from tent to Turkey - the Eclipse experience

Beating London's high costs - United Kingdom - Europe - World - Travel

The equivalent of more than $5 for a Tube ride, $65 for lunch and $4.50 for a cup of coffee - London's costs can take your breath away.

How can tourists survive? Here are five ways to save:

Give yourself a guided tour around London by spending an afternoon riding the London buses; it's one of the cheap thrills of the city. Ride for a whole day for £3 ($7), getting on and off as much as you'd like.

One suggested route? Take the No 94 bus from Picadilly Circus to Notting Hill Gate. It passes Soho, Oxford Street, Bond Street, Hyde Park Corner, Hyde Park and Notting Hill.

You also can buy a seven-day pass for unlimited access to the tube and buses in central London for £18.50 ($43.55); visit http://www.londontransport.co.uk.

Buy your lunch at Boots, the chemists. Don't laugh. It has a selection of cold sandwiches that cost about $5.90; a soft drinks is about $3.25. That's cheap!

The Tesco supermarket also has food.

Avoid hotel room service or fancy-looking restaurants for lunch; you'll be broke before dinner.

For dinner, think ethnic. Eat your fill for less at street markets or good Indian restaurants, such as Spice of India (12 Bathurst St, Tube stop Lancaster Gate). Dinner is about $39.25.

Get into sold-out shows by waiting in the returns line the night of the performance. You queue up about an hour before the show at the theatre. The box office sells no-show tickets to as many people as possible 15 minutes before curtain time.

You also can get half-price theatre tickets for some shows on the day of performances by going in person to the TKTS booth in Leicester Square.

At any rate, avoid scalpers; buy regular-priced tickets in advance in Australia at http://www.keithprowse.com.au (call 07-3239-5999 or 1300-730-023).

.Access the Internet at a cafe, not in your hotel room unless it's free. Many London hotels charge as much as $26 a day for Web access (they also may charge $6 and up just for using the telephone in your room ).

Find an Internet cafe - London has hundreds - where you can pay as little as $2.60 an hour and mingle with the locals.

. If you want to pay a reasonable price for a hotel - say, not more than $180 a night - you'll have to find small bed-and-breakfast places and sacrifice luxury. In exchange, you avoid feeling ripped off by overpriced hotel rooms you probably won't even spend much time in.

For example, the Garden Court Hotel is a small place near Hyde Park and Paddington Station with modest but clean rooms. For £58 ($136) a night single, you get a plainish tiny room with bath and a mini-TV, breakfast and use of a charming communal library and backyard patio; it's like staying at someone's house.

No air conditioning, but London usually doesn't need it. Visit http://www.gardencourthotel.co.uk

Posted by Spidey at 8:01 AM