Five gentle days at a family pace: Parliament and the wheel, the Tower and the glass floor, the free South Kensington museums, Greenwich by river boat, then the British Museum and the zoo — with a park or playground every afternoon.
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Numbered days, not dates — start it whenever you like, ideally April to June, September to October.
Parliament from the bridge, the wheel, then a riverside playground.
The free version of this stop is the walk out onto Westminster Bridge and back — the whole palace and the Elizabeth Tower only line up from out on the water, and the clock chimes on the hour. Inside is a different proposition with young children: the tower climb is 334 steps and admits nobody under eleven, tickets are released monthly and go quickly, so with a six-year-old in tow treat this as a photograph and a bridge crossing rather than a booking.
Book a timed slot, and be clear about what it buys: the time printed on the ticket is when you may join the queue, not when you board, and the rotation itself takes half an hour. It runs daily, bar Christmas Day and a short maintenance closure each January. Only under-twos ride free, and they still have to be booked on — from two years old everyone needs a child ticket. A mid-morning capsule is far emptier than a sunset one.
What makes this stretch worth an afternoon with children is Jubilee Gardens, the free enclosed playground directly under the wheel — long timber climbing frames and nets for the older two, a smaller version beside it for anyone who is not ready, open from 08:30 every day but Christmas Day. Walk east afterwards past the skaters in the concrete undercroft and the second-hand book stalls under Waterloo Bridge.
Overnight
Garden squares and plane trees, quiet after dark, and central in the way that matters here: the British Museum is five minutes on foot and Russell Square sits on the Piccadilly line, which runs to Heathrow without a change — worth a great deal on the day you arrive with luggage and two tired children. Coram's Fields, seven acres of playground that no adult may enter without a child, is a few streets north. One thing to settle early: most London hotel rooms sleep two, so search specifically for family rooms or an apartment rather than assuming a room can absorb a third and fourth bed.
A castle, the bridge's glass floor, a lawn, then lunch stalls.
Walk in and go straight to the Crown Jewels while everyone else is still photographing the ravens — that queue is shortest in the first hour and never gets shorter again. The Yeoman Warder tours leaving from just inside the gate are included with entry and are the best hour here for children, being mostly executions and bad jokes; the first one goes at 10:00, or 10:45 on Sundays and Mondays outside the summer, when the gates themselves open later. Book a timed slot, because dates do sell out.
Crossing the bridge costs nothing. The Exhibition is the ticket, and it buys the two high walkways with their glass floor 42 m above the traffic, then the Victorian engine rooms on the south bank. Open daily from 09:30 with last entry at 17:00 — check the site for the handful of closure days before you build a morning around it. Lie down on the glass and look up: that is the photograph, and it costs nothing extra.
A free lawn on the south bank with the bridge filling the sky above it, and the run-around between two ticketed stops. It is also where most postcard photographs of Tower Bridge are taken from, so get that out of the way while everyone eats what you carried.
Check the day before you build lunch around it: the market is shut on Mondays, trades 10:00 to 17:00 from Tuesday to Friday, opens an hour earlier on Saturday and closes early, at 16:00, on Sunday. Feed everyone from the stalls instead of looking for a table — the toastie and doughnut queues move, and four people choosing separately is the whole point of the place.
Overnight
Two free museums, then the pirate ship in Kensington Gardens.
Free and open daily, though it does close a few days a year — three at Christmas and one gala day in October — so check the site rather than assume. Book the free timed ticket anyway. There are three ways in: the Central Entrance off Cromwell Road, reached by a step-free ramp through the East Gate, plus Exhibition Road and Queen's Gate — and the queues are rarely the same length at all three, so look before you join one. The blue whale skeleton hanging in the main hall and the dinosaur gallery are what six-to-elevens actually came for; do those first and browse afterwards.
Also free, also open daily, and here the free ticket must genuinely be booked in advance rather than merely recommended. Wonderlab upstairs is the one gallery you pay for and the one that will hold a small child for two hours; a day pass starts around £13.50 and costs less booked ahead than at the desk. Everything under it, from the Apollo command module to the flight gallery, is included with the free entry.
Twenty-five minutes north on foot through Kensington Gardens, and free: a 17 m galleon beached in sand, a treehouse, a waterplay area guarded by a crocodile, musical posts and talk tubes, and a redesigned corner for the youngest. Only adults accompanying a child of twelve or under are admitted, apart from a half-hour window before 10:00 — which is exactly why the place feels the way it does. Closing moves with the season: 19:45 from May to August, 18:45 in April and September, 17:45 in March and early October, with last entry a quarter of an hour before. It queues once it fills.
Overnight
Downriver by boat: a clipper, the meridian, a hill to roll down.
Times are a suggestion — eastbound river-bus sailings call at Westminster Pier through the day and take about fifty minutes down to Greenwich, nearer an hour at weekends, so there is nothing to book but there is a morning to plan around. Buy child tickets on the operator's site or app before you go: they run up to a third cheaper than the pier, and they are the only way the half-price five-to-fifteen fare applies at all. Tapping a contactless card at the pier charges the full adult fare for a child, and the daily cap that protects you on buses and the Tube does not apply on the river. Under-fives go free. Sit outside at the back.
The sole surviving tea clipper, lifted three metres off the ground so you can stand underneath the Muntz-metal sheathing looking up at it — which is the part children remember. Open daily from 10:00 with last entry at 16:15, later through the summer, shut for three days at Christmas; under-fours free. If you are climbing to the Observatory as well, the combined Greenwich day pass costs less than the two tickets bought separately.
Covered, two minutes from the ship, and open every day from 10:00 to 17:30 — which makes it the reliable lunch on a day where everything else has a ticket and an hour. The food stalls at the far end are the reason to come, and they are cheap enough to let all four of you eat something different.
The Prime Meridian courtyard, where you stand with a foot in each hemisphere, is inside the paid area — so budget for tickets rather than turning up expecting to photograph the line for nothing. Open daily 10:00 to 17:00 with last entry 16:15, staying open to 19:00 through July and August and to 18:00 in September. The climb up from the market is short but genuinely steep with small legs, so allow for it — and if the weather turns, the National Maritime Museum at the bottom of the hill is free.
Free, with pedestrian gates open 06:00 to 21:00, and the statue terrace immediately below the Observatory wall hands you the same view of the river and the towers at Canary Wharf without a ticket. The grass slope under it is the best rolling hill in London. Go home on the DLR from Cutty Sark station, about twenty minutes to Bank — there is no driver, so the front seats are the ones to run for.
Overnight
The British Museum with a trail, the zoo, then boats and swings.
Free, open daily from 10:00 and late on Fridays, closed only for three days at Christmas; a booked free ticket saves you the weekend queue at the gate. Head for the Families Desk before anything else — it runs 10:00 to 12:30 and again from 13:15 to 16:30, lending out activity backpacks and explorer trails for younger children, and two hours with a trail beats four hours without one. The Egyptian mummies and the Sutton Hoo helmet are the rooms nobody wants to leave.
Open daily, with only a handful of closure days a year — check the site — and a dated ticket bought online is the only sensible way in during a school holiday. From Bloomsbury take the Tube to Camden Town and walk the last fifteen minutes along the Regent's Canal towpath, which turns the transfer into part of the day rather than a gap in it.
Free, with pedestrian gates open 05:00 to 21:00. Hanover Gate on the west side is where the playground sits, next to the children's boating lake; rowing boats and pedalos run from late March to October, opening at 11:00 on weekdays and 10:00 at weekends and coming off the water at 17:30 in April and May, 18:30 from June to September. If the boats are the thing your two want, do the park before the zoo rather than after it.
Overnight
Markets and museum cafés, and picnics in the parks — nothing that needs a booking
Oyster or contactless, buses over the Tube; under-11s travel free with an adult, but an 11-year-old already pays a child fare
Gentle — two to four stops a day, and a park or playground every afternoon
Two adults and two children aged roughly six to eleven
Spring or early autumn: English school holidays fill late July and August, plus half-term weeks in late May and late October
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Every itinerary here is written as a real plan, then checked stop by stop before it is published: walkable distances, opening seasons, honest travel times, and two to four stops a day rather than a checklist. Nothing on this page is sponsored or paid for.
Days are numbered, not dated, so a plan never goes stale — open it in the app and it lands on real dates you can change. Coordinates come from Wikidata, and photos from Wikimedia Commons under the licence credited beside each image.
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More on where the coordinates and photos come from, and what to re-check before you go.
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