10 Reasons to Follow an Itinerary For Your First Days in London

If it’s your first time visiting London, you’ll likely be thinking about following a pre-planned itinerary for your first few days here. We highly recommend doing so, for the following reasons.

1. It saves you days of research time

Whenever we are planning a personal trip, we spend a loooot of time planning our itinerary… DAYS is not an exaggeration, and we usually miss on some amazing stuff because, well, we aren’t locals, so we usually miss those hidden gems.

If you don’t have that kind of time (or that just sounds like your worst nightmare) getting a pre-made itinerary like one of our London Itineraries is fantastic option for you, and will eliminate all of that time you would have had to spend researching attractions and food spots, finding ones you think you’d like, and then figuring out how to piece them together based on how close together they are.

2. Allows you some flexibility

Having a pre-planned itinerary might sounds quite restricting, but if you’re following a detailed one like one of our London Itineraries, you’ll actually have quite a bit of flexibility built in. Because you’ll have multiple options for sights to see and where to eat, you can choose which suits your fancy at the moment, and can accommodate for unplanned closures and the like.

3. Provides you with local knowledge

We definitely can’t say this for the majority of “London Itineraries” that you find online because they’re often written by people who visited London for, like, a week, and then put together an “itinerary” on their blog.

If you follow an itinerary that’s based off of knowledge from someone who actually lives in London and knows it well, you’ll be better off, as you’ll have access to “on the ground” information that will be really helpful as you’re exploring. Our London Itineraries have loads of public toilets marked off on the digital map… we consider ourselves public toilet experts! Gross but true 😉

Also, only locals will know things like that just around the corner from Leicester Square, London’s most touristy square, is a hidden rooftop restaurant and bar with amazing views of the London Eye and the London skyline, and it’s not even that pricy of a spot.

If you’re keen to find little hidden gems like that for your London trip, have a watch of the below guide…

 

4. Reduces time wasted on transportation

London is a huuuuuuuuuge city and especially if you’re looking to go off the beaten path, you could end up spending a couple of hours a day on public transportation if you aren’t familiar with the distance between each of London’s neighbourhoods.

By following an itinerary that has been designed to limit the need for public transportation, or even not need it at all, you’ll spend less time being squashed on the tube and more time exploring above-ground.

Also if you need help with public transportation, here are the top things you need to know before you hop on the underground or a bus…

 

5. Prevents you from getting lost

If you’re following an itinerary with a digital map on your phone, it will be hard to get super lost. Even if you veer off the general track of our itinerary, you can whip out your phone and get walking directions back to the spot you want to be in.

Each of our London Itineraries includes a digital map for your phone!

6. Reduces clashing when traveling as a group

If there’s a few of you traveling together, you’re bound to have different tastes, possibly be different ages, and have a bucket-full of recommendations that you’ve all brought to the table and want to check out. It’s time consuming, and stressful, to sift through everyone’s ideas of what they’d like to do, and put together a cohesive itinerary that everyone will agree on.

Instead, with a little flexibility from everyone in the group, it’s easier to just say “let’s follow this itinerary” and stick to it. You’ll find that less choice is more, and that choosing what to do from a very curated list that’s already taken into account travel time will be a lifesaver.

7. Ensures you’ll make the most of your time

Even the type of travellers who like to go with the flow and not over plan usually worry about not making the most out of their trip. It makes sense– you’ve likely spent a lot of money to get to London, so you want to make sure you experience as many of the best bits as possible.

Following a pre-planned itinerary can help you do that, but also in the most efficient way (if it was made with efficiency in mind.)

Image Courtesy of F1 Arcade

8. Reduces overwhelm

London has hundreds of tourist attractions, thousands of restaurants, and covers 1,572 sq.km, or 606 sq. miles…WOAH. If you’ve not planned out what you want to do and see before you arrive, you might hop off the plane and immediately be incredibly overwhelmed.

Less choice is always easier to handle, and will reduce that overwhelm, and a detailed itinerary will do that just that.

9. Helps you get acquainted with the city

The first few days of being in London has a bit of a learning curve to it. You’ll be figuring out how to use the transportation system, and picking up cultural differences to your home country, in the least. Following a pre-planned itinerary will take out the guesswork out of “where do I go? What do I see?” as you’re getting to know how everything in London works. It’s kind of like learning on the job!

10. It’s like getting the answers to the test ahead of time

Any good, locally-made, detailed London itinerary will essentially be like getting handed the answers to a big test you’re about to take. There’s no extra work to be done, you just read through it, add a guidance map to your phone, and get going. Simple.

Our London Itineraries do everything we talked about in this article, and includes a 100-200+ page PDF guide detailing your options for the itinerary, as well as local knowledge like where to find free public toilets and what dish to order at a certain restaurant. It also includes an interactive digital map that you add to your phone that you can follow each day, step by step, making it super simple to follow. Plus for 2024 we have added Notion templates, with a must-dos database, a checklist and a booking and tickets tracker.

More tips for your London trip:

• 5 Common Mistakes Tourists Make in Their First Three Days in London
• 5 Reasons Not to Use a Free London Itinerary
• How to Prepare for your First 3 Days in London

Pin this to your London board…