Hi I am hoping someone can give me some suggestions regarding transportation and a pass to help see the sites of London on a budget. We are staying in a BnB in East Finchley and will travel nto the city daily by tube.
Thanks Carol
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London, United Kingdom
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Your basic options are to either charge an Oyster card and have money taken off it as you travel, or to use Travelcards. The Oyster card has a ceiling that means that you should not be charged more in one day than the price of a Travelcard. Travelcards can be purchased for each day or for a week. If you are staying for five days or more a weekly Travelcard will be cheaper than getting a new one each day. Another advantage of a weekly Travelcard is that if you are travelling before 0930 on Mon-Fri the price of a daily Travelcard or the Oyster daily ceiling is higher, but you don't pay this penalty with a weekly Travelcard. East Finchley is in Zone 3 so you will need a Zone 1-3 Travelcard.
If you buy a weekly Travelcard at a London Underground station you will receive it on an Oyster card and you can additionally put money on it to pay extra if you need to travel outside Zone 3. (The most likely places you might want to visit that are outside Zone 3 are Hampton Court Palace and the Royal Air Force Museums at Hendon.)
Another issue is that if you purchase your daily or weekly Travelcards at a national railway station (not an underground station) you can get two entries for the price of one at many London attractions - see http://www.daysoutguide.co.uk/ for details. Unfortunately if you are trying to do this with a daily Travelcard there aren't really any national railway stations in easy reach of East Finchley. But if you get a weekly Travelcard it's worth buying it at one of the central London stations so you can do this.