30 essential London tips in 9 minutes

welcome to London over the next minutes I'm going to give you 30 essential tips that you need to know before you come here and if it's your first time visiting London I have a special freebie for you so make sure you watch to the end of the video to get it okay let's [Music] go okay let's start with the basics despite being in Europe we do not accept Euros here we use Great British pounds so do not try to pay with Euros or American dollars only pounds are accepted we have pretty unique sockets here which

take plugs that look like this so if you're coming from almost any foreign country you're going to need an adapter to be able to use your own device Chargers in our sockets cars drive on the left side of the road here so be careful when you're Crossing and in fact you can look to the pavement and it'll tell you which side of the road you should look to before you the drinking age is 18 here in the UK but if you go out with your parents you can be 16 and have a drink most places

will not ask for ID to get in but it's a good idea to have one just in case and especially if you think you might end up at a club let's talk about money if somebody says a quid that is slang for 1B and if somebody says a Fiverr that means 5B and if they say a tener that's 10 lb obviously almost everywhere in London accepts credit and debit now and in fact loads of places are actually cashless so you could definitely get away with exploring London with having little to no cash on you but

if you do want cash exchange while you're back at home or use one of the many cash machines we have around the city a lot of them are free to use but your bank might charge you let's talk about tipping if you go to a restaurant and a server takes your order at the table you might notice on your bill that an optional service charge of 12 12% is added onto it this is your tip if no service charge is added onto your bill then you can give the staff 10 to 12% if you're happy

with the service by asking your server to charge the additional amount to your credit card or by leaving cash of course if you go to a pub or a bar and you order drinks or food even at the bar you do not have to tip of course you can if you want to no one's going to say no to some free money but it is definitely not expected oh taxi that was have been a good one sir can you just sit here for when taking a taxi it's polite to add a tip by rounding up

to the nearest pound you can do this easily by paying directly to the black cab driver or in an app like U for basically anything else tips are not expected of course if you want to give some extra money no one's going to say out and it will be appreciated but you're not expected to give anything unless you do one of those free walking tours they live off of those tips so for sure you got to tip on that one let's talk about Transportation the best app to figure out how to get from point A

to point B is City mapper Google Maps also works well too but if you want to know the cost of each option for your journey then city mapper is the way to go it covers bus tra TR bike taxi all the options you don't have to use an oyster card to pay for public transportation in London if you have a debit or credit card that has the contact list payment feature or you have Apple pay or Google pay you can use any of those methods to pay for transport in London if you want to grab

one of the iconic black calves like this one all you have to do is find one with the light on on the top put out your hand and it should stop for you otherwise you can use an app called get which works just like uber but only for black CS the cost of a tube ride in London depends on how many zones that you travel through but there's a daily cap depending on how many zones you travel through for the entire day if you stick to zones 1 and two which covers Central London the daily

cap is £770 which means once you've taken £770 worth of rides on the tube then all the rest of your two rides and your bus rides actually are completely free so make the most of it if you want to cycle around London we have a couple of different options the most popular are our sand Tander bikes which are our standard City bikes but there's also lots of electric bikes that you can get around the city which you can book through apps like uber this too much pressure this is a zebra Crossing or zebra Crossing and

if you see one of these it means you're crossing the street that you can just walk because pedestrians have priority and cars and traffic must stop for you that being said definitely still check both ways just in case they decide not to if you ever see a blue plaque on the side of a building that means that something important happened in that property for example the one behind me says that this was the home of John loie Bayard who first demonstrated the first ever television in this property in 1926 these blue plaques are all over

the city so if you see one make sure you run over to read it and see what happened in that place when you see street signs in London you might notice there are numbers and letters that are in red this is the postcode of the area the letters stand for north south east and west or C stands for Central and the number stands for how far away from the center of London that area or that street is so behind us this sign is wc2 which means West Central and two is obviously very close to the

center of London most intersections around the city will have a pedestrian light telling you if it's okay okay to go or not but if it's safe while it's red you're totally okay to go just please be very careful perfect cross yes Risk Takers if you see a station with this famous sign that means it's a tube station but if you see one with this sign it means that it's an overground train station and one with this sign means it's a bus station [Music] okay let's talk about accommodation the area you choose to stay in will

have an impact on your trip and I have guides that tell you about all of the areas of London but to give you a very Topline overview Central London is most touristy West London is the fanciest East London is the most eclectic North London has the best outdoor stuff and South London is the most underrated so make sure you know a bit about the area that you're planning to stay in before you book So Glamorous in padan s um hosels are the cheapest most sociable and probably least comfortable accommodation option when it comes to London

but we have them all over the city and they're great for anybody who wants to stay here on a budget especially for solo Travelers because you can book just a bed in a dormatory style room hotel prices can fluctuate here so if you see something that you like it's at a good price and there's flexible cancellation book it you can always cancel it if you find something better but generally speaking prices go up and availability goes down the longer that you wait to book a hotel here so jump on it of course there are last

minute deals we had but why risk it when it comes to Airbnb in London I don't recommend it for many reasons which I outlined in an article on my website which I've Linked In the description box but the biggest ones are that it's negatively affecting our housing market and also a lot of stuff can go wrong if you book an Airbnb here and so we have tons of great apart Hotel options which are great Alternatives and I have a very good list of them which again is linked in the description box of the video don't

leave London if you're here for less than 7 days it's going to take you at least 2 to 3 days if you want to do loads of the touristy stuff but you've only just scratched the surface and there's so much more to explore in this city so don't be tempted to leave stay here and explore more of it now if you want even more tips for your first visit to London then grab my free London 101 guide it has everything that you need to know before you come just click the link in the description box

or in the corner to get that completely for free but also I have tons of other YouTube videos about coming to London so watch one of those by clicking the boxes popping up around me good morning from London NOP that was a little bit weird good morning from London again