London is one of the greatest cities on earth, and to explore it correctly, you deserve wayyyy better than using some random free itinerary that someone on the internet (who probably only visited London once) has knocked out in 20 minutes using ChatGPT.
So, if you’re deep in trip-planning mode, here are 10 reasons not to just grab the first free itinerary you find online, and what you should do instead.
They’re often written by visitors, not a Londoner
When I’m on Tiktok or IG reels, I quite often see itineraries like “48 hours in London” or “What to do in London in 3 Days”, and when I look into who’s written them, it’s often by someone who visited London once, for a few days, and it’s the itinerary they happened to somewhat follow.
The problem with that is that visitors who only spend a few days in London don’t know the ins and outs of the city like locals do. A local can tell you how to avoid Oxford Street (which gets STUPID busy), when you’ll need some change for a public toilet, why not to stay in an Airbnb and which location of a restaurant has a better vegetarian offering.
I’ve lived in London for many years, so I know all of the small details that visitors often glance over, and I pass this knowledge along to our community, and have done so in our London Itineraries.
They’re generic
Honestly… you get what you pay for. Many free itineraries are pretty basic and just walk you through some of the most “obvious” London sights, with a plan that could have been made by someone who’s not actually been to London but is just decent at operating Google Maps…
A lot of itinerary content online is now written by AI
This has become a big issue, and I’ll to be upfront about it. A huge amount of travel content you’ll find online these days has been generated by AI. It’s fast to produce, which is exactly why so many websites are using it, but AI-written itineraries are just built from existing content on the internet, not from real experience.
That means it can recommend restaurants that have closed, suggest a walking route that makes no geographical sense, or give you “insider tips” that are anything but. AI hasn’t walked the streets us locals have, nor eaten in the restaurants, or figured out that a certain Tube station gets absolutely gridlocked on a Saturday afternoon.
Every itinerary on our Love and London shop is written by us, based on real, insider, local experience.
A free London itinerary doesn’t account for different tastes and budgets
Free itineraries are very linear, they don’t account for the fact that you can’t eat gluten, are on a budget, or don’t like museums. How enjoyable is it to follow a free London itinerary that takes you to the National Gallery for three hours if you hate art? Even if the itinerary didn’t cost you anything, you’ll still spend loads of time doing research to fill in the blanks of the things you don’t want to do, see or eat.
I did the opposite with our London Itineraries; from the start, I created them with alternatives so that people with different tastes, budgets and desired travel paces could all use them to the fullest.
You’re not getting a local experience
If you’re keen to experience the more local side of London, free online itineraries might not help with that. Quite often, they recommend a ton of major sights to see, without anything unique, and they also don’t provide locally-loved food options.
This is a big point… if you want to eat well when you’re exploring London, you need to know of places to go ahead of time when you’re in very “touristy” areas like Westminster, Tower Hill, and Leicester Square just to name a few. Those areas are chock-full of chain restaurants that are either overpriced or serve terrible food (or both).
In between seeing some of our London’s most loved sights, I’ve recommended smaller, locally-loved things to do, as well as provided tons of great, hidden-gem food options in our London Itineraries.
They’re hard to use when on-the-go
A free London itinerary is, well, ONLINE, so it’ll stay in your browser. So you either have to save the webpage to your phone, or write down the recommended itinerary, in order to follow it when you’re actually in London. The problem is getting from place to place. It will take you quite some time to open Google Maps and figure out how to get to each place on the list. Then you have to get there, and that could take ages if the writer didn’t account for travel time between each spot.
Ideally you want to use an itinerary that has a digital map, or you can make one yourself. That way you can easily navigate from one spot to the next with just your phone, and if you decide to go off the general path a bit, you can easily get back to where you need to be.
Our London Itineraries all have a Digital Map included, which helps you follow the itinerary each day, plus also shows you which of my recommended food spots are near to you when your tummy starts to rumble.
They don’t account for the best day and time to visit each attraction
Turning up to the Tower of London on a sunny Saturday during half-term when all the kids are off from school, will be a very different experience to visiting on a quiet Tuesday morning during winter. Timing matters, not just for crowds, but for cost, atmosphere, and how much you’ll actually enjoy yourself. Free itineraries don’t account for this, and tend to offer a “one-size-fits-all’ approach, but that’s not real life.
Our London Itineraries go beyond the basic “avoid weekends” advice and break down the best days to tackle each route. That’s because some markets are closed on certain days, come museums are more busy during certain times and Mondays are a day when you’ll find a lot of restaurants are shut, so we make sure you know all that before you set off for the day.
They don’t tell you what needs to be booked in advance and what doesn’t
Some London attractions will sell out weeks ahead (Sky Garden, we’re looking at you), whereas others are happy to let you pay at the door. Free itineraries won’t really specify the details of this, but to avoid the sheer disappointment rocking up to a sight and finding out you can’t get in, we created a Bookings & Tickets Tracker (included in our London Itineraries). It pulls everything together in one place to help you keep tabs on exactly what needs advance booking and what you can leave. It also includes direct links to book, and a space to track what you’ve already sorted, so you don’t get confused.
You won’t get a guide of all the closest toilets to each attraction
This sounds unglamorous and it is. But nothing derails a day of sightseeing quite like desperately searching for a public loo in central London, only to discover the nearest one costs 50p, has a queue, or closed in 2019.
Unlike a free itinerary, our London Itineraries map out the best toilet stops along all our daily routes because knowing where they are before you need them can be such a small detail that actually makes a surprisingly large difference to your day, especially if you have young kids.
They won’t help you work out whether an attractions pass is actually worth it
The maths on London attractions passes sounds simple: pay one price, see everything. In practice, it’s rarely that straightforward. Whether the London Pass saves you money depends entirely on which attractions you actually want to visit, how many days you have, and whether you’re realistically going to go to everything included. Plus, there’s a bunch of places you may still have to pay extra for if they’re not included, which defeats the purpose. To help work out what’s right for your trip and your needs, we’ve built a calculator (that comes included with all our London Itineraries) that does the number-crunching for you, so you can make the call in minutes rather than spend an afternoon down a spreadsheet rabbit hole.
First time in London? If you want to skip the research rabbit hole, our London Starter Pack has everything you need to plan your first trip in one place, including your first three days in the city sorted, as well as how to navigate public transport, organise your budget and decide what to pack.
Here are some more tips to help you with your first few days in London:
