London for less

“How can you visit London cheaply? It’s impossible! Everything is expensive,” declares John from south-west England. We meet him in the British Museum cafe, where he has just paid ￡1.65 for a mug of tea. He is visiting a friend in London and cannot believe the prices here. Like many museums in the capital, the British Museum is free—but eating and drinking certainly are not. “You have to have deep pockets,” John warns, adding only half-jokingly, “I have to go home now. I can’t afford to stay on in London.”

London is Europe’s most expensive city, but bargains are easy to find if you know where to look. Guidebooks and specialist websites offer plenty of information for budget travel. The key to cost saving is preparation and information. At a Starbucks in the City, Gerald Kern, a business student from Austria, is studying his travel guide. “When I first looked for a room, it was terrible—around ￡80 a night,” he says. In the end, Gerald found a small room at a hotel in King’s Cross for ￡36. Like many people, he booked online to get the best deal. He could have paid ten pounds less, but that would have meant sharing a dorm with five other people.

London food prices were also what Gerald had expected. “Last night, I went to a restaurant in Soho—a nice place, but nothing special,” he says. “I had a pizza and two small beers for ￡17. That’s pretty expensive, probably just because it was Soho.” However, Soho also offers low-cost buffet meals for as little as ￡5.

A common problem is that visitors go straight to the well-known spots around Covent Garden, Leicester Square and Piccadilly. Few people make the effort to visit the rest of the city, says Garth Jackson, 27, who runs St Christopher’s Inn, a hostel in Borough High Road. “London is a fantastic city, but if you head for the tourist areas, you’re always going to get ripped off,” he says. “London can be cheap if you look in the right places. For example, if you go to Brick Lane or Angel or to Chinatown and look about, you can find cheap eats.”

London’s diversity certainly helps the traveller who wants to save money. Many members of ethnic minority groups live on below-average incomes and need to eat, drink and dress inexpensively.

Lisa Kirby, a 20-year-old backpacker from Melbourne, for example, has developed her own strategy. She recommends sandwich lunches (England is, after all, the home of the sandwich) and eats evening meals at the hostel (only ￡3.50 for guests). She shops for clothes at low-cost designer outlets like Topshop in Oxford Street. Other travelers at the hostel give her even more ideas. “Everybody has tips,” she says.

Lisa is one of more than 16 million visitors to London every year. But what about people who live in London? Matt Lary, 26, is a social worker who lives in Wood Green, north London, with his girlfriend Gen (Genevieve) Clemens, 25. Matt was able to buy their small flat only under a shared-ownership scheme for key workers. The average house in London currently costs around ￡270,000, which is far too much for most first-time buyers. After housing, travel is the single biggest cost for Londoners, especially during peak hours. Although Gen and Matt live only a minute away from an Underground station, Gen takes the bus to work in central London, and Matt uses his bike. Since the 7/7 bombings, bike sales in the city have risen by a third.

Like most Londoners, Matt and Gen shop, meet their friends and go to restaurants in their own borough. “We can’t really afford to go into central London,” says Matt. Instead, they enjoy meals at a vegetarian restaurant in Wood Green market for ￡3 and have their cinema evenings on Tuesdays, when films at the local multiplex cost ￡2 less. Many London reductions and free events are available in the middle of the week. Going out then is one of the best ways to save money.

The pair of jeans Matt is wearing cost him just ￡3 from a Primark sale. He paid only ￡6 for his haircut at Mr. Topper’s, a cheap and cheerful chain of barbers. (Gen, as a woman, had to pay ￡10.) For Matt, saving money in London clearly has an element of fun and challenge to it. Visitors can follow his example. London is always an enriching experience. You don’t have to be rich to enjoy a visit.