1week London Itinerary

Wow, sounds like a great trip! My only thought is you may not be leaving yourselves enough free time. Time to just wander around, look in shop windows, stroll through the parks, visit an open market, drop into a pub, just chill.

But your trip sounds like a lot of fun. Happy travels!

No British Museum?

Wow! About the only thing I didn't see on the itinerary was Windsor Castle... But seriously, I think you are trying to cram too much in. For example, the Tower of London can be the better part of the day if you actually want to look at the exhibits and contemplate what you are seeing.

An easy way to see some of London's pomp and ceremony is to see the Queen's guard detail stand guard-mount (inspection) at Wellington Barracks and then march to Buckingham Palace. Or, the 4: 00pm Dismounting Ceremony at the Horse Guards. (See changing-guard.com)

The boys might be interested in the Museum of London (walking distance from St Paul's) as it chronicles London from pre-history, through the Romans (both eras), to today.

The British museum does have a lot of exhibits that pre-teens might find cool but place will make your brain hurt if you allow it to. (It's the most incredible museum I've ever visited but 6 hours will barely scratch the surface - its collection is immense).

The Royal Air Force Museum is supposed to be outstanding but it’s still on my 'to do' list.

The London Aquarium (next to the London Eye) is also supposed to be outstanding but it’s also still on my 'to do' list.

I didn't really care for the Hop On - Hop Off bus tour. Traffic is so bad in London that it wasn't conducive for traveling tourist site to tourist site. Also, the audio commentary seemed to always be out of sync.

Imperial War Museum?

You should realize that you are going to be dead tired when you get to your hotel. You most likely will not have any energy to walk around after you get to London, let alone go out at night. Also, it gets dark by 4:30 PM. Some how I don't think people have as much energy, once the sun goes down. I suggest you look at what and where the day tour companies travel to. We used Evan Evans day tours. The Hop On, Hop Off bus take an inordinate amount of time. We stayed at the Doubletree Westminister, about five years ago. It is very nice, as you can go out of the hotel, turn left, turn left again and walk a short distance and you are on the Thames. We were disappointed with the food selection in their café. Hopefully, it has changed by now. The breakfasts were fine though. It is a very short distance to walk to Paliament, Westminister Abbey, to the pier for a river cruise, etc., etc.

I am going to suggest a few places we seen that was perfect for children and still interesting for adults.
Instead of Churchill War Rooms, I would suggest HMS Belfast museum, its a boat and pretty fun to explore for kids and adults. The war rooms, were pretty "dry" for me. Husband liked both but thought for your boys, the HMS would be something to consider. HML Belfast is close to tower of London, across the river.
Have a great time, we loved London and spent 7 nights. The hop on and off bus was a nice break for your feet and we actually used it as transportation some of the time to get from one museum to another. I found them to be pretty fast to get around town, and fun when a speaker was on board.

Greenwich: National Maritime museum, cutty shark are great for kids. We took a river thames boat ride roundtrip to get there. Seems I remember the London pass had a free day to ride the boat, check first.

We also had a similar schedule, and loved the full experience for the week. We went to the top thing to do in the am and our sound choice, and if we got to tired, then skipped the least important activity. Sent you a PM.

Please note that you are arriving on a Bank Holiday weekend, so travel may be disrupted, particularly rail services. All shops over 3,000 sq ft must close by law on Easter Sunday.

The previous poster is incorrect, as even now it's not dark by 4.30! By March, sunset will be c 6.30 and the clocks change over Easter, so it will be 7.30 pm.

Saturday is too full. Drop the Clink Museum. The Transport Museum is much more interesting. You have too many tours to keep most children interested. I too think that the War Rooms and the Globe Theatre are not the most interesting things in London for children. Why not take the boat to Greenwich for the day and look at the Royal Observatory and Greenwich Market?

London will be busy as all UK children are on school holidays.

If you have to take the HOHO bus rather than just use normal buses, do it earlier in your itinerary to get your bearings.

We spent a week in London last summer with our boys 10 and 12! :) We had a great time. Here is what we did, just for reference (I have an insane spreadsheet with lots more details, PM if you want it)

Arrive Saturday, 7/25, 12:20pm, unpack at flat, wander around a try not to fall asleep! :) Also went to Hamley's (bought boomerangs). (They were DYING by about 7pm, no way I would do a late London Eye this day.)

Sunday, Wembley Stadium tour, Arsenal soccer game

Monday, "War Day", Churchill War Rooms, Imperial War Museum

Tuesday, Westminster Abbey (they whined A LOT), horse guards at 11, hang in park playing boomerangs (and beer for mom!), lunch at St Martin in the fields crypt cafe and did the brass rubbings, pictures with the Lions, Natural History museum late afternoon

Wednesday, split up - one kid to Harry Potter (both he and dad LOVED it!), one kid and me to see Wicked (we loved it!) - and splitting up for the day allowed everyone to reset. Highly recommend!

Thursday - Tower of London at opening, Tower Bridge (definitely go to top!), Borough Market, London Eye (and we played a bit at the arcade there)

Friday - left for York.

We were pretty exhausted - if your boys are anything like mine, plan some park time with a ball or frisbee. I tried to go for two sites/things per day, one in the morning, one in afternoon. Usually we go back to the flat and take a little break mid-day, but this trip our flat was a little further out so we didn't, and man we were seriously exhausted. This was the hardest part of any of our trips - not sure if it was the ages, maybe too much packed in (though I thought I didn't), no mid-day break, or something else.... Our split day was the best ever. I pretty much planned things that they would like - with just a few exceptions - dragging them around to stuff only us adults were interested in just isn't worth it (IMO) - sometimes I do it, but it's more the exception. Not sure how much you have done big travel with them, and your kids may be different. I don't know how your kids do, but my kids would completely melt with so many walking tours. When we travel they say they like to "do stuff" and not "walk around and look at things".... me, I don't quite see the difference, but I have learned with them to try and find active things, at least sprinkled in. And lots of park time - I think their favorite thing may have been feeding the ducks at some park on the way to the history museum - they were completely fascinated by it, and I was like seriously?!!?! It was like they had never seen a duck before. I think it was mainly because they just got to run around! :) They had a great time at the playground outside the London eye as well. Good climbing structures for bigger kids, they made some friends and did races.

Anyway, have a great trip!!!!

Kim

You have a good plan and some good advice above. Having just made our first trip to London in December, I can tell you that you will not get to everything and a "we'll be back" attitude will help. I am certain the British Museum is fab, but we skipped it on trip #1 and will do it another time ourselves. One person's sacrilege is another person's salvation.

Don't hesitate to jettison something on the fly or to split up. Maybe you want to do the Globe and Dad and kids can go throw a frisbee in the park or even see a movie. Yes, they'll whine at Westminster Abbey, but it doesn't mean you shouldn't do it. They can use the audioguide and self-tour. For that matter, they might like the War Rooms and audio tour as they can kind of wander on their own.

As to your arrival day, see if you can get early check-in. Sometimes you can and a chance to unpack and shower can be hugely refreshing. After a walk and lunch, consider allowing everyone a 90-minute nap. Set an alarm and stick to the 90 minutes. While it may be hard to wake up the kids, it might just make it possible to get through your London Eye experience, and that is something they should love!

Laurel reminded me of something... first, I assume my kids did better or worse at sites given many different variables of that particular day... they did whine horribly at Westminster Abbey (though I am always amazed that later they remember some detail about or in this case I believe later that night my little one described it as "epic").

But when we went to the York Minster, they had this scavenger hunt thing on their website - find the Lions, or some such thing.... we sent the boys off on their own with the paper and camera to document, and they had a great hour, and we looked around in peace. It was a lot less crowded than Westminster Abbey - but just throwing it out to do some research up front (even if you have to make your own) and maybe give them some kind of task to do in places you think they may be bored.

And another note - I was looking back at our travel blog from last summer.... and I remembered points where we were terribly irritated with their behavior - we really roll with things pretty well in our family (we do have 2 very active boys close in age, I am sure you can relate) - like during this one walk along the river we were trying to get some pictures, and they kept making peace signs in them with their fingers and I was so mad. So then they started trying to make secret hidden ones.... Now when I look back, I am like, who cares? It would have been funny now to just have wild peace signs in the pictures, and we would remember that as the day the kids were being giant pains. :) Point is, in the moment it is hard to just chill about things, but try to (just like at home I guess, easier said than done). Oh and we also found them to be getting on each other the worst during tube rides, so we started riding each parent with a kid in a different car, and that solved that problem.

I still think you will never make that first night London Eye (especially with a 7:30am arrival)... that was one of the highlights of the week for my kids, so I really suggest moving that to another day. :) I have been 3 times to Europe - once arriving at 5pm, awesome. Once at 12:20pm, much harder. And when I was young arriving at 7am. Worst day of my life - I have never been so tired as I was that day. So put things lower priority that day just in case you just can't do it.

Have a great trip!! You are going to have an amazing time!