Tours in London

Buckingham Palace is only open when the queen is in her summer residence in Scotland. So you need to check those dates. August maybe a little early. We didn't use a tour guide because basically it is a walk through. A tour guide at Westminster would be a better choice because of the complex history. Steve's walking tours in his London book are good and obviously cheap. And London Walks are good, inexpensive small group tours all over London. Have done a number of them over the years.

See previous discussion on this subject --

https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/england/which-walking-tour-company

We did a London Walks tour of Westminster Abbey and were very happy. We did not have to wait in line to get tickets, or to enter; the guide gave us wonderful information on all the chapels and locations of famous people; and we did not get the sense of being lost in the crowd. I highly recommend London Walks for Westminster Abbey.

Thanks to everyone for the help! Do I need to get tickets in advance for the Westminster Abbey Walk or do we just show up at the meeting place... Also does it cost more on top of that to get into the Abbey or is that included in the walking tour?

Thanks again!

We did a London Walks tour of Westminster Abbey and were very happy.
We did not have to wait in line to get tickets, or to enter; the guide
gave us wonderful information on all the chapels and locations of
famous people; and we did not get the sense of being lost in the
crowd. I highly recommend London Walks for Westminster Abbey.

I also did the London Walks Westminster Abbey tour, in October 2015, and was very pleased with it. I got much more out of it than I would have gleaned from walking around with a recorded audiotour in my ear. Obviously, YMMV.

Thanks to everyone for the help! Do I need to get tickets in advance
for the Westminster Abbey Walk or do we just show up at the meeting
place... Also does it cost more on top of that to get into the Abbey
or is that included in the walking tour?

No advance booking with London Walks. You show up at the appointed meeting place and hand the total amount to the London Walks tour guide. In this case they will have (at least) two of them. The amount includes your guide's fee plus the cost of admission to the Abbey - but since it's a discounted group admission the total is still IMO a good deal.

What happened next with us - and I assume that's how they always do it - is that one of the guides scurried over to the Abbey to buy the tickets and the other one escorted the group at a less rapid pace the short distance across a few streets and around to the guided tour entrance of the Abbey. By the time we got there we got sorted into a couple of groups, the other guide appeared with our tix, and we went in. I don't recall going through a security check but I assume we did, and I also assume everyone will continue to do so these days.

We were divided up into I think two groups, one per guide, and I didn't feel that our group was too large. There was actually so much info imparted by our guide that I hope to do this tour again in October because I didn't retain enough of it. (Well, also I had a tricky hip joint that started paining me halfway through and that was distracting.)

Finally, at the end of the organized tour, our guide gave us a great tip. She pointed out where the loos were in the Abbey or thereabouts. More importantly, at least to me, she then told us about the Methodist Central Hall, a large building across the road from the Abbey. Where they have nice, clean loos, free of charge (!), in the basement. Also in the basement is the airy, large, clean and reasonably priced Wesley's Cafe. Hot meals and snacks, cafeteria style, I think even good free wifi. I had a very pleasant lunch there and intend to visit it again.

We had a totally different experience with London Walks and Westminster Abbey, perhaps because we were there at Christmas. To our delight, they got is in fast, bypassing the enormous line out front, but the Abbey was so crowded that we could not hear our guide for mush of it and finally abandoned the tour when she was in a small side chapel that we could not wedge ourselves into as there were too many people. We went back a few months later, found no line out front and went right in. We used the excellent audio guide provided by the site and learned much more.

I can heartily recommend London Walks for anything out-of-doors as long as the crowd doesn't get too big. Otherwise, we have self-toured all the big sites. St. Paul's has an outstanding audio guide and the Rick Steves app and book tours fill in the gaps nicely. We did take a couple of London Walks for fun and also greatly enjoyed the Beefeater Tour at the Tower of London although that crowd was huge, too. Luckily they have booming voices!

I did this tour too recently. My experience was the same as Suz. See website www.walks.com

They also do a good tour to the British Museum - a good overview, so you are not overwhelmed.

My husband and I bought tickets right outside of Buckingham Palace last August. The ticket office is easy to find. It is located to the left of the big Palace gate. You can't miss it. We made the reservation a few days in advance We totally enjoyed our visit. We also visited some of the carriages and saw a few horses, on the adjacent tour. At the end of the tour, you are routed through some beautiful gardens. It is about a 10 minute walk to leave the property. There is also a very nice gift shop, at the end of the tour.