London With Kids: The Four Nights That Cover It

London is the first European city most American families do, and it is the easiest, because everyone speaks your language and the Tube goes everywhere. Four nights is the minimum. Six is comfortable.

Sleep near a Tube line, not near the sights. South Kensington puts three free museums on your doorstep and the park across the road. Bloomsbury is the British Museum and cheap breakfasts. Both are twenty minutes from everything.

The Tower of London is the day one. Go at opening, straight to the Crown Jewels before the queue, then a Beefeater tour. The ravens, the armor, the spot where two queens lost their heads. Three hours. Then Tower Bridge next door for the glass walkway.

The Natural History Museum is free and the dinosaur gallery is the reason to go. The Science Museum next door is free too. One museum a day, an hour and a half each, then out into Hyde Park for the playground and a pedalo on the Serpentine.

The river and a show

Take the boat from Westminster to Greenwich. An hour on the Thames past Parliament, the Eye, St Paul’s and the Tower, then the Cutty Sark, the Royal Observatory and the meridian line to stand on with a foot in each hemisphere. The best half day in London and the kids do not know it is educational.

A West End show. Matilda, the Lion King, whatever is on. Book a matinee, sit in the cheap seats up top, eat ice cream at the interval. Most kids over six sit through it and most parents cry at the end.

Pizza by the slice, a pub lunch with a Sunday roast, fish and chips from a proper chippy once. Then the train to Bath, or Edinburgh, or the Cotswolds. London is the door, not the whole trip.

Planning England with kids? Start with the full England family travel guide, or send me the ages and the dates and I will come back with what is really available.