completely by accident. Sure, you could have looked up the days and times of the change ahead of time, but it wasn’t on your original plan. Enjoy the fanfare, fight the crowds, and move on before it ends.

5. Take your picture in front of Westminster Abbey. Don’t go in because the line goes around the corner and you can’t see the end of it. Yes, I am sure it’s worth it, but our time frame didn’t allow it. You can still appreciate it’s mass and beauty from the outside.

6. Joke about Big Ben and Parliament ala National Lampoons European Vacation. 

Then after you joke, appreciate this amazing place you standing in front of.

7. Appreciate the London Eye. We walked along the opposite side of the river as the eye, but could see the serious line. Since it takes an hour to do the tour just, again, we didn’t have time to wait. However, I do recommend going to the top of the Shard, which we did the following day with the entire family and the view was truly spectacular.

8. Have a take away sushi lunch in the Victoria Embankment Gardens. Sit down. Breathe. Drink a coke to keep your energy up.

9. Walk through Trafalgar Square and marvel at the street performers. There were some new “floating” performers that I hadn’t seen before! Chat with the volunteer guides who stand about waiting to talk with lost tourist. They really know a lot about their city!

10. Stop in the National Gallery. It’s free! You could easily spend hours in this museum! My dad picked up audio guides for each of us and we listened to descriptions for about an hour and a half. Definitely worth it for a bit of culture and art appreciation on a time crunch!

11. Check out Covent Gardens. – A hot spot for workers who lunch and tourists alike, my sister (the one getting married) works there. We trolled the streets to stalk her building down a cute, brick building, cobblestoned street.

After a day like this, you will be pretty exhausted, but oh-so-happy to have seen all the quintessential tourist spots. Of course, I don’t recommend doing London in just a day, but sometimes plans demand other scenarios!

RQ: Would you be able to “blitz” a city? If you were to go to London, what would be on your “must see/do” list?

Brooke Selb

I’m Brooke Selb, a Personal Trainer and Health Coach specializing in helping busy moms and moms to be to easily juggle mom life with family friendly recipes, and easy exercise routines to help you achieve your fitness goals that fit in with your already busy life with sound nutritional advice.