London! Fascinating name! Amazing place! In need of lot of exclamation marks to express my excitement and the beauty of this place!!! I will try to remember and write important details of my trip so that the reader could find it helpful. After coming back from London, I am so happy and full of energy that I forgot the painful planning process. Like every other trip, this needed planning and we had a solid eight days plan made about a month ago. This is not enough! The bottle neck is the UK Visa. It is very likely to have a bad experience. The entire process is frustrating. It is like a black hole, just send your documents and wait for it to know about the decision. There is no online tracking system for it. Even their paid email and call service does not provide any useful information. For about 10$, you will just get a standard email response. Waiting for your passport and hoping for a positive decision is the only way. I tracked my passport via UPS mail about every minute which was frustrating. So, I got my visa after fifteen working days. This spoiled my plan and reduced to four days trip. Four days!!! It is enough to explore London. With all new enthusiasm, I booked the same day flight ticket and was off for the dream place. Not caring about money and ignoring the jet lag, I just wanted to explore the place to the fullest.

The tickets to Gatwik airport is cheaper than Heathrow airport. I reached Gatwik at around 3 pm. Underground railway, thames link etc.. are the best means of transport. So, getting the Oyster card should always be the first thing to do. It allows you to go from anywhere to anywhere in london 1-6 zones. It is cheaper than (relatively) the one way ticket or day ticket. You can also get the curency exchanged at the airport but you can always find better rates in the city. My journey started from LAX airport, so few details may or may not be helpful. I had to encounter eight hours of jet lag. Airbnb may seem cheaper but with good website hunt you could find a reasonable deal in even a 4-star hotel like Sheraton. I had a good dinner and sleep to prepare myself for tomorrow.

One major underground station’s name which you would like to remember is Paddington station. All other stations are easily accessible from here. We left in the morning around 10 am. The following map is very useful for a one day amazing site-seeing in London. This roundabout will cover the famous places which everyone recommends.

It is not a good idea to take the Big bus or hop on hop off bus for the tour as it will be costly and will give you only half of the london experience. Try to take underground trains to hop on and hop off at different destination.