Our Weekend in London; doing free activities ONLY!

Earlier in the summer, me and Sam spent an entire weekend in London. Sam had booked this weekend getaway as my birthday present, but by the time it came around, we both realized we didn’t want to spend much money as we were trying to save up spending money for the other trips we had planned for the rest of the year. (We are off to New York for a week in December and with the amount of stuff we have planned & things we want to buy when there, we need about a years salary :’) )

Sam had booked for us to spend 2 nights at the “London Marriott Hotel, Park Lane”. If I had known how posh this was going to be before we arrived, I wouldn’t have dressed in a baggy jumper and joggers. We were booked in from the Friday evening until the Sunday morning, and since we both had work on the Friday, Friday was our travelling day, and so comfy attire felt appropriate, that was until we pulled up outside the hotel.
For anyone looking to splash out and enjoy a couple of nights in London, I would 110% recommend this hotel. The rooms are insane, they have smart toilets in them that have heated seats, jet washes and speakers in the bathroom that connect to the TV, so you can still listen to your fave shows whilst getting ready/showering/toileting. (see some pics on the slideshow below)

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Saturday

Our Saturday started with breakfast in bed, I ordered poached eggs on a breakfast muffin with some hollondaise sauce, and Sam ordered a full English breakfast (as well as a hot cross bun on the side). This was the perfect start to the day  and set us up for what ended up being an extremely busy one. As I mentioned above, we had decided to make it a cheap weekend, and so before leaving on Friday, we sat and planned our couple of days and filled it with only free activities. So the only thing we actually spent money on the entire weekend was food, winning!

After breakfast, we headed out to explore for the day. We had set the destination on our maps as the museums (Science Museum & Natural History Museum) and the 35 minute walk there was so nice through Hyde Park. The weather was lush, blue skies and really warm and so there were so many people strolling about, taking paddle boats out on the water and picnicking on the grass.

Both of the museums are completely free to get into, you do get the opportunity to donate money to help fund their amazing work, which a lot of people do (and I actually did, I donated a fiver to each museum). We spent time in both museums as they are right next to each other and they were both so interesting. They are such a fun thing to do when in London, they don’t take that long to walk around and considering they are free to get in too, there’s no reason not to add them into your itinerary.

We then changed the destination in our maps to Buckingham Palace. We were basically acting as tourists in our own capital city, and it was really fun. It was a long walk to Buckingham Palace, and we stopped for lunch on the way, where I had to try one of London’s famous Vegan Meals, and it didn’t disappoint.

We couldn’t believe how busy it was outside Buckingham Palace. We could barely get close to the gates to see inside the courtyard but when we arrived the Palace Guards were doing one of their marching displays which was spectacular to see. The area surrounding the palace is so pretty and picturesque, flower displays everywhere, statures, fountains and golden gates. I was snapping so many pictures all over the place because I just found everything so stunning.

We then headed towards Big Ben and the London Eye, we wanted to go and see them before heading back to our hotel, because at this point we were knackered and Sam was very keen to get back and watch the World Cup (football widow right here).

We started the hour walk back to our hotel, and stopped to pick up some nibbly bits and a McDonald’s (London on a budget means no fancy meals out). We spent the rest of the night chilling in our hotel, enjoying the room and watching the World Cup.

Sunday

We had to be checked out by 10am on the Sunday, but we didn’t waste the morning. Before heading home we made our way to to Sky Garden. This is also free to get into, you can pay to have breakfast or a meal in there if you’d like, but it’s also just a really nice place to visit, a garden, at the top of a skyscraper, and it has an amazing view out over the whole of London.

After the Sky Garden, we headed on the 2 hour drive home to get stuff sorted for the week ahead.
I hope this blog post can make people see that you can easily visit a city and take part in a tonne of fun-filled free activities and hardly have to spend a penny. It is perfect for people who are trying to save/budget but still want to go out and see some amazing places. We managed to:

• Visit the Science and Natural History Museum
• Visit Buckingham Palace
• Visit the London Eye, Big Ben & Westminster Abbey
• See the Tower of London
• Stroll through Hyde Park
• Visit the Sky Bar

All free activities, that filled up our entire weekend and provided us with some incredible memories.

I hope you guys enjoyed this blog post. Please leave it a like a comment below, I love to read all your comments.

Thanks for reading,

Lizzie x