(upbeat music) - Hello, and welcome to another episode of All The Hacks, a show about upgrading your life, money, and travel. If you're new here, I'm your host, Chris Hutchins, and one of the areas I love optimizing the most is travel. I've been to 60 plus countries, and on every trip, I love meeting locals, trying to understand their culture, having authentic experiences, and most of all, I love finding a way to eat all the best foods a place has to offer.

So I thought it'd be fun to introduce a new type of episode where I bring in a local expert in another country to share all the hacks for visiting their city. I was originally gonna start with Japan because it just opened, I have the perfect person in mind, and it's probably my favorite travel destination in the world but that episode will be next because after my episode with Bill Perkins, which is amazing if you haven't checked it out, I started talking with Amy about how we could start optimizing for more net fulfillment in our lives.

And so we actually decided to book a last minute trip to London on less than two weeks notice and ended up getting a ridiculous deal with points, which I will talk about at the end of this episode. So with a trip to London on the horizon, I reached out to Jessica Dante, who not only has been living there for almost a decade, but runs the Love in London YouTube channel, which has over 20 million views and she knows so much about London.

We're gonna get into why you should visit, what you should do, what mistakes to avoid, and get all of Jess's secret spots to visit to have an incredible trip. And then after talking to Jess, I'm gonna break down exactly how I booked my trip and give you an overview of the best way you can be using your points and your miles and even scoring some deals on a trip to London.

So let's get into it right after this. Jess, thank you for joining the first travel destination episode of All The Hacks. - Amazing, thanks for having me. Really happy that London is the first, I'm not gonna lie. I think I'm a little biased, but I think it's maybe the best in my opinion.

Depends on who you ask. - It's not just you. So someone shared me this list from afar, the website and magazine afar. There was the 10 best cities and London was number one. And there was another study on the best cities and London was number one. It just came out also for 2023.

And then I looked at travel and leisures, best destinations for 2023 and London's on that list. So I was like, wow, so London's the number one city. It wasn't even just to live or to travel. It was just the number one city on two lists. So I think I wanna ask you, why do you love London?

What is it about London that makes it such an amazing city? - Oh my gosh, well, there's so many things, but I think a couple of the top things are, I love how diverse that the city is. So that goes from the people that live here to the architecture, to the types of cuisines that you can try here.

You just meet so many different people with so many different backgrounds. You can eat so much amazing food and you can experience so many different things, no matter what your interest is or what your budget is. There's just basically something for everyone, whether you live here or you just come to visit.

So I love that. And as someone who works telling people what to do in London, I don't wanna ever get bored and I never will because there's so much to experience. It's always changing too. So I'm gonna be here for like 30 years and there's still gonna be more for me to check out.

And I'll be like, I haven't been there yet. Gotta go check that out and see if it's good or not. - Is there something that sets it apart from other major metros that of course have diversity, have lots of restaurants, have lots of things to do? - Yeah. So I think London is a really interesting in between, in my opinion, of like New York and the rest of Europe.

So I'm originally from New York. I'm from Long Island, but I've spent time in New York. Obviously I have friends who live there. And New York City is go, go, go, right? Which I love. I love that energy and it's really intense. And then very generally speaking, a lot of parts of mainland Europe are a lot more relaxed when it comes to working culture.

Basically all of the culture, it's seen as like a lot more relaxed and liberal, whereas London's kind of like in the middle. So it's a really good balance for me. And I think like a couple of good examples of that is our work-life balance is better here. So people are a bit better than say New York about like actually leaving work at six o'clock, mainly 'cause people wanna get to the pub, which I'm totally down for.

I think that's a great motivation if that's your motivation. Something that's also really unique about London that as someone who lives here, I really feel is like super important is that we have so much green space here. So compared to my time in New York and other major cities, London's really spread out and you're really actually never that far from a beautiful public free green space that you can enjoy.

And I think that works actually for tourists as well. And it's one of the beautiful things you can experience when you come to visit London too. So we have green spaces, we have going to a pub. Are there a few other like top London experiences for you? Not for anyone else, just for you.

Yeah, so I love Sunday roast. Do you know what Sunday roast is? No. Okay. So it's a British tradition of obviously it happens on Sundays where you go to the pub and on the menu, only on Sundays they have this special roast menu. And you choose from different types of meat.

So it's usually chicken, pork, beef, and sometimes a couple other ones or loads of places do vegetarian, which is where I usually go for and also vegan. And then basically from the Americans, I always kind of equate it to, they bring this plate out and it's not dissimilar to Thanksgiving food.

It's kind of like you can have Thanksgiving like every Sunday. It's a plate that has roast vegetables on it. There's really good potatoes. They do gravy. There's this kind of like a pastry that's called Yorkshire pudding, which is like so yummy. And you use that to soak up the gravy.

And sometimes there's cauliflower cheese. And it's just like a really nice tradition where you gather up your family or you gather up your friends and you're like, let's go for a Sunday roast. And you just go to the local pub and sit and you eat Sunday roast. And if you want to have a pint of beer, you can do that too.

So that's one of my favorite things. I always tell people to make sure you get to a pub on a Sunday and experience that. - What sounds like one thing that is uniquely London is that the pub is something that you could do with your family. I'm thinking as someone flying overseas with a two-year-old and a six-month-old, I'm like, oh, you know, we're not really gonna have the same trip we used to.

It sounds like in London, I could just go to the pub with my kids and we could have a beer. - You can, yeah. So pubs are very family-friendly, especially on the weekends. They're not as friendly in very central London, so around like the really main touristy areas. But for example, one of my favorite areas that I tell people to go to for pub experience is Notting Hill.

And you'll always on a weekend go to the pubs in Notting Hill and see families there. And they've got little kids, they've got teenagers, and it's like a family thing. Sometimes it's big groups of families that will go, and it's very normal. They cater to kids, so it's like nothing out of the ordinary.

And it's a really nice daytime weekend experience for families. - Awesome. So while I'm actually planning a trip to London, we've already booked flights and where we're staying, I'm gonna assume most people aren't. So I wanna start this and just talk about all the awesome things there are to do, get people excited, and then at the end, we can wrap up and talk about things like hotels, flights, transportation, that kind of stuff.

What's the vibe of people in London? Is it easy to meet people? Are they friendly? What should we know about Londoners? - So Londoners are very nice, but we're a little bit more closed off when it comes to meeting quote unquote outsiders. I think it comes from that everyone's just really busy.

And the British are just a tiny bit more closed off compared to the Americans, which everyone's a little bit more closed off that I think compared to us Americans, right? So that's not a hard feat. That being said, if you do end up talking to somebody who lives in London, generally they will be very nice.

And if you, for example, need like help on the street and you can't figure out where the tube station is, you can stop somebody and they'll be like, "Yeah, yeah, no worries. "It's just like down that way." Or they might even walk you. But it is a little bit harder to meet people.

That does change though when alcohol is involved. It's much easier to make friends when everyone's had a couple of pints. - Is there a type of person you think a trip to London is best for? Is it young, old, single, kids? - Ooh, I don't think so. Because there is so much that you can do here, I think that everyone's basically covered.

I think people that come with kids, maybe it's a little bit harder because if you're trying to use public transportation, it is trickier if you've got like a lot of stuff that you're carrying or if you've got strollers. That is tricky because a lot of the tube stations don't have escalators or elevators.

So that's tricky. That being said though, if you're staying pretty central and you've got kids, a lot of people end up just walking everywhere. So maybe they'll do like an hour walk to get to the first area that they wanna go explore. So it is doable. And then you save money doing that too.

There is kind of something for everyone. And then you just kind of have to adjust based on your needs and your budget. - That one, we just bought a super compact light stroller that's like one click pop on your shoulder, carry kid down the stairs. - Perfect. - So we are prepared for running around the city.

We don't have one of these giant American bus strollers with us for this trip. Is there a best time? And by all means, if I tell you I'm staying somewhere and you're like, that's the worst place to stay or that's the worst time of year to go, don't feel bad about offending me.

Like this is for everyone else. But when would you say someone should plan their trip? - A lot of it will depend on what your budget is. And again, not to be like, that every time of year is great to go. But actually the beauty of London is that there's always gonna be a pro of a time that you're gonna visit and there's gonna be a con.

So for example, you guys are coming very soon. So that will be middle to end of December. The pro is it's so festive here. It is incredibly beautiful. There's so many fun Christmasy things to do if that's what you're into. There's also like loads of ice skating rinks and there's great shopping.

The downside of that is that it is cold, of course, and also it is very crowded. So like what you guys probably are gonna wanna do is if you wanna do some of the major things like the free museums, like the Natural History Museum, for sure you'll wanna avoid weekends because it is right now just like absolutely rammed with people who come from outside of London, take the train in and take the kids to go do everything.

So every time of year has a pro and con. If you come in January, it's really, really cold, but it's also the quietest time and also the cheapest time. If you come in the summer, you're hopefully, fingers crossed, gonna get the best weather. You're also gonna get the most sunlight 'cause it stays light till almost 10 o'clock, which is really cool.

But also the prices are highest because it's peak travel season. And again, you're gonna see those crowds. And if you get a heat wave, we don't deal with heat waves very well here. A lot of places do not have air cons. So if that's something that you're considering that would be really tricky for you, then that's probably not gonna be a good time for you to come.

And then shoulder seasons are always great 'cause they've got the mix of the peak and the downtime. - So if you want a deal, avoid the summer. I would say avoid Christmas, New Year's holidays, but we're going like the two weeks before that. And we got amazing deals because I think everyone's traveling in the States for Thanksgiving.

Everyone's traveling around Christmas, New Year's. No one's really traveling the first few weeks of December. So I think it's a great deal time. We'll see how we fare on the weekends. Maybe those are our park days to just kind of let the kids run wild. - Yeah, definitely. - I have a friend who always was like, "You know what, you can go to any city "for any amount of time." Is it crazy if you live in New York and it's seven hours to go for the weekend?

Is it crazy to go for a week, two weeks? At what point in time do you say, maybe if you're going that long, check out some other place for a few days? - Yeah, so you can do a weekend. So when I first moved over here and I was working at a travel company, this travel company was selling to the British crowd these three-day trips to New York.

And I was like, "That is absurd. "Who would fly all the way to New York for three days?" But it is doable. It's actually not that far if you really think about it, but it is quite a journey. So I usually say at least a week is a really good amount of time because you can really dig into some of the areas, not just like the main tourist attractions, but you can also give yourself time and you don't have to feel like you're rushing around because you have three days to see whether it's all the main tourist attractions or you wanna see Shoreditch and you wanna do Notting Hill, but those are really far apart, so you're probably not gonna do those in the same day.

It just gives you some time to take your time and also be a little bit more spontaneous. For Love in London, we sell a three-day itinerary. That's our most popular thing. And we also have a six-day one, which has actually been really popular as well because most of my audience are people who are coming from the US, so they are coming for usually more than three days.

But a week is a great amount of time. And I usually say if you wanna do day trips, I usually recommend not doing them if you have less than a week because there's just so much you can do in London. And again, if you're still feeling a bit jet-lagged and you've come to London, you've been running, running, running for the first few days, and then you have to hop on a train one day and head out to Bath or Oxford or wherever you wanna go, that's great, but also, you might wanna just slow it down a little bit, in my opinion.

I'm always trying to get people to just be like, okay, there's a lot to do and you can't do it all, so let's try to slow it down and leave some room for if you see a shop that you wanna go into and spend an hour in, or you run past a cafe and you're like, let's just sit for an hour and have a nice coffee and just relax, then you can do that.

- So we're going for, I think, six days. We're not going anywhere else. Our style of travel, though, to be clear, we haven't actually done this with kids, is much more like I wanna get the experience of being in London, living in London. So if we miss some of the tourist destinations, that's fine.

London is so central to so many European trips that I'm sure we'll be back in the future. So I think we're trying to go on the kind of trip you describe, and I went through one of those itineraries you made and I was like, this is exactly what I want.

I would say maybe, I was like, we have two kids, it's probably a little overkill for a two-kid trip, but some of those things we'll just skip. What about food? You said there's lots of cuisines throughout the world, but would you say London's like a foodie town for drinks?

There's pubs, so is it more of a beer crowd? California seems like it's more wine and now cocktails in the city. - Yeah, so everything, all of the above. So London's amazing. You can try any cuisine here from all over the world. Something I do see that's a little bit of a mistake from tourists sometimes is that you come to London and you only just wanna have British food, which I'm not saying don't have British food.

Try fish and chips, bangers and mash, the pie, like totally do that if that's what you wanna do. But there's also so many different cuisines, especially if you don't think you're ever gonna get to Malaysia, why don't you try like Malaysian food or Sri Lankan food and you can really expand your palate and try cuisines that you might not ever get to try again if you're never gonna go to like a major metropolitan city.

We have a huge foodie scene here, same with drinks. So pubs are huge, but also cocktail bars, we've got great wine bars, there's drinking for the lower end of the budget and just like rowdy, like more fun, younger crowds. Then there's also really fancy speakeasies and really like exclusive cocktail bars.

Anything you can want, we've got it here. This is what's so cool about London is that anything that you want, you're gonna be able to find it. You just kinda have to like do a little sifting. - So we're gonna get into a lot of these things and I want some real recommendations, but you said a mistake is eating just British food.

I feel like British food has a pretty terrible reputation. So I'm like, man, if that's what you're coming to London for, you're probably doing it wrong. What other mistakes are people making when they're coming to London? - Well, I am gonna caveat that, what you just said actually. So British food has gotten much better.

So you can do really well. And if you do wanna have British food, I always say the best place is at pubs because most pubs will have restaurant sections and they'll have like classic pub menus or they'll be more of like a gastropub and do a modern take on similar British dishes.

So it is good, but yeah, I just wanted to throw that in there, but it's definitely the type of food that you'll get sick of after like eating it three times in a row, for sure, yeah. - I watched a few of your videos and one of them was like, if it says it's like truly authentic pub, just like run away.

- Yeah, exactly, it's one of those things like if you have to say it, you probably aren't. So something that I have been seeing with tourists recently is there's a lot of content around when you use public transportation here that you have to get an Oyster card. An Oyster card is basically something that you can buy once you get here, where you add your money to it and you use it to tap in and out for the underground system or to use the buses.

But then you have to keep tapping it up. You also have to pay seven pounds for each of the cards and it's non-refundable. So instead, I'm just trying to tell people, you can actually use Apple Pay or Google Pay and you don't have to worry about doing the top up.

And also if you have any credit or debit cards that are contactless, you can use those too. And it's much easier and quicker and you don't have to wait in the queue to top it up at the station every time you run out of credit. So that's something I see quite a lot.

I also see a lot of people who think that you have to spend a ton of money on their hotel to make sure that they're in a safe area or they're just at a safe property and they end up sticking to some of the big US corporate brands, which is fine.

That's fine. And I know everyone's got points and stuff. So a lot of people are trying to stick to the Marriotts and this and that, blah, blah, blah. That's completely fine. But we have so many amazing, safe, boutique hotel properties that are like so beautiful and interesting and they're small and they're in gray areas too, even if they're not in very central London.

So I would say don't ever discount something that looks like it's a good deal. If it just doesn't seem like it's a name that's recognizable to you, or it's in an area that you don't necessarily recognize as like Covent Garden or Soho right in the center of London. You could end up in a really amazing hotel and also in a cool area.

- Is there like a good rating site in the UK that's like, oh, I'm looking at this hotel, is it good? Like I don't personally put a lot of faith in TripAdvisor. So I'm curious whether it's restaurants or hotels, is there a thing? - So for hotels, I personally use booking.com.

I find that the ratings generally are on point. And then obviously you can just book right to booking.com. So it's really easy. I don't really use TripAdvisor for anything actually anymore. And then in terms of food, so we don't have like a Yelp here and TripAdvisor is generally tourists.

So I would say if you're looking for like what locals think about food or a bar or something like that, probably like Google reviews, which are always, you never really know, but I think that's where like most Londoners would go if they're looking for reviews in a style that's a site like that with like actual reviews from people.

Otherwise we have websites like The Infatuation is really big here, Time Out, Love and London. I don't know if you heard of it, but we talk about food and drink and all the things of course. - You briefly said something about safety. Is there dangerous parts of London? Should people be concerned at all?

I had this one realization where I was reading this Lonely Planet book for New York for fun. I think someone we knew was traveling around the States and it was like, New York, make sure you get a money belt and you put all of your money in your money belt and tuck it in your pants.

And I was like, I've been to New York dozens of times. It's never crossed my mind. I've lived there, never been a thing. Is everyone just always kind of scaring people? So what's the low down there? Are there places to avoid? Are there times a day to avoid? Is the tube rampant with pickpockets?

- So there are areas in London that are relatively speaking not safe, but they're never where tourists are gonna end up. So I always say like, don't worry about the area. It's never a place that you would ever go. So areas are completely fine. In terms of pickpockets and things like that, just like you would in any other city, just keep yourself close to you.

Don't have your phone waving around. We do have a little bit of a problem at the moment of mopeds going by and grabbing phones out of hands. So that's really the main thing. But otherwise, just the same rules you would apply to any major city. Don't have your pockets open.

Don't have anything in the back pocket where people can easily take it from you. Keep everything zipped up, everything close to you. Don't have any valuables out in plain sight. But millions of people run around the city every day and have absolutely no problems. So it's really nothing to be concerned about.

And I think in terms of safety at night, generally the only thing I would say is that women on their own-- so I usually, past 11 o'clock, will get an Uber to get home. But if I was with somebody else, then we're fine to be on public transport and to walk on our own.

People can interpret how they want to. So I want to get a lay of the land. And we could spend so long talking about here's this neighbor, that neighbor. But is there generally a way you break up the city and kind of group it into a few major areas?

Yeah, so basically the most popular area that tourists a lot of times only stay in is what's called central London. So this is like the really famous areas like Soho, Covent Garden, Marlebone, the South Bank, Westminster, which is where Buckingham Palace, Houses of Parliament, all those places are. And it includes a few other areas.

That's where the majority of the tourist attractions are. And it is the dead center of London. So that's where even Londoners will go there if we're meeting a friend for dinner. And we both live on other parts of the city. So that's where a lot of tourists end up doing a lot of stuff.

There's lots of good restaurants around there, and bars, and things like that. You just have to know where you're going. So there's also some really not so good stuff there. It's like very tourist trappy and kind of gross. It's those like authentic pub kind of places that you'll find there.

Basically, the city's broken up into four major areas. Simply North London, South London, East London, and West London. And in each of those areas, there's a few main areas that I would say that tourists are more likely to go to, because there's things to do. And it's not only just neighborhood-y.

There's good bars, good restaurants, parks, activities, things like that. Personally, for me, I live in East London. That's my favorite part of the city. There's just lots of stuff to do around here. And it's fun and beautiful. But then West London has Notting Hill and lots of great museums and really interesting things to do there.

And North and South also have their great things, too. As Londoners, we have this really big divide of we self-identify if we're East or West London. And we think the other side is terrible. We don't know why people live there. And then the same with North of the river, which is the River Thames, or South of the river.

And there's this constant battle of, why would you live on the other side? It's so boring there. And it's just always been like that. Let's highlight a couple neighborhoods where you're like, these are just really cool spots. Whether you stay there, you spend an afternoon or a morning there, what would you put on your list of three or four awesome neighborhoods in London?

OK, so-- Not all in East London. I know you think it's the coolest place ever. OK, fine, fine. So I've said Notting Hill a lot. I think that's a really famous one. So I might not spend too much time on that. But Notting Hill is a really beautiful area.

And it's one of the few areas of London where, even though it's quite popular with tourists, it still has a really interesting local vibe where neighbors actually say hello to each other, people pass by each other on the streets. It's a really lovely community area. And that's why the pub scene around there is so great.

And that's why I always recommend people to go do pub hopping around there for a nice relaxed afternoon. It's not like a crazy, let's get drunk pub kind of area. But if we skip on past Notting Hill, in North London, there's an area called Hampstead. The main thing there is this park called Hampstead Heath.

And it's this beautiful big park that has viewpoints. There's swimming ponds that people go to in the summer. There's Kenwood House. Have you ever seen the movie Notting Hill, actually, Chris? I'm not sure if I have. OK, OK. When you say it, I'm like, of course it's a movie.

I remember it. But now I'm like, have I? I don't know. That's OK. Well, if you do watch it-- and I'm sure there will be people listening that have seen it-- Kenwood House is featured in the movie towards the end when she's filming this like Victorian film. And Hugh Grant's listening to her speak.

And it's a whole thing. You'll have to watch it at some point. So the house that's featured in that is in Hampstead Heath. So people go to Hampstead Heath to see this beautiful Victorian house, which actually is also a little museum that has art and other things that you can see in there.

So that's a really good jumping off point. Really great to take kids there, because they can run around, see the wildlife. They can see people swimming. They can go swimming. Not right now, but a little too cold. Probably not on this trip. Yeah, not this trip. Not this trip.

And then you can go into Hampstead Village, which has really great cafes, bars, restaurants. And it's super family friendly. It's also this really just beautiful area with like multi-million pound houses. A lot of celebrities live around here. And there's a lot of historical value. So that's Hampstead. Yeah, and then, I mean, it's hard to pick, because there's so many.

And I love to kind of talk a little bit more about the areas that people don't go to as much. Like, if we go to South London, there's an area that's called Brixton. Brixton is super diverse, has really great markets that have been around for ages. And they have vendors selling all different types of wares, as well as there's little wine bars.

There's little shops there. So Brixton is just a really cool, interesting area with lots of things to do down there. If you're going to stay central, though, there's an area that I really like going to that's called Seven Dials. So it's really close to Covent Garden, which is one of the most famous areas in Central to go.

But Seven Dials is basically seven streets that converge onto each other. And there's a sundial in the middle of it. That's obviously where the name comes from. And down these streets, there's some not independent places, but there's also lots of great independent cafes and restaurants. There's a couple of pubs in the area.

And there's a really great indoor food market called Seven Dials Food Market, which I highly recommend. And then there's also this hidden little courtyard that's called Neil's Yard, which you can go into. It's the home of Neil's Yard Remedies, which is quite a famous skin care brand. And in there, you'll find this fantastic wine bar called CVS, and also one of my favorite restaurants in London called The Barbary.

And now they have a new place next door called The Barbary Next Door. And they do food that's inspired by the Barbary Coast. And it's so good, really, really good. It's one of those ways I'm like, I don't really love telling people about this, but I don't want to gatekeep.

So yeah, really yummy food there. But it's a really cute, colorful little courtyard. And so it looks really nice in photos as well. And you can sit there, have a glass of wine, have some food, have a coffee. It's great. And then I am going to circle over to East London.

It is my favorite. There's an area called Shortage. This is probably the most popular area of East London. And it is very eclectic. It is the area that's the most popular for street art. So if you are really interested in seeing street art, this is where you're going to do it.

You can either walk around on your own and easily find it, or there's loads of really affordable or free street art tours that you can do. This is also where a lot of creative agencies are based, a lot of artistic agencies. So a lot of the people that are in this area, even during the week, are very creative.

So you always kind of feel that vibe while you're there. And of course, you're going to have good cafes, good coffee, fantastic restaurants. I come to this area a lot to eat. One of the restaurants that I love is called Bao. And they do Taiwanese bao buns. And in Shortage, they have a noodle shop, which is really good.

So highly recommend going there. And for cafes, Attendant Cafe is really good. They do really nice coffee. And probably the most popular cafe around this area at the moment is a place called Jolene. And there is basically always a line outside the door, especially on the weekends. But the coffee here is just fantastic.

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Again, that's allthehacks.com/DAFFY. I kinda got a little bit of lay of the land. Obviously, I'm gonna have to walk around. You talked earlier about how you have these awesome itineraries. So I've been going through the three-day because I was like, well, I don't wanna plan too much. So let's take the three-day, spread it out over six-day.

What do you think things people should be really trying to do on their trip? I'm sure someone could find a list, best attractions in London. We don't need to go through everything, but what are the highlights of an itinerary? - Of course, everybody wants to go see the House of Parliament and Big Ben and Westminster Bridge.

So I think do whatever the sites that you're really interested in, make sure you do them because I get it. You're in London and you've seen these things on TV and in movies for years. So make sure you do that. For me, I'm always trying to think of an interesting way to see something.

So I think a good example is, everyone knows the Tower of London. So the Tower of London, it's been around for like a thousand years and it's still in this place. And you can go and have tours there. They're very family-friendly, but you can also do something that's quite interesting, which is called the Ceremony of the Keys.

And what this is, it's a tradition that's been happening for 700 years. And they've done it every single day for 700 years, except I think there's one day during one of the wars that they had to stop doing it. You got tickets for it and you basically watch this tradition of where they exchange the keys when they're kind of like closing up the tower at night.

And it's never been recorded. You're not allowed to film it. You're not allowed to take pictures. And I think it's a really interesting, different way to experience this like really popular tourist attractions. And it's very hard to get tickets, but it's definitely doable. And the tickets are only five pounds, whereas it's usually I think about 25 pounds for adults to get in at normal times of the day.

So I think that's really cool. In terms of viewpoint, so a lot of people like to do the London Eye, which that's cool. The first time I ever came to London, I did the London Eye as well. I thought it was great. It is a bit of a steep price for the tickets.

So if you still wanna do some kind of viewpoint, but maybe you don't need to do the London Eye, you could go to this place called the Sky Garden, which is completely free to visit. And it's actually higher up than the London Eye. It's basically this garden in the sky.

You take a lift all the way up to the top of the building. That's called the walkie talkie building 'cause it looks like a walkie talkie. And there's all this plant life that you walk around, but there's also these amazing views over the London skyline. It's pretty cool and a lot cheaper, obviously.

- I know you're like the spokesperson for London on YouTube in my mind, but don't be afraid to be like, dude, it's just not worth it. Don't waste your time there. I know you've said that about Leicester Square, but. - Yeah, Leicester Square is for sure the number one thing that I'm like, avoid it at all costs.

Like I even will walk around it if I'm just navigating to get somewhere else in the city. Basically, Leicester Square is this part of central London where it's just lined with like McDonald's, Burger King. There's a couple of casinos. There's a couple of movie theaters. There's the M&M store, which I have so much disdain for the M&M store.

I just don't understand. And there's always such a line to get into it. The Lego store. For some reason, there's so much stuff out there saying to go see Leicester Square. I'm like, there's nothing here. It's not upkept very well. And so I always say to avoid that. Instead, you could actually go just one block over and you're in Chinatown, which is amazing.

We have a small Chinatown in London, but really good food. There's some hidden bars there and just a really interesting place to walk around. So I'm always like, skip Leicester Square. Instead, go to Chinatown. It's literally one block over. - Do you have a favorite hidden bar? - So in Chinatown, there's one that's called Opium and it's a green door that is unmarked and you go up the stairs and there's three different rooms and the cocktails are really good.

They're like super unique and different and they're all like Oriental themed. So super interesting and they serve food there as well. But the cocktails, go for the cocktails. Hard to pick a favorite hidden bar, but I actually went to a really good one last night called Nightjar. There's two different locations and it's Prohibition themed.

So you go like down the stairs, the menu is like themed with different parts of the Prohibition and the war and the servers are dressed up like they're old timey and the service is amazing and the cocktails are really cool. - And are these the kind of places where you need to make a reservation?

How does that typically work? - Yes, especially recently London, you have to make reservations to get into places, especially the ones that are quite popular, even if they are kind of under the radar, people still find out about them 'cause Londoners love under the radar stuff. Anytime you can make a reservation, I highly, highly recommend it 'cause also a lot of places in London are just very small.

So they have very little covers. So if 10 people show up, that might cover the whole restaurant. So anytime you can make a reservation for sure or go very early or very late and you might be okay. - It's funny, I'm like such an optimizer and normally I'm like, okay, I'm gonna research all this stuff.

And then I was like looking through your three day itinerary I was like, well, this is pretty good. You just put it together. So for me, I was like, normally I would wanna go through all this and I was like, why don't we just use this? Like, why don't we just, this is our new playbook and save us a lot of time.

So I appreciate that. Any other must see things that people need to do when they're here for a short trip? I wanna see the city as it is normally seen by people who live here. And I imagine you don't spend every weekend at the Tate. - No, exactly. And the thing is too, like personally my mindset for what I do is that there's not really any must sees because it completely depends on what you're interested in.

So like some people might say, you have to go to the National Portrait Gallery, but if you're not into portrait art, even though it's free to go into, don't waste your time there. Find art that you like or skip art altogether. The Tate Modern's not gonna be interesting to you if you're not interested in modern art.

So I'm trying to give people like the permission. Don't feel like you have to do something because someone has said like, you have to do the London Eye. You don't have to. There's so many things you can do. Just do whatever's gonna work for you and also your budget because some of this stuff's really pricey.

So if you're gonna take the four of you on the London Eye, that's gonna cost you like a hundred pounds, then is that really gonna feel worth it if you weren't really that interested? - Are there deals for some of these things like that I should know about going in, like book it in advance or buy it from this guy who works down this alley in the street?

- Oh yeah, definitely. If you wanna do like the main attractions, I always tell people to look into the London Pass, which is, it's got like 150 of the biggest attractions on this pass and you get a two-day pass, a three-day pass, a six-day pass, whatever you choose. And the tickets are included in the price that you pay.

And if it works with what you wanna see, you can save a lot of money with that. You just have to plan and do some math to make sure that it all adds up. Because if you're mostly wanting to see stuff that has low ticket prices, then it's probably not gonna be worth it.

But if you're going to the big things with big ticket prices, it does end up saving, especially if you've got four of you, five of you, 'cause they have kids passes as well. It actually can end up saving you like hundreds of dollars. It's actually kind of crazy. So the London Pass, we do have something on our website where it helps people understand if it's gonna work for them or not before they buy it.

So if you just Google London Pass on our site, that's helpful. - I'll link to that page on the show notes. - Perfect. In the line of the Sunday roast that we were talking about, another British tradition here is called afternoon tea. And I personally love afternoon tea. It's mostly hotels that will put on afternoon tea.

Some restaurants do it as well. Around like one o'clock, two o'clock, you'll go to this hotel that you've booked and they bring out your selection of tea. You get to choose if you want tea or coffee. If you go really high end, they'll have like extra specialty that's been flown in from Sri Lanka or India or wherever.

It's like really a beautiful experience. And then you get a bunch of different types of treats. So we'll start with little finger sandwiches of various variety of different kinds. Then you'll also get scones, which, oh, I love scones. Scones kind of resemble crumpets, but they're a lot nicer than crumpets in my opinion.

And you eat those with jam and cream. And then the final tier is the sweet treats. So the really nice places, this is where like they shine. They do these little pieces of artwork that you eat for your lunch/breakfast, whatever time you ended up going. And it's a really lovely experience.

A lot of people in London will do it as like a special occasion for someone's birthday or for bridal showers and things like that. It's very British and it's lovely. It's really lovely. One of the places that I always recommend if you want like a very classic, traditional afternoon tea experience is Fortnum & Mason, which is a department store.

And they've got a beautiful tea room, which I think the queen actually opened it up if I remember correctly. Yeah, it's very classic. They've got like the classical music playing. Somebody's playing piano. You can get champagne if you want champagne. So I recommend either there or if you want something really special with amazing views, there is the Shard, which is the tallest building in Western Europe.

And there's the Shangri-La Hotel, which is in the Shard. And their restaurant Ting does a sky-high afternoon tea, which they like pull out all the stops. It's an amazing experience. - This is also something that as we did some research, it's like not everywhere, but many places are pretty kid-friendly and even sometimes like kid-themed.

So it looked pretty cool as something we could do with the kids. - Also, if you want another recommendation for a kid-friendly tea at the One Aldwych Hotel, they do a Charlie and the Chocolate Factory themed tea, which is really great for the adults as well, but the kids love it too.

So it's like really cute. - So I have a random question, but very specific to tea. So we looked at this one. It seems like make reservations for most of these places, but I was looking at the menu and I guess either it's an entire meal. It looks like it's enough food that like you're skipping lunch that day.

Or I was like, well, our daughter usually naps at like one. What if we went at three o'clock? I don't want to ruin dinner. Would it be poor form to go and just get like one or two for four people? Or do you need to order one for every person?

- It's a bit different with kids. If you've got like really little ones, then you don't have to order ones for them, obviously, if they're not going to eat it, but you usually do order one for each person. - Okay. - Yeah, yeah. - I was looking for like a little deal.

I was like, if we just want a little snack here and there. - I know. Well, the kids' ones are cheaper. So they're like significantly cheaper. So that's good. But actually a lot of people ask me that. So that's a good question. - Whenever my wife and I do like a tasting menu, we're like, can we just do wine for one of us?

Because we don't need six glasses of wine. So we'll just do the tasty menu with wine and one person doesn't do the wine, but then we just share it. So little things like that. Afternoon tea, any other cool experiences? Even if they're small, like I'll say in New York City, one of my favorite things to tell people to do is if you're downtown, take the six train at the end of the line and just ride it South till it turns around and comes back North.

And you loop through City Hall Station, which is a closed station. It's like many, many years old. It's really cool. It was like the shining star of the subway system, but it's not open. And you can like once or twice a year get a tour there. But if you just ride the six train, it actually says, I think it's Brooklyn Bridge.

It's like, you're on a downtown six train next stop, Brooklyn Bridge uptown. And you could like ride this cool loop. There's always these like kind of cool, random, weird things that would never make an average tourist list. In San Francisco, there was this thing, for anyone who did it, you'll know exactly what I mean.

Unfortunately, it's closed, called the Jejune Institute. And you like went to this office building and you just went up to the 30th floor. You knocked on a door, the door opened, you went into a room and you like watched a weird video and there was an envelope. And then you would go on like a scavenger hunt.

And I'm like, I have no idea how this works. Like you put a $20 in a slot, but there were no people. It was the weirdest thing. It wasn't an escape room 'cause there was no escaping, but it kind of had that vibe. And it was the coolest thing ever, but not on any tourist guide.

So any of those kind of like cool experiences that you might do on the weekends with friends that would, maybe it would make one of your guides, but it's definitely not in the average guide. - Okay, so I'll give you two 'cause I'll give you a little one, but then let me give you a bit of a bigger one that you can spend an afternoon.

So there is this area in London called Bermondsey and running through Bermondsey, because it's very close to London Bridge Station, which is one of the biggest stations in London. There are elevated railway tracks and then underneath the railway tracks are businesses that are in the arches. Because they're small spaces, they're all very small businesses that are very independent.

And in one specific area of Bermondsey under these arches, it all happens to be breweries and gin distilleries. And so this thing has come about where it's like the unofficial name for it is called the Bermondsey Beer Mile. And on Saturdays, these breweries open up and they let people come in and do tastings or just get a pint or try the gin.

What people do is they make a Saturday of it and they hop around to all the different distilleries and breweries and try all the different drinks. And it can get a little bit messy, obviously, depending on how quickly you do it. You can also pair that with a visit to Maltby Street Market, which is literally right there.

And you can get food and they have really good independent food. They have probably the most diverse food vendors of all the markets in London. I love doing that Bermondsey Beer Mile. It's really fun. And I feel like it gets skipped over so much because there's no official website for it.

There's someone who's made an unofficial one, but it's pretty easy to find. You just navigate to Maltby Street Market and then you'll see all of the breweries and distilleries. I love recommending that. But I don't think that many people take me up on it, sadly. But it's almost good though, so it's fine.

- I don't know if we'll do the full drinking mile, but I'm like a sucker for street food, food market, anything like that. Favorite stall? - I mean, I had an amazing banh mi sandwich, so Vietnamese. I don't remember the name of the stall. They do kind of change them out sometimes too, which is nice 'cause then everyone can try different things.

But I think probably that banh mi is a favorite I've had so far. - Okay. - It's good. - I will look for it. - And then just for a little fun, a smaller one too. We were talking about Shortage before and I mentioned that it's like the most famous area in London for street art.

So if you wanna go street art spotting, you can do that. A fun little thing you can do while you're doing that is there's a bunch of tiny 3D broccolis scattered around the Brick Lane area. So you can go and spot all of the little broccolis. And the broccolis were put there, I think it was about 15 years ago, by this artist, Adrian Boswell.

And he actually has a gallery there and like broccolis are his thing. So you can end up spotting all the broccolis and then go to his gallery and see what the deal is in there too. So that's kind of a fun thing. But it's one of those things where I had never noticed that.

And then a couple of years ago, somebody pointed it out to me and I was like, "Oh my God, that's so cool." In all of my research, I've never heard anyone talk about that before. - I feel like my daughter would love a walk around looking for broccolis. So that's a great one.

- Perfect. And they're like colorful. And so yeah, they're great for kids too. - We're talking about food a lot and it just happens to be noon in San Francisco. So I'm already getting hungry. But I think the reason that we travel is often for food. So one of the challenges is it's so easy if you're going to Malaysia, I know the kind of food I wanna go get.

But when I think of London, it's like, gosh, I've been told the best Indian food in the world outside of India is in London. So we're like, okay, we got a little list there. I don't even know how to ask this question. Like, where should we be eating? Like, there's just so many options.

Are there a couple cuisines or a couple restaurants? I'm sure you could have a list of a thousand. I'm sure the itinerary I was looking at probably has the list of a thousand. But what are just a few restaurants that are must go to? They don't have to be the most popular.

They don't have to be the most expensive. Ideally, they're not the ones that you have to plan two months in advance to get a table. - This is a hard one because there's just so many good places. Also, I think what's interesting about London, in my personal opinion, is that you don't have to spend a lot of money to have a really, really good food experience.

I actually find that the mid-range restaurants are my favorites. We did talk about a couple of them that I love already. So we did the Barbary, we talked about Bao. There's an Italian that's called Campania and Jones, and it's in a tiny little place off of Columbia Road, which, this is East London, and Columbia Road is quite famous for being this very beautiful, picturesque street that has all independent shops on it.

And on Sundays, it has a world-famous flower market, which people love to go visit. You can pick up flowers, or you can just walk around and see the chaos that kind of ensues with it. It's very fun. So just off of that is Campania and Jones, and they do regional Italian dishes from Campania, obviously.

And the food here is amazing. It can be tricky to get reservations, but if you can do a weekday and do it like five o'clock when they open, then, or do a later one, like 9.30, then it is doable. If anyone does end up going there, there's a starter that's called Nudie, and it comes with sage butter.

It was like one of the best things I've ever had. It's so nice. It's really good. I was with friends and we were eating it, and we all just stopped talking, which is a lot for me and my friends, 'cause we were all just like, "Oh my God, this is amazing." It's kind of like Italian dumplings.

So good. So I love Indian. I also love Sri Lankan. I have been to Sri Lanka before, and my interest just has been piqued. And we have some really good Sri Lankan restaurants here. One of my favorites is called Paradise, and it's right in Soho, so it's very central London.

It's a modern take on Sri Lankan food. So they do really great small dishes. You just order a bunch of them and everybody shares. They do this chickpea curry, which is so good. And they do amazing cocktails as well. All the good places you do have to reserve. That's just kind of how it is.

But I did, the other day, go there and managed to, only a couple days ahead, get a 5.30 booking for four people. So it is doable. Go on a Monday or a Tuesday if you can, and go early, and that works well. And then finally, I'm gonna give one more Italian.

- Give one more Indian, 'cause I just want-- - One more Indian. So Dishoom is the most popular Indian place in London. It's a little bit more of a modern take on Indian. They've got four or five locations now. Obviously, I can't speak to how incredibly authentic it is, 'cause I am not from India.

But it's really popular because they do really, really good food at affordable prices. The staff are amazing, and the decor, it's supposed to be kind of like a small restaurant that you might see in Bombay. So the decor is really interesting. And kid-friendly, works for everyone. It's one of my favorite places to go for breakfast.

- Ooh. - Yeah, they do really good breakfast. - I don't think I've had it. I mean, I've been to India, so I've had Indian breakfast, but I don't know if I've had like a westernized version of an Indian breakfast. - It's a British version. They kind of like combine Indian food with what would be considered like a British breakfast, but it's really good.

And that's also if you struggle to get in, because they don't really take reservations at most of the locations, especially for dinner. So either try to reserve for lunch, or go for breakfast if you can't get for lunch either. But some of the locations have really long lines, and people wait like an hour and a half.

I don't really think you should do that for anything, in my opinion. There's ways we can get around that. So try to reserve at lunchtime, go during the week at lunchtime, or go for breakfast. - Are walk-ins a thing? In a lot of Japan, it's like, no, we fully book our tables, you can't necessarily walk in.

What about for us, who have two young kids, and like eating dinner at five o'clock is the norm? - That's doable. So we have a really big range. So some places will be reservations, and if they're booked up, they're booked up. Some places will have a mix of, they'll reserve half of it for walk-ins, and half of it for reservations.

And then some places are walk-ins only. And for every budget, that varies. So it's not like if it's a budget restaurant, it's always walk-in. They sometimes will do reservations as well. If you're trying to find something that's like an easy walk-in, and you're kind of like, we've had a long day, I don't want to do too much research, pizza is really good here.

There's a lot of places that do good Italian pizza for very affordable, and they do kids menus as well. Like there's Pizza Pilgrims and Franco Manca. Those are two different places. They're fantastic, really easy. You'll be able to get in, no problem. - And you had one more Italian.

- Oh yes, I went here last night. So it's fresh on the mind right now. And it's in the guides as well, so you'll see it in there. So it's called Padella, and they do basically simple pasta dishes. And the word Padella comes from the Italian word that is, I forget exactly what the Italian word is, but it's how they actually make the pasta here, which is they finish it off in a pan.

Very simple, but really, really good, and also affordable. This is a walk-in place, which if you go at 5.30, you're golden, you will be able to get in, no problem. Otherwise, people queue up, or they have like a queuing system where they can text you when your table's ready.

If you go to Padella, my recommendations are to start with the burrata and order bread on the side, 'cause the burrata there is so beautiful. And then I always order the cacio e pepe. It's the best cacio e pepe I've had in London. It's not too cheesy, it's just really nice.

So those are always my recommendations, and I love going there. - This is awesome. What about just general dining etiquette? Are meals slow, are meals fast? Is there something you need to know to get the attention of the wait staff, tipping, all this stuff? - So things are generally a bit slower than say if we're comparing to the US.

Also, every place is very understaffed right now. So just kind of pack your patience pants when you come, because I mean, Chris, you're coming very soon, and it's a very, very busy time of year. So things are just generally slower, but it's probably gonna continue like that for the next year or so.

Patience, definitely. - So you probably will have to ask for the server, unless you're in a more high-end place, but you might have to a few times raise your hand and be like, "Can we get some more water? "Can we get this?" Blah, blah, blah. And you definitely will have to ask for the bill.

And then do you want me to go through tipping for restaurants? - Yeah, wherever it applies, beyond restaurants. - Okay, perfect. So for restaurants in London, generally what happens is you will get the bill, and on the bill it will say optional service charge, and that's generally 12 1/2% that's been added onto your bill.

If you've had really bad service, you can ask for that to be removed. Generally, people just end up paying it, even if they weren't super happy. But once you've paid that service charge, you don't have to tip anything additional on top of that, and that service charge usually gets distributed between front of house and back of house.

So it doesn't only go to your server, it just gets put into the pool, and it goes to people in the kitchen as well. In terms of tipping for other things, we're not a huge tipping culture here. If you're at the hotel and your bags have been carried for you, you could tip, but you won't make anyone upset if you don't.

But of course, no one's gonna be upset about some extra money. For taxis and things like that, you can round up to the next pound, or if you had someone who was really great and you had a long journey from the airport or something, you can give an extra couple of pounds.

But it's not extremely expected. I'm in my very British mode now. What else do people usually tip on? (laughs) - I don't know, you'd get a drink at a bar, and you leave a couple of bucks. - So if you go up to the bar and you're ordering yourself, so someone's not come to your table, then you do not have to tip.

You can, so sometimes people will leave a pound coin, sometimes a bar will have a jar where you can leave tips. There's also this thing where you can say, "Oh, can I buy you one as well?" to the bartender, and then they will basically charge you for another drink, and then that money will go into a pot for everyone at the end of the night.

Sometimes it's a little bit dodgy if they actually get that, so if you do wanna tip, I would just say, "Leave a pound coin or two," and that's gonna be the best option, but you don't have to. I never tip at the bar. Occasionally, if I've had someone really good, I'll pop something into if they have a tip jar, but it's definitely for sure not expected at all, and there will be no service charge added onto your bill if you order at the bar.

If you got table service, then service charge will probably be added, and if it's not, then you can leave around 10% if you'd like. - So while we're on the topic of drinking at a bar, it might not be as relevant to our trip, but I wanna talk a little bit about nightlife because I feel like London is well-known for it.

Let's talk about what people should be doing at night who aren't in the situation we are with two kids, two and under. What's nightlife like? Where should people go? What should people be doing? - So the biggest areas for nightlife in London are generally Soho and Shoreditch. So Soho's the very center of London.

It's very eclectic. It's also where the majority of the LGBTQ+ clubs and bars are, so anyone who's looking for that, Soho is your place for that. And then Shoreditch is a little bit more artsy-ish, but also very popular for all different types of people who wanna go out. Both areas have both cheap and cheerful drinking.

That's very rowdy and crowded. They've got the cocktail bars, wine bars, and then both also have clubs. Not gonna lie, clubs are not really my thing anymore, but I can give a couple of recommendations off the top of my head. So in Soho, there's a club called Freedom, which is quite popular.

They've got a pretty standard upstairs, and then down in the basement, they've got DJs and a dance floor. And then for Shoreditch, we had a really famous place there that just got shut, but actually, you can just walk around and follow the crowds and hear the music, and then you can find places that way.

So it's pretty easy. - Awesome. And then what time do things close? Does transportation still run? - Transportation generally stops at midnight when we talk about the tube. If you are out past midnight, there are a couple of options. There are night buses. They have an N in front of the number, and so if you're using CityMapper or Google Maps and you're trying to get back to your hotel, you might see N87, and that will be a night bus, and those run all night.

There are also some night tubes, which run all night as well on Friday and Saturday nights, so Google Maps might be like, "Oh, go on this line," and that's because it's running all night. Both of those are generally pretty safe options, but also, of course, you can get taxis.

So you can either use Uber or FreeNow if you wanna call a taxi, or if you see a black cab, which we're quite famous for our black cabs here, and it's got a light on, that means that it's free and available, so you can put your hand out and call it, and they'll pull over and take you.

- Do one of those apps also call, like if you're like, "I wanna take the London black cab experience," which I've heard actually for kids is easy 'cause you could roll a stroller in and set it down, and it's not so crazy. - Yes, both Uber and FreeNow call black cabs.

I know Uber does, I'm pretty sure FreeNow does, and yes, I 100% agree. Also, anybody who might be traveling with someone with a wheelchair, the black cabs are the best option because the seats fold up, so they can accommodate wheelchairs. So wheelchairs, buggies, which is the British term strollers, things like that, also, if you just have a lot of bags too, they're best for that.

And then in terms of when the actual nightlife closes, so generally, pubs will only stay open 'til about 11, 11.30. Bars will stay open 'til about 2, 2.30, and then the clubs, a lot of them shut at four, but also a lot of them go a lot later than four, so depending on which one you decide to go to.

- I can assure you that I am more likely to be waking up at four than still awake at four. So that makes sense. I feel like we're planning on doing a lot more public transit than taxis. What about the airport getting in? Any tips there? - We do have six different airports here in London.

Most people who are flying from the U.S. or just doing the big, long-haul flights will fly probably into Heathrow Airport. That's our main airport and our biggest one. That is technically still kind of London, but it's actually not really, so it is quite far west of the city, but it's very easy to get into Central.

Of course, you can take a taxi or an Uber if you want to, but we have lots of really good public transport options, with the main couple being the Elizabeth Line, which only just launched a few months ago back in May, and that is basically like a tube line, and it can actually get you into Paddington Station.

It can get you into Central London. It also can get you to East London to Liverpool Street Station, and it only costs £12.70 at the moment, which is great. There's also the Heathrow Express, which gets into Paddington, and it's faster than the Elizabeth Line. It only takes about 16 minutes, I think it is, but it's also £25 per adult, although kids under 16 go free with an adult.

It also doesn't really make sense to take the Heathrow Express, 'cause you might not be staying anywhere near Paddington, so your best bet really is to use City Mapper or Google Maps and navigate from Heathrow to your hotel and see which options are saying for you, but also make sure you adjust for your arrival time, because if it's really early or really late, then the availability drastically reduces.

So then you might actually get stuck just taking a taxi or a very, very long night bus. - We were talking about nightlife. I know the London theater scene is pretty big. In New York, my wife and I hit up a lot of Broadway shows. We did the Rush stuff to get discounts on tickets.

We did all the kind of cool, crazy theater, immersive stuff like Sleep No More. Anything stand out in those areas? - Yes, so the people who have done Sleep No More, so Punch Drunk, they recently have opened a similar to Sleep No More show called The Burnt City here in London, and I just went last week and it was awesome.

Highly, highly recommend it. For people who don't know what that is, it's like immersive theater. First of all, if you're a viewer, you have to wear a mask. You always have to keep this mask on, and you go into what's like this huge set. - And we don't mean like a COVID mask.

We're talking like face mask. - Exactly. It kind of looks like the scream mask a little bit. Not as quite as scary, I think. And then what you do is you go into what is like basically a massive movie set that has multiple different rooms and all these different props, and you see live actors that are acting out different scenarios.

And sometimes they interact, sometimes they split ways, and you follow all of these people around and follow their stories. And the details are amazing. Like even the smells of the room are different. Chris, I know I'm preaching to the choir here. You've done all this already, but it was a really amazing theatrical experience.

They're running until April, I think, at the moment. So if you're in London before April, 2023, definitely check that out. But if you wanna do something a little bit more traditional in the London theater scene, there is the longest running theater show of all time here in London, which is called Agatha Christie's "The Mousetrap." And it's been on for 70 years.

So this is the 70-year anniversary. So it's actually quite special if you end up getting like, I guess it's only a few people will be able to get there. Before, it's a 71st year, but still. It is like a linchpin of London theater, and it's very kind of old school.

And it very much represents British whodunit theater, which is a little bit like over the top, but it's really fun and it's really cool. It's just definitely like a very London experience. So I would highly recommend people get tickets to that. And you can actually get like 15 pound tickets for that, even if you book in advance, if you just go for the really high up seats, but they also do some last minute deals as well, which you can get through TKTS, or it's also called Official London Theater.

- Wow, okay. I feel like this is a masterclass in London, which was the goal. We talked, I think, about most of the things people need to plan out in advance. So I just wanna recap, like make your reservations at restaurants if you wanna go to hotspots and you wanna eat in prime time.

Any tickets for things, especially during peak season tourist attractions, any other things that people really need to make sure they figure out before they get there? - If you're doing peak season, anything that you can book in advance is a good idea. 'Cause also ever since COVID, a lot of the major attractions are now having timed entry.

Not all of them stick to it, but they will sell out for a certain time. So if you've got a pretty strict schedule that you wanna stick to, then at least give yourself a couple of days ahead of time to book the tickets so you don't have to worry about like, oh, well now we didn't get the time that we wanted, so we're gonna have to run back and do this and do that, blah, blah, blah.

I would say in 2023, anyone who's visiting tourism has really come back with a vengeance. And we're already seeing availability of hotels really low for even like the end of next year. So I would definitely recommend anyone coming next year to book hotel as quickly as possible. You can always do something that you can cancel, but it would just be good to have something just in case you don't find anything else at the price that you're looking for.

So just get it done, do it in advance. - Any favorites amongst the hotels that fall in that category of like, you might not find them on the major sites, you might overlook it 'cause it seems like it is this random property? - Yeah, so there's one place I really like, again, in East London, it's called Mama Shelter.

I think it's a Parisian brand 'cause they've got a few places in France. - And LA. - Oh, that's right, they've got the one in LA, yeah. - I helped our au pair book a room there like six months ago so and she said it was really cool. - Yeah, they've got a really nice rooftop at that one, it's really nice.

The one here, I think gets overlooked sometimes because it's a little bit out of the way if you wanna do only the main attractions, but it's actually really well located if you wanna do some of the more local stuff in East London. For example, it's not far from Broadway Market, which is this Saturday market that's quite famous now, lots of great stalls selling food and jewelry and artisan pieces and things like that.

Also walkable in about 20 minutes to Shoreditch or there's a bus that will get you there even quicker. And I would say it's on the higher range of budget hotels, but the staff are amazing, it's really colorful. They do karaoke nights, they've got a gym there. And if you book in advance, you can get a pretty good deal there.

So that's probably one of my favorite recommendations for hotels. - Anything on the next tier up, like the mid range? - The mid range, so I really liked the Henrietta Hotel. It's more luxury. The Henrietta Hotel is right in Covent Garden. It is a small boutique hotel that is French inspired and really beautiful decor.

You can't get any better on the location. You just walk out the front door, you're in Covent Garden, it's amazing. And the rooms are beautiful and they're big and the bathrooms are amazing. And then I have a really special luxury high-end recommendation. We talked about the Shangri-La earlier. That hotel is the highest hotel in London, obviously, 'cause it's in the tallest building in Western Europe.

And it is super special too, because they have an indoor pool, which is the highest hotel pool in Western Europe, but probably a lot of other parts of Europe as well. So it's got floor to ceiling windows and you're just swimming around, looking down onto London and across the skyline.

It's a pretty special experience. I recommend that one. We filmed a video in one of their suites there. It was like the coolest experience. It was awesome. - There are gonna be a lot of links in the show notes to anything you mentioned. Send me all those links also.

For anyone who's new and hasn't heard, we have a hotel booking service at All The Hacks for like those five-star hotels. Can hook you up with usually an upgrade, a property credit, late check-in, early check-out, free breakfast, all that stuff. So you just go to allthehacks.com/upgrades and you can see that.

A couple other hotel things. So one, this is new for me, normally we stay at hotels. And we're never really the Airbnb type. And then we started traveling with a family and we were like, okay, we got two adults, two kids and an au pair. We were looking at hotels.

One of the challenges in Europe is that a lot of hotels have capacity limits on rooms. I do know that if you are booking a chain, whether it's Hyatt or Accor or Marriott or Hilton, I think almost all of them have a program in Europe, including some of the hotels in London where you get 50% off the second room.

So definitely inquire. It's not just if you book two rooms, but if you book two rooms and your kids are coming, they give you a deal for that second room. That's true in a lot of other places. And then we booked an Airbnb and I didn't know this, but you can negotiate Airbnbs.

And so we saw a place, we're planning it pretty last minute. And we were like, hey, you have six days free. We're gonna be there for those exact six days you have free. We're coming in a week. Your place is a little nicer than some of the places we're looking at and it's a little more expensive.

If you could bring it down 25%, we'd book it. And we did that for London. We're also going to Paris and both places brought the price down about 20% and we booked it right away. And so we were able to save 20%. Normally, I think the idea of staying at a hotel where you got free breakfast and there's a lot more things figured out was easier.

But it turns out if you're two adults, two kids and an au pair, we just couldn't find a hotel setup that worked, especially over the holidays, where we would be able to have a place that we could hang out while the kids are sleeping in the rooms. For the next little bit, it's gonna be hard for us.

- Can I give a recommendation for anyone who is looking for something like that and wants to do almost like a service department? - I don't even know what that means, but of course you can. - It's like an apart hotel, I would say. So there's this brand here in London called the Cheval Residences.

You can get pretty good deals there if you book in advance. So you just have to kind of like play it out. But they've got one property that overlooks Tower Bridge and they have apartments. You can get like two bedroom. I think they have three bedroom as well. And they're great with kids because they can provide anything you might need, like cribs, high chairs.

You can accommodate stuff if you wanna bring your pets. Anything you basically need, they can give it to you. And then this place is extra special because if you get one of the Riverside places, you wake up and you go on your little balcony and overlook Tower Bridge. It's amazing.

Personally for us, we try to dissuade people from Airbnb just because of the ethical side of it in London. We're having a really bad housing crisis here. So I usually try to push people to apart hotels and with families who need like the multiple rooms off of the living area, Cheval usually is like a really good option for that.

And it's really nice. - Well, I apologize for contributing to your London problems. - It's okay. It's a tricky one. You're not the only people who have struggled with that. And that's part of where Airbnb has flourished is for stuff like that. So it's not to shame you or anything, but I try to give alternatives.

- And on the topic of kids, what's the vibe of bringing your kids around? People are annoyed by it. Are they cool? What should we be thinking? Can you give my wife breastfeed in public? I know London's a little conservative. - She can definitely breastfeed in public. That's totally fine.

You know, I don't have kids, so I can't like fully speak for families who are going out in the world all the time in London with children. Most of the time though, as long as the kids are fairly well-behaved and they're feeling okay, it's pretty doable, especially during the day.

Like you can take the kids anywhere during the day. All restaurants will take them. They'll accommodate them. All of the sites and everything, obviously. And like we talked about pubs, you can take the kids to the pubs during the day as well. So generally the reception is good. And I have been told by parent friends that the reception is better in London than like New York and some of the other major cities that they've been in.

- Well, I am incredibly excited for this trip. I have one last thing before we wrap. We're not gonna put this in the show notes. You've already given a lot of great recommendations, but is there one like best kept secret that you were like, I don't really want anyone to know that this restaurant is here, it's my favorite, it's not crowded yet or bar or something that we can leave right at the end of the episode only for the people that are still here?

- Yeah, okay. There's a cocktail bar that's called Lounge Bohemia and it is in Shoreditch. I had passed it a million times. It's just like a very random door. I would say it's speakeasy vibes. I'd pass it a million times over my nine, 10 years here and someone eventually was like, "Oh, you've never been there.

"You should go try it." And I was like, "Okay." And I randomly went in there one day and it's this tiny, tiny little basement bar that has like 10 seats and they do very experimental cocktails. Basically the guy who runs it who ironically does not drink. So his wife tests all the cocktails for him but he runs this bar as like a tester for the work that he does for like corporate events and things like that.

And he gets hard to do these like crazy, crazy, huge special events, really high end. But you can go to Lounge Bohemia and you can do a tasting menu and it's I believe five different cocktails that are like off the wall. Like one of the cocktails I had, it was called a Canadian breakfast and they brought out this little tray that had a little pan of blueberry pancakes and then they lit a fire and like cooked the pancakes and then you mixed up the jam and that was like part of the drink and then you put the pancakes in the drink.

It's just crazy stuff like that. One of the cocktails was called Winnie the Pooh and it has an actual bee on the side of it. I'm vegetarian so I made sure that no bees were hurt in the making of this cocktail. They're residual bees from, I forget what he was, he said it was exactly, that would have just gone to waste anyway actually.

But it's an actual bee that sits on the side of the drink and you can eat it. So it's like off the wall, crazy, crazy stuff. Because it's so small, you do need to book ahead but if you're like a cocktail connoisseur who really likes off the wall, crazy stuff, that's like the best place to go.

- I feel like you just described me. I'm like, I love crazy, weird cocktail. The only twist that would make it like hit every mark for me is if it was also a spicy cocktail. But I'm sure there is one there that meets that criteria. So. - Yes, definitely.

- Okay, so I've been fortunate to peruse a ton of your content but where can everyone here go to plan their next trip and get all the stuff you're putting out? - So everything is under the name Love & London. We have over 300 YouTube videos at this point talking about how to take the tube, where to eat, things like that, mistakes not to make.

We also have a website. We've got Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest and email lists. So there's tons of free content and then we've got a few of our paid guides like the itineraries that we talked about which are all linked on the website. - And there's a one-on-one guide that's also free that I'll link to in the show notes, which was great.

Like just kind of high level overview. One thing that I think is the like crown jewel of the content that you sell is so much of my trip planning is usually done in Google Maps. And we're just really far behind on this trip because we planned it a week ago.

And in the guide, it was like, click here, boom, here is your Google Map. And I was like, what? So I now have this like better than I normally would lay out like with icons of this is a restaurant, this is a bar, that kind of stuff. And I think that that is undersold on your website because I think you could just sell for maybe even the same price, the Google Map of it.

So that was my favorite feature is that now I have Google Maps loaded on my phone where I'm like, when we're out and about, we know what we're doing and we could find cool spots. So thank you for putting those in there. - Yeah, of course. - Make sure everyone else knows about them.

- Cool, I added that 'cause I was like, I feel like when I get stuff like this, I'm always just adding it to Google Maps anyway. So I'm like, why don't I just do it for them? So it made sense. Also, we do have something for your listeners. We do have a special discount that can be used in the Love in London shop, which is where you can buy all of our digital travel guides.

So we will put a little discount code for 10% off the entire shop in the show notes or we'll put it somewhere. - Yeah, we'll put it in the show notes. Yeah, we'll put it in the show notes so you can find that and everybody can check that out.

Thank you for doing that. And even more, thank you for being here. I'm so excited about this trip and we have a lot of stuff to figure out. - Good, no, it's great. Thank you so much for having me, I appreciate it. - I wish I could say that I'm eating a fully balanced diet every day, but the reality is that I am definitely not.

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I just wanna thank you, Quick, for listening to and supporting the show. Your support is what keeps this show going. To get all of the URLs, codes, deals, and discounts from our partners, you can go to allthehacks.com/deals. So please consider supporting those who support us. Okay, we just got back from our trip last night and I wanna do a quick recap of some of the awesome highlights, things we did, share some stories, as well as talk to you about how to get the best deals on your trip to London, especially when it comes to using your points on flights.

So, first off, I just have to say the trip was awesome, but wow, doing a trip like that with kids is so much different. This isn't the first time we've traveled with kids, but our other trips have been to stay with family or go to the beach and not to explore a city.

So, I've been saying that there's this whole parenting episode on the horizon that I wanna do with Amy, and now that this trip is over, we're gonna try to get that done soon and we'll talk all about what it's like to travel with kids because it is very different.

So, stay tuned for that, and until then, let me talk about London. First off, it was so amazing to be there in the winter. I don't think any season does the holidays like London. There are holiday decorations everywhere and strung lights above every other street downtown. It really felt like a magical place, and I'm pretty sure another holiday trip will be there in our future.

I'll run through a bunch of the things we did, and I'll try not to repeat anything Jess and I already discussed. First off, we ended up staying at an Airbnb because with two kids that go to bed early and an au pair with us, it was gonna be two to three times the price to do a hotel, and while we definitely missed some of the amenities of a hotel, the ability to do laundry, have a place to hang out while the kids were asleep, and just generally having more space outweighed what a hotel had to offer for this trip.

That said, we certainly had quite the Airbnb experience. First off, I learned all about Airbnb negotiating, which I didn't realize was a thing until I just tried it myself. Since we were booking last minute, I figured why not reach out to the more expensive, nicer place and see if they would offer a discount of 20 to 25%.

Sure enough, it worked, and I actually since have talked to a few hosts who've told me that anywhere from 20 to 50% of the people staying with them try to negotiate, and they often make special offers. So if you're booking an Airbnb, definitely ask if you can get a deal and you might get rewarded.

We actually spent a week in Paris before London. I won't cover that in this episode, but we ended up getting a deal at both places. The person in London actually first said they'd only give us a deal if we booked off Airbnb and wired the money, but I didn't wanna take that risk.

I didn't wanna lose the Airbnb protections, which became very important. So we ended up settling on a discount a little bit less, closer to 15%, but it ended up being the best move. So when we got to London, we checked into what we thought was gonna be an incredible place.

It was in an amazing location near Paddington Station and Hyde Park. It had great reviews, but it was pretty downhill from there. We checked in and it was almost 100 degrees upstairs in all the bedrooms, and the radiators were all so hot that you would burn yourself if you touch them, which is hard to explain to a toddler who loves to run around and touch everything.

So we tried to open the windows to cool it down, and in one bedroom, the windows were actually screwed shut, and the other bedroom had zero windows and zero ventilation. The carpets upstairs were also stained a bit. The dishes weren't that clean. Some of the glasses in the cabinets had lipstick on them, and then there was just this smell that was really hard to put your finger on because they had those little fragrance diffusers in every single room of the house trying to cover it up.

The funny thing was that any one of those issues probably wasn't a big enough issue to send a message to the host about, but the next day we realized that the downstairs area, which was the living room and the kitchen, could not be heated. It was one of the coldest times ever.

In fact, when we showed up, there was snow all over the place. So when we go to the thermostat and it says it's 86, but it actually feels like it's closer to 60, and there wasn't a single way to get the heat kicked in, it wasn't the most comfortable time.

So I didn't actually know what to do in a situation like this. If it were a hotel, I'd just ask for a new room, ask for a partial refund, or get some bonus points, but for an Airbnb, it wasn't that clear. I didn't necessarily want them to send a cleaner to wash a handful of dishes.

I didn't really think they were gonna be able to clean the carpets, and obviously, if they could fix the heat, that would be great, but I messaged them and they didn't seem the most responsive to that single issue. So I called Airbnb and asked them what I should do, and they were very underwhelming.

They basically said, "Oh, well, we can call the host "and tell them about all the issues," and I said, "Well, hold off. "Let me send a message to the host." So I wrote a long message to the host that detailed out all the issues, and I said, "Hey, let me know what you think "we should do about this." After that, I responded to Airbnb and said, "Hey, I'd reached out to the host, "so if you wanna connect with them as well, "you're welcome to, because I thought it would be good "to reach out to the host first." Well, it didn't go that well, because despite that I had emailed the host first, as soon as they heard from Airbnb, they sent me a message that they were very uncomfortable with the fact that I contacted Airbnb support before letting him resolve all the issues, and that he was no longer comfortable with us staying in the home, and he would prefer that I checked out and found a new place to stay.

So, the silver lining in this, which was a very frustrating and stressful experience, was that I got to put Airbnb's air cover protection to the test. Specifically, their get what you booked guarantee, which actually says, "If at any time during your stay, "your listing isn't as advertised, "for example, the refrigerator stops working "and your host can't easily fix it, "or it has fewer bedrooms than listed, "you'll have three days to report it, "and we'll find you a similar or better home, "or we'll refund you." So my biggest concern reading that, and all the subsequent terms around it, is that it wasn't very clear whether they would find you the bigger or similar home, or refund you, and in our case, a refund wouldn't have been very helpful, because there weren't a lot of places that we could book.

Actually, there were pretty much none that were a similar size, quality, and location at that price. So, I was a bit worried when the Airbnb support rep started sending me suggestions of places they could help us rebook, because we had booked a nice three-bedroom place, and all of their suggestions were studios, or one bedrooms with nowhere near enough room.

However, when I sent them the three-bedroom place that I found that had all the same amenities, was centrally located, had a crib, had laundry in the unit, they actually created a coupon for me that brought the price down by 50%, so we didn't have to pay any extra. So, two days into our six-night stay, we moved into an amazing place, and wow, was it an upgrade from the previous place we stayed at.

It was in an incredible location in Covent Garden, and it was such a nice place. Funny enough, we had a similar issue with the heat going out, but this host had a very different attitude, and had six heaters delivered before the kids' next nap time, and scheduled an emergency plumber to get things fixed within 24 hours.

But the real highlight was the Harry Potter-themed kids' room. I really can't describe how cool it was, so if you're curious, check out the link in the show notes. It had a train-themed bunk bed, a custom bookshelf that looked like a bunch of suitcases, a hollow tree with a reading area inside it, and a mini castle on one wall.

I definitely have some inspiration for a future kids' room, but if you're ever in London, and this place is in your budget, I highly recommend it. It was discounted 35% because it was last minute, and then Airbnb covered half of the rest, so you probably won't get it for almost 70% off, but I will say that it was amazing, and we would love to stay there again.

And even if that place isn't the right fit, I definitely recommend staying in the Covent Garden area. It was so central to so many things, and especially when you have kids, it means you don't lose all those short, precious hours between naps on the train. Okay, so that was maybe more than you asked for, but I thought it was worth sharing because one of my biggest fears with Airbnb is that you'll get stuck in a place that doesn't quite match the photos or the reviews, and you won't have a good alternative.

Well, I now feel a lot better having put the air cover policy to the test. That said, going forward, I will put an even higher emphasis on reading those reviews, and once the kids are a bit older, I think hotels will definitely be back on the table, at least for trips in cities.

As for the rest of our time in London, let me share some highlights. When it comes with transportation, being able to use Apple Pay or a tap-to-pay credit card to ride the Tube or a bus was so great. Coming off the heels of Paris, where we were carrying around 10 packs of paper Metro tickets that got demagnetized by being too close to our cell phones, it was so convenient and easy.

I did take a few Ubers for meetings, but if you wanna order a London cab, the app Free Now was what everyone said to use and was so easy. In fact, with an early morning flight and a new Airbnb that wasn't that close to the Heathrow trains, we opted for a cab to get to the airport.

Leaving at 6 a.m., it only took 40 minutes, and it was 73 pounds versus 40 pounds on the Elizabeth Line or 75 pounds on the Heathrow Express. Also, speaking of paying for things, there might be somewhere you need cash in London, but I never found it. Every restaurant, food stall, Christmas market vendor, and convenience store had a tap-to-pay credit card terminal that made the cash I took from the ATM completely useless, though given the current exchange rate, those 200 pounds might be worth a lot more next time we visit.

As for activities, I'll review a few things. First, the London Transport Museum. Our daughter absolutely loved it, so if you have kids, I'd recommend it, but as someone who's pretty fascinated by transportation, I was a little underwhelmed. Hamleys, which is a gigantic toy store, was similarly loved by my daughter and even fun for the adults, but if you're going during the holidays and you wanna see Santa, you do need a reservation.

We also checked out the Natural History Museum, which was really awesome. I don't think we had the time to do it justice, but it's a free museum and it was really impressive. We also went around the corner to do a science-themed afternoon tea at the Ampersand Hotel, which was so much fun, and while they're pretty expensive, I think that if we had planned things a little more, we might've even done a second afternoon tea, and despite the kids' theme, Amy, Marta, our au pair, and I all really enjoyed it as well.

As for food, I have a few recommendations. It is hard to put anything higher on the list than Dishoom, which has a few amazing Indian restaurants in London with fantastic bars, delicious chai, and ridiculously good food. Specifically, I would definitely check out the House Black Doll, the Chicken Ruby, and the Sali Bhoti.

They were so delicious. In fact, Dishoom was so good for dinner that we literally came back the next morning for breakfast, where you should not skip out on the double bacon naan roll, and then we came back again for breakfast a few days later. It is just so good, so definitely check it out.

We didn't have a reservation any of the three times we went, but if you wanna go without waiting at dinnertime, I definitely suggest making one. We also went to Borough Market one day and ate all kinds of delicious food from the food vendors. If you find yourself on the northwest side of Hyde Park, Norma's Malaysian restaurant was amazing, and the Mitre Lancaster Gate Pub was a perfect spot for a pub dinner.

Amy and I did have one dinner out without the kids at Ave Mario, which was such a fun place for a dinner with great food, but the Silk Handkerchiefs pasta dish I had down the street at Bancon the night before might've been one of the best pasta dishes I have ever had.

Amy wasn't feeling great that night, so I had a solo dinner at the bar, and it was so good that I wish we had one more night so I could take her back. Finally, that same night, I snuck out on my own to check out Opium, the cocktail bar that Jess recommended, and it was awesome, definitely suggest heading there.

I also tried to go to the Barbary, but they had zero room for walk-ins, so that didn't happen, but the Seven Dials Market around the corner is a fantastic alternative. It's like an indoor street market with a couple dozen food vendors with cuisines from every corner of the globe.

My favorites were the bao from Yum Bun and the chai from Chai Guys, but I didn't get to try as many things as I wanted. So I think that covers my London recap, and if you're not excited about a trip to London at this point, I'm really not sure why you're still listening, but I think you should be excited because it was so much fun, and I'm already looking forward to going back, and we literally just got home yesterday.

So as for getting there, let's talk about flights. You can get to London from 33 different cities in the US, and almost all of those flights are to Heathrow, though a few of them are to Gatwick, so if you're searching on Google Flights, make sure to put both airports as your destination, and those flights are across seven different carriers, but if you're willing to change planes in Canada or Europe, then you could probably add another two dozen airlines to that list.

So what are the tactics? Because our dates were pretty specific, I started doing my search on point.me, which, as I've said in the past, is $1 for your first month on the standard plan if you use the code ALLTHEHACKS, but they actually sent me an email for the holidays saying that the next 25 people that wanna give it a try can use ALLTHEHACKS for a free 24-hour pass.

Now, if your dates aren't as flexible, I do tend to like searching on the airline websites more or using a tool called Seatspy, which lets you look at a calendar to look at more dates at once to try to find the best deals, but here's the summary for London, and this applies to Europe a little bit as well.

First, while British Airways and Virgin Atlantic are great airlines, the taxes on their award flights can be so expensive. For business class, we're talking over $1,000 round trip per person just in taxes. It is a lot less in economy where you can actually find really great deals. For example, on Virgin, you can get to London from the US for 12,500 to 15,000 points per person each way, so if you're doing economy, it could be worth checking out Virgin or British Airways.

All that said, if you wanna fly business and Virgin or British Airways are the only options, even with taxes at $1,500 a person, it's probably gonna be a better deal than paying for business class with cash. It's just not gonna be as good a deal as what you might find with the following options, which is what we did.

I'll start with American, which is a great option, and it's a built transfer partner, with round trip awards costing as little as 25 to 30,000 points each way in economy and 57,500 in business, and as long as you're booking on American planes and not British Airways, which is one of their partners, the taxes on their flights is pretty reasonable.

For Star Alliance, you'll probably be flying on United unless you're changing planes in Europe, but you can book on any of the Star Alliance carriers. If you book on United, it can be as low as 30,000 miles each way in economy, 45,000 in premium economy, and 60,000 in business, but that same 60,000 point flight in business on United can actually be booked with Turkish Air, which is a built or Capital One transfer partner for 45,000 points.

In fact, that is exactly what we did. I found four seats available in business for 60,000 points each way on United, and then set up a Turkish Air account and called them to book it. The other great thing about Turkish is you can actually book the award before you transfer the points, so you can be confident you're getting exactly what you want.

It's a bit frustrating because you have to book on the phone, which is a bit of a pain, but I ended up saving about 60,000 points on those four tickets, so it was definitely worth the phone call. Also, no matter where you book that United flight, the taxes and fees are pretty reasonable at a few hundred dollars a person in business and even less in economy.

The last option, and one of my favorites, is booking with Air France or KLM's Flying Blue, which happens to be a transfer partner of Chase, Amex, Cap One, Citi, and Built, so chances are you probably have a way to get your points to their program. On top of that, they have great availability to Europe, and both the miles needed and the taxes and fees are pretty reasonable, not to mention they frequently have transfer bonuses when you move miles over.

For flights to Europe, it's gonna be as little as 25,000 points each way in economy and 55,000 in business. For our trip, the exact flights we wanted, which were nonstop from SFO to Paris in business, were actually 75,000 points plus $195 in taxes. However, since there was a 25% transfer bonus to Amex, we only needed 60,000 Amex points per person to do it, so we booked SFO to Paris nonstop on Air France for 60,000 Amex points that we transferred to Air France and paid $195 per person in taxes and fees, and then to get home, we booked London to SF nonstop on United in business for 45,000 Capital One points that we transferred to Turkish Air plus $302 per person in taxes and fees.

So we booked four tickets, but per passenger, it was 105,000 points plus $500 in taxes to fly nonstop business class round trip to Europe. And when I looked at booking those flights nonstop in business with cash, it was about $7,000 per person, which means a value of a little over 6 cents per point, which is pretty damn good.

One other thing to share is about bringing a lap infant. While on domestic flights, they're free, it is a totally different situation internationally. Depending on the airline, the cost can vary widely. For some airlines, it's a fixed number of miles, and for others, you have to pay 10 to 25% of the full fare cost of that business class ticket.

So that's the $7,000 ticket that we never would have bought. On Air France, it was the latter at 10% of a full fare business ticket. So we actually had to pay $643, which seems crazy, but it almost seemed crazier to spend the miles and the dollars to get a six-month-old, her own seat in business class.

For booking the United flight, the cost of her seat was actually very different depending on how we booked it. If we'd done it on United, it would've been 10% of the fare, but it was capped at $250. Had we booked it on Air Canada, it would've just been 2,500 miles, but on Turkish, it was 10% of the adult miles, so 4,500 miles in our case, plus taxes and fees, which for us was $88.

Also note that most of these sites don't make it easy to book a lap infant online, so we had to call Air France and Turkish to do it manually. And fun hack, as soon as I found the availability I wanted on Air France, I wanted to book it quickly, but it was too late for the US reservations office to be open, and it was too early for the one in France.

So I used Google Voice, and I called the Tokyo Air France office because it was open, and we were able to get things booked right then. But this hack isn't just for when offices are closed and you need to make a booking. It is also great for when lines are busy in the US.

So when there's major weather issues or delays in the US and calling United, American, or Delta has you stuck on long wait times, try calling the office in London, Tokyo, or any other country around the world, and you can usually get through right away. Just make sure to use a service like Google Voice so the call isn't that expensive.

Okay, so that's flights, but I do wanna briefly talk about booking hotels with points, even though we stayed at an Airbnb. The short version is that there are so many options at every price point that I feel good you can find something with your points, but because there are so many hotels in London and prices are competitive, you might actually be better off saving your points for flights and just paying cash.

However, if you do wanna use points, I'll share a few things. First, if you already have your points in a hotel program, then you'll probably just be using those and searching from their site, and you probably are pretty familiar. If not, I think the only real way to get a good deal in London, at least on the luxury side of the spectrum, is to transfer Chase or BuiltPoints and bill with Hyatt.

So I would start just searching straight on the Hyatt site. However, if you want a great map of all the points hotels options in London, I'll put it in the show notes. I think it's a little out of date, but it's a good starting point. And I'll also put a link in the show notes to a few articles I liked that specifically went through a bunch of London hotel options at different points budgets.

And if you're booking for a family, you should know that a lot of hotels have max capacity limits in Europe. Sometimes it's two, sometimes it's three people. So definitely make sure that when you're searching, you put the right number of guests in your search. In general, some of the best points options for families are Club Carlson, which lets you book premium or bigger rooms for not too many points.

Marriott, Hilton, and IHG are the most likely to have rooms with three plus person capacity. And some of the Hyatt hotels, like the Churchill and the Andaz, have some large rooms or suites that you can book for points that have larger capacities. Finally, if you're not gonna use points, two tips.

One, first, if you're looking for luxury hotels, definitely check out the All The Hacks Luxury Upgrade Program. You can find it at allthehacks.com/upgrade, where through a partnership I set up, we can get you free upgrades, free breakfast, late checkout, and a property credit at hotels in London like the Connaught, the Ham Yard, the Four Seasons, and dozens more.

And this, by the way, applies to almost any other luxury hotel in the world. Second, check out @hotel on Instagram and send them a DM. They sometimes have ridiculously good deals on hotels because of the fact that requiring you to DM them makes their access private, which means they can offer rates better than what you see on hotel websites or sites like booking.com.

(upbeat music) Hopefully that helps you with hotels on your trip. And I think that covers everything for this episode. I am so curious to hear what you all think about this one, because I've never done a city or country-specific travel episode. So I would love any or all feedback so I know whether to keep doing them, what cities to prioritize, or if there's anything else I could do to make them better.

Finally, happy holidays to everyone. I hope you have a wonderful time celebrating the holiday season with your families. I am so thankful for all your support this year, and I'll see you next week. (upbeat music) (electricity buzzing) (birds chirping)