Getting around in London questions

If you are travelling for six days then I would suggest getting a seven-day Travelcard each. This will be cheaper than six individual day maximum charges on Oyster, and has the advantage of being able to start travel before 0930 on Mon-Fri without paying an extra "peak" charge.

Also, do you have any children with you?

No Children travelling with us. Okay. Just this morning I'm reading about the RailPass and they also offer the London Pass with them. Not sure if it's a "deal" or not. But the London Pass offers Unlimited travel on Tube, and buses, etc.

The London Pass costs a fortune, and it is very hard to make it pay off (there's only 24 hours in a day, so that long list of "included" attractions is meaningless). I just looked at the price of the London Pass Plus Travel - what a rip off! The transit add-on is double the price of the 7 Day Travelcard Philip quite correctly told you to get. The reason is that the London Pass Plus Travel includes a Travelcard for zones 1-6, and you only need zones 1-2. You can get your 7 day Travelcard on an Oyster or on paper. If you are going to take advantage of 2 for 1 offers from Days Out, you will need a paper Travelcard with a National Rail logo, which must be purchased at a rail station (not a tube station). Search for more information on this (there's lots here and on other websites about the 2-4-1 deal). This will save you a fortune compared with the London Pass.

Remember when thinking about any passes in London, that the huge great majority of museums in London are completely free (donations gratefully accepted). 5 days will have you seeing plenty of things - a really good taste of what London can offer. Rather than a "hop on hop off" bus if you have a 7 day Season Ticket - Travelcard you can pop on and pop off all the time as you wish on all the red buses and the Underground. There is a special "tourist bus map" in section 6 of the excellent official Visitor Guide which is at http://www.tfl.gov.uk/assets/downloads/visitor-guide.pdf

My contrarian opinion: The fare rules and permutations for London transport are exceeded only by the fair rules for the UK's railways. It all depends on where you go and when you go, and maybe the position of the Moon in the night sky on the day you go. It's arcane. For anyone seeing the usual sights in London, either a Travelcard or an Oyster Card will be fine. One may save a few dollars, but it's tough to say which one. Don't stress out about it. When you leave for Paris, be sure to get to the station in time to clear passport control, etc.

Thanks everyone. Great advice. i think I will look into the Travel card more. That sounds good. Is the link that Nigel posted the correct link to buy the Travel Card. When I googled Travelcard...there were lots of different sites. I want to go to the correct one. Also is there National Rail available with this card. Thought I read that somewhere. Thanks

The last time we were there we had the Travelcard and used it the entire time. Just run it through the card reader on the bus or at the Tube station and take the Tube or buses at will. The Tube is faster, but the buses are more scenic and well worth figuring out. After a few days, we took the buses whenever we could. It's just such a fascinating town to see. The Sightseeing buses (i.e. Original London Sightseeing Tour or the Big Bus tours) that advertise "hop on/hop off" aren't really for transportation. They have tour guides or audio guides that talk about the sights as the bus drives around London. The Travelcard doesn't work for that nor does the Oyster card as far as I know. You buy a pass good for a day. We also tried to figure out which would be a better deal, but it all depends on how much you use it. (We popped for the London Pass, too, and probably got our money's worth but we worked at it. Our days were very full.)

tfl.gov.uk is the official site. There may be good information on tourist information sites but some of them are reselling cards at inflated prices. There's no need to buy one before you arrive in London. Yes, Travelcards do cover National Rail, but the few attractions that are best served by rail are out in the suburbs, in the outer zones. Unless you're visiting many suburban attractions, it will be cheaper to get a central area weekly Travelcard and use Oyster pay-as-you-go for the odd trip further out.

We have been to London four years in a row. We have stayed there anywhere from 10 days to two weeks each. We have always gotten just the Oyster card. If we ended up going outside of our zone, we just added on to our Oyster cards, as we entered for our return trip. This past July we ended up using the two level buses more than the Tube. double decker buses are included with your Oyster card. The transportation in England is fantastic.

We were there for 4.5 days including flights in May. We got a 3 day London pass without transportation on sale. and Oyster cards when we got there loaded with 7 days unlimited zone 1-2. At the end of London we saved tons of GBP.
Skipped tons of lines and saved lots of time. But we are young 26-32, fit couple. The way we travel, usually don't work for most others.

The Hop-on, Hop-off buses are included with your Oyster card. London buses, usually red, are included on Oyster Cards, along with the Croydon Tram and the Underground. What are generally referred to here as Hop On Hop Off are private open top tour buses with either live or recorded commentary. They are privately run and not included in the Oyster Card. They must be paid for separately. They are expensive.

Thanks everyone. I haven't decided if we want to do one of the Sightseeing Hop on Hop off buses yet. I'm kind of thinking that we could just do it ourselves with the London Buses. Ok, I do not want to ask the same questions but I'm still not clear on this... The Oyster as I read it is a card you pay for up front and you secureit with your credit card & it will add on each time you use the bus/tube/whatever, when swiped as you enter transport. correct? The Travelcard you pay for once and have unlimited transport. correct?
I don't need both do I? We arrive at Kings Cross and I want to have transportaton cards ready to go and head off to our accomadations. Just booked it, close to the Victoria station area. Once there we want to easily access the tube and buses to get around. Thanks again.

Shelley: That is not how the Oyster Card works. You use your credit card to add a fixed amount to the card. Every time you use the card the cost of the trip will be subtracted from the Oyster Card. However, once you exceed a daily amount, which I think is slightly more than the Travel Card daily amount, it will stop deducting from the card. When you run low on the Oyster Card you go to a booth or to a self-service kiosk to have funds added to the card; there is no automatic deduction from a credit card. Bottom line: if you will be using the Tube and bus on a frequent, daily basis the Travel Card is what you want. However, if there will be days when you don't do much travelling the Oyster Card will save you money since you will not be paying a fee for transportation services that you do not use.

A bit more on Oysters and Travelcards. First - when somebody tells you that when you go into a Fish and Chips shop and show them your Oyster Card you can have a free portion of oysters - that is not true ... LOL. That used to be a tourist rumour when Oysters first were released on the public. ;-} Now back to the issues at hand, You can feed an Oyster a credit card, true; but you can also feed it cash, either at a window or at a machine. You load money on and then every time you tap in and tap out the appropriate fare is deleted from the card. If you use the Oyster, every time you enter a bus you "tap" the card onto a reader. If you use the Underground you "tap in" as you go through the barriers - look for the yellow circle. As you are leaving the Underground you "tap out". For the DLR you also have to tap in and out but the readers are in different places and there are no barriers. Trains are different but similar. If you don't use an Oyster card for some time the money remains. As long as there is sufficient credit you can go anywhere in the system. If you use the Oyster sufficiently in one day it maxes out at the level of or just below that of the appropriate Travelcard. Travelcards are only valid within the purchased zones. They are only valid to the end of service for the purchased day or week regardless of when it is first used. If you buy a Day Travelcard at 11pm it will only be valid until 1am, not into the next day. A 7 day Travelcard is less money than 7 maximums on an Oyster. Only a paper Travelcard from a rail station can be used as train ticket to qualify for the 2 for 1 program, not an Oyster nor a paper Travelcard from other than a train station.

Belated response to a perennial question: Just get an Oyster Card. The intricacies of fares on London transport are infamous, and fill a very, very thick book. Compared to the cost of travel to London from Alberta, the price difference between an Oyster Card and a Travelcard is tiny. Which will be cheaper depends on all kinds of variables, few of which you are likely to know in advance. The Oyster is dead simple to use. It's been my observation that it is very popular with London commuters. So, rather than get a headache thinking about it, I just buy an Oyster Card the morning after my arrival. You can do that at any Tube station with actual human beings behind a ticket window.