We certainly have started to get a thrill out of traveling on a budget and we wanted to share how we had a 4 day / 3 night break in London on a budget a couple of weeks ago. The reason we wanted to go to London was to go to an attraction Kidzania and we created everything around that.
We are going to give you a breakdown of what we spent and how we did it, hopefully inspiring you to travel on a budget especially as staycations this year are ridiculously overpriced.
Let’s start with the total we spent: £584.47
Here’s the breakdown:
Petrol- £75.00
Hotel – £93.97
Hotel Parking – £0
Kizania- £110.00
Attraction Parking- £12.00
Underground Tickets- £38.00 x 2 days
Food for packed lunches- £25.00
Food out and about over 4 days- £192.50
Here’s how we did it part 1:
Hotel
Let’s start with the hotel, Travelodge have been doing some fantastic nights away for £29.00 a night. We actually went away last year for a few nights in Nottinghamshire when the eat-out to help-out was on.
We managed to find the same £29 a night deal in London which was just 3 miles away from Kidzania (our main location target). We started at the London Park Royal for 3 nights, one of the staff members was so very helpful on our arrival and gifted us the car parking which would have cost us £18. This hotel is also outside of the congestion charge area.
An amazing bonus was that we were a 5 minute walk from the nearest underground which meant we could go into the centre of London.
Food for packed lunches
We initially spent £25.00 at our own local supermarket on bread, ham, cheese, crisps, fruit, drinks, treats, UHT milk, mini cereal boxes and snacks. Our plan was to have breakfast and packed lunch on each day meaning we would only need to fund one meal a day. We got into the mindset of camping but in a hotel room and we are out most of the day so we only need to be at the hotel for sleep. It happened to be very hot the weekend we went away and so our plans are to take a cool box with us the next time we do this.
If you are buying food on the go we noticed from our break away that the prices didn’t differ much in the chains like Tesco, Asda, Costa, Boots etc.
What we couldn’t change:
The attraction tickets, parking and underground tickets were all set in stone, but we accepted this and we adapted our break so that the other days were filled with adventure. We will go into that in how we did it part 2 further down.
Kidzania
What an amazing experience this was and highly recommend it to anyone with children under 14 years old. It’s a city run by kids and the idea is that they need to work for their money which is loaded onto their cards, they can spend their money on non-work-related activities or in the small gift shop at the end.
Our children enjoyed being police officers, firefighters, nursery nurses, hotel staff, radio hosts, flight crew, window cleaners, delivery drivers, shop assistants and more.
Here’s how we did it part 2:
Two of the days were spent traveling into the centre of London and there is so much to do without spending money on attractions. As you know we are Geocachers, so this played a big part in our adventures and made us find out about London in a completely different way.
We managed to visit, Trafalgar Square, Leicester Square, China Town, Covent Gardens, Hyde Park, Buckingham Palace and Marble Arch.
Let’s start with Trafalgar Square because we loved visiting there, not only because of the lions but because there was so much to do here. We loved the art installation which actually had a webcam in the drone for us to find ourselves on, it was a part of a Geocache. If you have no idea about Geocaching, the fun never ends and it’s almost like a worldwide treasure hunt, download the app for free. We also completed an adventure lab around the area as well as find traditional Geocaches. Adventure labs require you to be close to the clues to solve them in a sequence and after you’ve solved 5 areas you claim the find, it means you find out about the history and have to be observant.
We found GC7B73B Virtual Reward : The Fourth Plinth, GC5A7DW Trafalgar Square and Trafalgar Adventure Lab Cache.
We walked onto Leceister Square and had our lunch here, it was Sunday and it was rather quiet so we had plenty of choice on where to sit. We started another Adventure Lab here which took us all around the West End and ending in Covent Gardens, it was such a fun walk and the kids really enjoyed discovering everything.
Believe it or not we started another Adventure Lab when we got to Covent Gardens. This trail took us to London’s oldest restaurant as well as a hidden ear in the wall which was a cast of an artist who hid his ears around London back in history (we would have never noticed this if it wasn’t for Geocaching). We even got a bonus cache to go and physically find which was so much fun in the middle of a busy London.
On the second day we didn’t do as much Geocaching but we got to see the sites and had a rare treat of seeing the Queens Guards on horses going from Buckingham Palace through Hyde Park. We were pretty tired after all the Geocaching adventures but it didn’t stop us from having fun.
We were pretty impressed with how much we got to see on a small budget but had so much fun, the kids are still talking about it now.
Looking back we believe we could have saved more money on eating out by planning where we would like to eat in advance, it takes a little more organisation but it will be worth it. Having three kids you never know what you might have to buy on the go but we can safely say we didn’t hold back, for example when we were in Hyde Park we all enjoyed an expensive ice cream. What we are trying to say is that we didn’t feel like we were holding ourselves back to purposefully stick to a budget but be mindful on our spending.
We would love to know if this has inspired you to travel on a budget, do let us know where you end up. It is possible to travel this way if you find a hobby like Geocaching, go to local free attractions and explore the local history.
I wonder where our Geocaching adventures will take us next.
The Gilmours