November 2016, and it was cold in the way London gets cold in November, damp rather than sharp, the kind that sits on your coat. World Travel Market had finished for the day and we had no plan at all. So we did what we always do when we land somewhere and can’t be bothered making decisions. We walked. Coffee in hand, no destination, just drifting through the centre watching everyone else be in a hurry.
That’s still the bit I remember best. Not a landmark. Not a restaurant. The walking and the watching.
We were there for two nights and I’ve thought about that trip a lot since, mostly because of what it taught us about short breaks in expensive cities. We’re planning to go back in 2027, and this time we know exactly what we’d do differently.
Is two nights in London enough for a couple?
Two nights was enough. I’d say that fairly confidently, though I know it sounds mad for a city that size.
Here’s the thing nobody tells you. London doesn’t reward completeness. You will not “do London”. Nobody has ever done London. Once you accept that, two nights stops feeling like a compromise and starts feeling like a deliberate choice, and the trip changes shape entirely. You stop measuring the days against some list that you problaly got from Instagram.
Two highlights a day is about right. One in the morning, one in the late afternoon, and everything between them left deliberately empty. That empty bit is where the trip actually happens. It’s where you end up in a café for an hour longer than you meant to, or walking a street you’d never have chosen. This is what always happens with us anyway….a couple of hours in the cafe instead of just 1.
The other reason two nights works well is budget, and it’s worth being honest about this one. London can be quite pricey. Two nights is a lovely weekend away that won’t stretch your wallet too much. Five nights, on the other hand, might be something you notice on your bank statement for a little while afterwards.
Where should couples stay in London?
We booked an Airbnb in the centre for about €100 a night, which even in 2016 felt like we’d got away with something. What made it work wasn’t the actual AirBnB itself. It was that we could walk out the door and be where we needed to be without thinking about it.
That’s the thing I’d prioritise over almost anything else. Not the view, not the size of the place, not whether there’s a bath. Walkability. If you’re staying somewhere that requires a plan and two changes every time you want to leave, you’ll leave less. And leaving less is how a short break quietly disappears.
Central and slightly boring beats characterful and far out, for two nights. You’re not going to be in the flat. You want it close to the action, on a street where you’d happily walk back at eleven at night, and near a tube station you can find without looking at your phone.
What does a romantic break in London actually cost?
More than you might expect, really — and the tricky part isn’t the big bookings. It’s the little things. A coffee here, a pint there, a taxi when your feet have had enough. On their own, they’re nothing to worry about. But by Sunday, they can quietly add up to a number that gives you pause.
A few things that actually help. Get an Oyster card or just use contactless, and tap the same card every time so the daily cap does its job. There’s a limit on what you can be charged in a day within the central zones, and once you’ve hit it the rest of your travel is effectively free, so it’s worth checking what the cap is before you go and then not thinking about transport again.
Book dinner ahead for anywhere you actually care about. Not for the money exactly, but because the alternative is standing on a pavement at half eight, both hungry, both being polite about where to go, and ending up somewhere neither of you wanted at a price neither of you enjoyed. That’s the most expensive meal on any trip. We’ve done this so many times that we’d hate to try and count. Don’t be like Carlo and Flor in that instance 🙂
Same with tickets. Buy for the big attractions and any show in advance, online, before you leave. Queueing is the single least romantic activity available in London and you’ll pay a premium for the privilege of doing it on the day.
How do you dodge the crowds?
Early or late, and that’s more or less the whole trick. The big sights are calm first thing and calm again in the last hour, and unbearable for the six hours in the middle. If you’re only doing two things a day anyway, you may as well do them at the good times.
The other half of it is going where nobody’s counting. Our best evening cost the price of two coffees. We walked, we sat, we watched people, we talked. I’d take that over a rooftop bar, and I say that as someone who’d happily go to a rooftop bar.
Getting from Stansted into London without the faff
This is the bit we’d change most for 2027, and it’s why I’m even writing this.
The arrival day sets the tone for the whole break. If you land tired and then spend an hour and a half working out ticket machines, dragging cases up steps and being separated on a packed train, you don’t arrive relaxed. You arrive frayed, and then you spend the first evening recovering instead of enjoying it.
So the plan next time is simple. Land at Stansted, walk out, get on a coach, sit down beside each other and let someone else deal with it. Flibco run a London to Stansted Airport coach service into the city, and everything we’ve heard about it points the same way: convenient, straightforward, no car, no faff. We haven’t used it yet, so I’m not going to pretend I’ve sat on it. But it’s what’s going in the plan for 2027, because the transfer is the one part of a short break that’s pure logistics, and the less of it there is, the sooner the trip actually starts.
What we’d do differently
Less. That’s it. We’d book the two dinners we cared about, buy the tickets before we flew, sort the transfer in advance, and then leave the rest of it wide open.
The best trips we’ve had haven’t been the full ones. They’ve been the ones with room in them. Two nights in a city that’s quite expensive, with almost nothing planned, and a long cold walk with a coffee. That’ll do. We lovvvveee our coffee.
If you want to see where we’ve ended up since, we’re on Instagram and Facebook most days. Currently we’re in Seoul, South Korea for a week, checking out abandoned locations in the city!
At a glance
Where: Central London
Getting there: Fly into Stansted, then the Flibco coach into the city. Contactless or Oyster once you’re there, tapping the same card each time for the daily cap.
Cost: We paid around €100 (£85 or so) a night for a central Airbnb in 2016. Budget more now, and budget for the small spends as much as the big ones.
Time needed: Two nights. Three if you want a slow one in the middle.
Best conditions: Early mornings and late evenings for the big sights. November is cold and damp and quiet, which we liked.