London Tour

[nancy anne]

Has anyone ever done a Grayline tour, specifically the one that is called the Best of London? It is about 9 hours long and includes the London Eye and a boat ride on the Thames? I was thinking it would be a good overview of the city when we only have 2 days there. Anyone done something similar?

 

Nancy

[handfordr]

In London, Grayline Tours are operated as/by Golden Tours and are one of the big 3 traditional guided tour operators in London. They are a professional company and use blue badge guides who are independent of Golden Tours. Of this type of tour Golden Tours are as good as any.

In terms of numbers the vast majority of visitors would use one of the hop on, hop off operators in preference to the traditional guided tour for the purposes of orientation. You will see much more of the sights of London using either the Original London Tour or the Big Bus tours that covers everything this tour covers and much, much more at a fraction of the price.

This particular tour is a bit of a tourist cliche of a tour. Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace is for most people an anti-climax, lunch at a 'traditional Englsih Pub' has to be put in the context of being a pub on the tourist curcuit, Covent Garden in my opinion is best visited in the evening not during the day. If you put great value on the services of a guide with you all day in a large group then go for it, otherwise I'd personally go for the HO-HO bus, do an orientation curcuit of London in the morning seeing everything that is worthwhile and then visit the things personally of interest to you in the afternoon and perhaps do the river trip included in the HO-HO bus too.

Given your lack of time you can 'do' the London Eye and Covent Garden in the evening if these are attractive to you.