5 Days in London Itinerary

Three days in London gets you the greatest hits, but it leaves you running. This 5 days in London itinerary is where the city finally exhales. You get the icons and a full day out of town and a couple of slow mornings where you sit with a coffee and watch a street market wake up.

This is the plan I give friends who have the luxury of a fifth and sixth night. It keeps the classic core but adds breathing room: a river boat to Greenwich, an afternoon lost on Portobello Road, a proper West End show, and a long pub dinner by the water with nowhere else to be.

This 5 days in London itinerary front-loads the must-sees over three brisk days, then opens up: day 4 is a half- or full-day trip (Greenwich, Hampton Court, Kew or Windsor), and day 5 is unhurried neighbourhood time in Notting Hill, Shoreditch or Camden, plus the evenings and meals that turn a sightseeing trip into a real one.

Quick Answer: How to Spend 5 Days in London

Spend your first three days on the classic London core — Westminster and the South Bank, the Tower and the City, museums and royal parks. Use day 4 for one day trip by train or river boat, and day 5 for slow neighbourhood wandering and markets. With five days you can see the icons without sprinting, and still have two real evenings for a show and a riverside pub.

The structure I lean on is simple: get the headline sights done while your legs and your enthusiasm are fresh, then earn yourself a change of pace. Days 1 to 3 below are deliberately a summary — for the hour-by-hour version of the classic core, including how to ride the Tube and which order to do Westminster in, follow my three-day London route and treat this guide as the “and then what” once you’ve got more time.

At a Glance: Your 5 Days in London Itinerary

Day	Area / Focus	Highlights	Day-trip option
1	Westminster & South Bank	Westminster Abbey, Big Ben, London Eye, Southbank walk	—
2	The City & the river	Tower of London, Tower Bridge, Borough Market, St Paul’s	—
3	Museums & royal parks	British Museum, Hyde Park, V&A or Natural History Museum	—
4	Day trip	Pick one: Greenwich, Hampton Court, Kew or Windsor	Greenwich (by boat), Hampton Court, Kew, Windsor
5	Neighbourhoods & markets	Notting Hill, Shoreditch or Camden; West End show	—

A quick orientation note before we start: London is huge, but the tourist core is more walkable than it looks on a map, and the Tube fills in the gaps. I won’t re-explain fares and Oyster versus contactless here — I’ve covered that in detail in my guide to getting around London, and there’s wider context in the England transport pillar if you’re travelling beyond the capital.

Days 1–3: The Classic Core (In Brief)

These are the three days almost every first-timer should do, and I’ve written them up properly elsewhere. Here’s the brisk version so this 5 day London itinerary holds together on its own.

Day 1 — Westminster and the South Bank. Start at Westminster Abbey (entry is around £30 as of 2026, and it’s worth pre-booking), then walk past the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben, cross to the South Bank, and stroll downriver. The London Eye is here if you want the view; I’d rather spend that money elsewhere, but plenty of people love it. End in Covent Garden for an early dinner and street performers.

Day 2 — the Tower and the City. The Tower of London is the morning’s main event — give it three hours and pre-book (around £35 for adults as of 2026). Cross Tower Bridge, then it’s a short walk or one boat stop to Borough Market for lunch. Spend the afternoon between the Tate Modern, the Millennium Bridge and St Paul’s, and if you book ahead, the Sky Garden is a free alternative to paid viewing platforms.

Day 3 — museums and parks. Pick your museum based on taste, not obligation — the British Museum, the V&A and the Natural History Museum are all free, all enormous, and all impossible to “finish.” I usually suggest a focused two hours, then Hyde Park or Kensington Gardens to recover. If you want help choosing, my round-up of the London museums guide breaks them down by interest, and there’s a whole list of London for free for the gaps.

The point of keeping days 1 to 3 tight is that you’ve now banked the icons. Everything from here is the part most rushed itineraries skip — and the part you’ll actually talk about when you get home.

Day 4: Choose Your Day Trip

This is the day five gives you that three doesn’t. You can get properly out of the centre — onto a boat, into a Tudor palace, or down a tree-lined street where nobody’s in a hurry. Pick one. Doing two would just recreate the rushing you came here to avoid.

I’ve laid out four options below, roughly from easiest-and-shortest to a full day out. If none quite fit, the day trips from London pillar has the wider menu, including Bath, Oxford and the coast.

Option A: Greenwich by river boat (my default)

If you only do one of these, make it Greenwich, and get there by water. Hop on an Uber Boat by Thames Clippers river bus from a central pier like Westminster, Embankment or Tower; a single Central-and-East fare runs around £9–10 if you tap a contactless card or use the app (cheaper than buying paper at the pier), as of 2026. The journey down the Thames, past the Tower and under bridges, is the best forty minutes of sightseeing in London and it costs less than most “cruises.”

Greenwich itself is a half to full day. The Royal Observatory sits at the top of the park — you can straddle the Prime Meridian line, one foot in each hemisphere, for around £24 adult as of 2026 (open daily roughly 10am–5pm). Below it are the Cutty Sark tea clipper, the free National Maritime Museum, the grand Old Royal Naval College, and Greenwich Market for lunch. The walk up the hill to the Observatory gives you the postcard skyline view back across the river to Canary Wharf.

Why I love it: you get maritime history, a real park, a market, and a boat ride, all without leaving Greater London or buying a train ticket.

Option B: Hampton Court Palace

Henry VIII’s palace is the grandest day out on this list and the most “wow, I’m in a Tudor world” of the four. It’s about 35 to 40 minutes by South Western Railway train from London Waterloo to Hampton Court station, then a short walk over the bridge.

Tickets are roughly £27 off-peak (weekdays) and £30 peak (weekends and bank holidays) for adults as of 2026 — booking online for a weekday saves you a little. Give it most of a day: the Tudor kitchens, the state apartments, the astronomical clock, and the famous hedge maze in the gardens. One 2026 heads-up worth knowing: the main Great Gatehouse entrance has had scaffolding and entry has been re-routed via Seymour Gate, and the Mantegna Gallery is closed for the year, so check the Historic Royal Palaces site before you go. Even with that, it’s a magnificent place and far less crowded than the central sights.

Option C: Kew Gardens

Kew is the gentle one — a vast botanical garden where the agenda is “walk slowly and look at plants.” It’s reachable by the District line Tube to Kew Gardens station, which makes it the least faffy of the trips. Peak-season tickets (roughly February to October) are around £20 online on a weekday, £22 at weekends, as of 2026; off-peak winter is cheaper.

Plan on three to five hours wandering the glasshouses, the treetop walkway, and the Temperate House. It’s the best choice if you’ve got tired feet, a slower-paced travel companion, or kids who need space to run — and it pairs beautifully with a relaxed lunch. If you’re travelling as a family, my family travel guide leans into days exactly like this.

Option D: Windsor Castle

Want a proper castle, still lived-in by the Royal Family? Windsor is about 30 minutes by train from London Paddington (changing at Slough) to Windsor & Eton Central. Castle tickets run around £32 adult booked in advance, a bit more on the day, as of 2026, and it opens at 10am but is usually closed on Tuesdays and Wednesdays outside high summer — check before committing.

The State Apartments, St George’s Chapel and Queen Mary’s Dolls’ House make a satisfying half-day, and the riverside town is pleasant for lunch. Windsor also folds neatly into a wider England plan; it sits alongside the kind of stops in my Bath and Stonehenge guide day-trip guide if you find yourself wanting more historic England than London alone provides.

Day 5: Neighbourhoods and Markets

Day 5 is the one I’d protect most fiercely. No tickets, no queues, no “we have to be there by 10.” Just one neighbourhood, on foot, with a coffee in hand and time to follow a side street because it looked good. This is where London stops being a checklist and starts being a place.

Pick one of the three below to anchor your day. If you want the full character breakdown of each area before you choose, my guide to London neighborhoods for tourists goes deeper.

Notting Hill and Portobello Road

This is the classic choice and, on the right morning, it earns it. Come on a Saturday for the full Portobello Road Market — antiques at the south end, fruit and veg and street food further along, vintage clothes under the Westway flyover. Wander the pastel terraces on Lancaster Road and the quieter mews streets; duck into a café on Westbourne Grove. It does get busy and a little film-set self-aware, but it’s genuinely lovely, and the surrounding residential streets are some of the prettiest in the city.

Go early if you can. By noon on a Saturday the main drag is shoulder-to-shoulder, and the magic is in the first couple of hours.

Shoreditch and Brick Lane

If pastel houses aren’t your thing, head east instead. Shoreditch is the art-school side of London — street-art murals down every alley, independent coffee, vintage shops, and Brick Lane with its bagel shops and curry houses. Sunday is the big day here, when Brick Lane Market and the nearby Columbia Road Flower Market are both in full swing (Columbia Road runs Sunday mornings only, and it’s a riot of colour and shouting flower sellers — get there before 11am).

This is also the best part of town for a casual, excellent lunch: a salt-beef bagel from Beigel Bake on Brick Lane (open practically around the clock, a few pounds), or whatever’s good at one of the street-food yards.

Camden

Camden is the loud, slightly chaotic option, and teenagers tend to love it. The market sprawls from the Tube station down to Camden Lock and along the canal — food stalls from every cuisine, music memorabilia, leather and band T-shirts. Walk the towpath along Regent’s Canal toward Primrose Hill, climb the hill for one of the best free skyline views in London, and you’ve turned a market visit into a proper afternoon. It’s grittier and more commercial than Notting Hill, but it has real energy.

Rainy-Day and Slower-Pace Swaps

It will probably rain on at least one of your five days — that’s just London. The trick is to have indoor swaps ready so a wet morning doesn’t wreck the plan. Here’s what I reach for, and a note on timing: shoulder seasons are kinder on both weather and crowds, which my guide to the seasonal rundown gets into.

• Rain on a day-trip day? Swap Greenwich or Windsor for a museum-heavy plan, or do Kew’s glasshouses (you can shelter inside the Palm House and Temperate House for ages).
• Rain on neighbourhood day? Trade Portobello or Columbia Road for a covered market — Borough Market, or the antiques arcades inside Old Spitalfields Market near Shoreditch.
• Tired legs or a slow morning? Build in a long café breakfast, a sit-down afternoon tea, or a half-day rather than packing both halves. There’s no rule that says every day needs two activities. My England food guide is full of unhurried ideas.
• Travelling with kids or different energy levels? Kew, a river boat, and a market with street food beat a third cathedral every time.

The whole reason to spend five days rather than three is the freedom to swap. Hold the plan loosely.

Evenings and Food: Two Nights to Get Right

Three-day trips tend to collapse into the hotel by 8pm. With five days you’ve got the energy to do a couple of evenings properly, and they’re the bit you’ll remember.

A West End show

See one show. London theatre is among the best in the world, and you don’t need to overpay. The official TKTS booth in Leicester Square (the clocktower building) sells same-day seats at roughly 20–50% off, open from around 10.30am Monday to Saturday and 11am Sunday — and the same prices are now online from just after midnight each day. For the keenest deals, some theatres release a handful of cheap “day seats” (often £20–30) at the box office when it opens; you queue, but you can land front-row seats to a sold-out show for the price of a meal. Whatever you choose — a long-running musical or a sharp new play — book the show for an evening when you’ve had an easy afternoon.

A riverside pub

One night, skip the restaurant and find a Thames-side pub. The South Bank near Bankside, the stretch by Tower Bridge, or further out at Greenwich and Richmond all have old riverside pubs where you can get a pint and a plate of fish and chips or a Sunday roast and watch the boats go by. Budget around £6–7 a pint and £15–18 for a pub main as of 2026. A proper roast on a Sunday afternoon — beef, Yorkshire pudding, gravy, the works — is one of the great cheap pleasures of England.

A market dinner

For something lower-key, eat at a market. Borough Market in the early evening, the street-food yards of Shoreditch, or the stalls along Camden Lock let you graze across half a dozen cuisines for not much money. It’s casual, it’s social, and it suits the loose mood of days 4 and 5. If you’re watching the budget across the whole trip, my costs and budget guide has the numbers laid out.

Where This Fits in a Bigger Trip

If London is your whole holiday, five days is plenty and this plan fills it well. But a lot of first-timers fly into London and want to see more of the country — and five London days slot neatly onto the front of a wider loop.

From here you could carry on by train to Bath, the Cotswolds, York or beyond. My England itinerary pillar shows how the pieces fit, and the complete London guide is the hub for everything capital-specific — where to stay, how to get in from the airports, and how to plan around the seasons. Treat those two as your map; treat this article as the detailed plan for the London leg.

Final Thoughts

The difference between three days and five days in London isn’t really “more sights.” It’s permission to slow down. Three days is a sprint through the icons; five days lets you ride a boat to Greenwich, lose a morning on Portobello Road, sit through a West End show, and finish with a pint by the river while the light goes gold over the Thames.

My honest advice: don’t try to fill every hour. Bank the classic core in your first three days, give day 4 to one proper day trip, and protect day 5 for wandering. The trip you’ll talk about afterwards is almost never the famous landmark — it’s the canal-side café in Camden, the salt-beef bagel on Brick Lane, the boat ride you didn’t expect to love. Leave room for those, and five days in London will feel like exactly the right amount of time.

Research and Source Notes

Prices, fares and opening hours were checked against official sources in mid-2026 and are hedged as “around” / “as of 2026” because they change — always confirm before you go. Key references: Royal Museums Greenwich (Royal Observatory tickets and hours), Historic Royal Palaces (Hampton Court Palace prices, hours and 2026 works), Royal Botanic Gardens Kew (Kew tickets and seasonal hours), the Royal Collection Trust (Windsor Castle), Transport for London and Uber Boat by Thames Clippers (river-bus fares and zones), and Official London Theatre / TKTS (same-day West End ticket pricing). Itinerary structure and neighbourhood detail draw on widely cited first-timer guides cross-checked against these official sources and my own time spent in the city.

Photo Credits

• Tower Bridge over the Thames at dusk on a 5 days in London itinerary — Photo: Aleem Yousaf / CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons. Source
• The Royal Observatory in Greenwich Park, a half-day trip on a 5 days in London itinerary — Photo: Dietmar Rabich / CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons. Source
• The Tudor facade of Hampton Court Palace, a day trip on a 5 days in London itinerary — Photo: Ricardalovesmonuments / CC BY-SA 4.0 via Wikimedia Commons. Source
• Pastel houses and market stalls on Portobello Road in Notting Hill, a stop on a 5 days in London itinerary — Photo: Papertree at English Wikipedia / CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons. Source
• Camden Lock and the market by Regent’s Canal, a relaxed stop on a 5 days in London itinerary — Photo: Oxyman / CC BY 2.5 via Wikimedia Commons. Source

? Frequently asked questions

Is 5 days enough for London?

Yes — five days is a great length for a first visit. It’s enough to see the major icons over three relaxed days, take one full day trip, and spend a day wandering neighbourhoods without exhausting yourself. You won’t see everything (no one does), but you’ll leave feeling you experienced the city rather than just ticked it off.

What is the best day trip from London for first-timers?

Greenwich, because you can reach it by river boat in about 40 minutes and get maritime history, a park, a market and a skyline view in one half-day without a train ticket. If you want a grand palace instead, Hampton Court or Windsor are the standouts; Kew Gardens is the gentlest, most relaxed choice of all four.

How much should I budget for 5 days in London?

It varies hugely, but as a rough 2026 guide, mid-range travellers might spend around £40–70 a day on food, plus attractions (many museums are free; paid sights run £24–35 each) and around £8–10 a day on transport with a contactless card. Two evenings out — a show and a couple of pub or market dinners — add to that. Booking sights online in advance saves money.

Should I get the London Pass for 5 days?

Only if you plan to cram in many paid attractions back-to-back, which runs counter to the relaxed pace this itinerary is built around. Several of the best things here are free (museums, parks, neighbourhood walks) or cheap (a river boat). Add up the few paid sights you actually want, compare to the pass price, and you’ll usually find pay-as-you-go wins on a 5-day trip with a day off in the centre.

Do I need to book attractions in advance for London?

For the big timed-entry sights — the Tower of London, Westminster Abbey, Hampton Court, Windsor Castle and the Royal Observatory — yes, book online ahead. It guarantees entry, often costs a little less, and saves you queueing. Free museums like the British Museum don’t require booking, though it’s worth checking their site for any special exhibitions you want.

Is 5 days in London good with kids?

It’s ideal, because the spare time lets you swap in kid-friendly days: a river boat to Greenwich, the dinosaurs at the Natural History Museum, space to run at Kew, and street food at Camden or Borough Market. Build in slower mornings and don’t pack both halves of every day. For a child-led version of the whole country, see my England with children guide.