A week ago, I began a slow trek from the Midwestern suburb I call home to the Parisian dorm room I will call home for the next semester. Five planes, two trains, and four days later I found myself with three days and £35 to kill in London. This is the story of how I became an expert on frugal tourism in the most expensive place on earth (or the most expensive place I’ve ever been, anyway).
The first trick to living cheaply in London is that you must accept that you won’t see any interesting buildings from the inside and that you will also be walking everywhere. This was fine for me because I love walking, museums make me sleepy, and I’ve seen enough churches for several lifetimes. However, if you are the kind of person who actually wants to see things on your vacation, I suggest that you budget more carefully than I did and don’t end up broke in London.
The second key ingredient to a successfully stingy stay in London: you have to be okay with not do anything fun. Having been on vacation for three weeks prior to my arrival in London, I had already had exactly as much fun as my bank account would allow and was content to spend my evenings re-learning all the French I forgot after last years’ traumatic Spring semester nightmare Française. There are countless pubs that would have been happy to take my money for a pint of beer—or a pitcher Pimm’s, which is what they would serve in heaven if heaven were reserved for young women with low alcohol tolerances—but I stayed strong, and I got to keep my money.
My final, and most important, tip in the London-on-a-budget hat trick is cheap housing. I paid £18 a night for a bunk in a 16-person dormitory. It was nice(ish), but had some major shortcomings. Chief among them: fifteen-second push-button showers. My fellow hostelers did not appear unduly concerned by the fact that they were expected to push a button every twelve seconds in order to enjoy uninterrupted water pressure, but I am not ashamed to admit that my showers involved more than a few instances of foul language.
By my second day I was convinced that I smelled bad all the time. When I discussed this with some dorm-mates, they told me that I smelled fine, but that they also thought they smelled bad all the time. Which, to me, meant that we all smelled bad but had reached the point where we could no longer smell it. I was pondering this one morning while eating my “full English breakfast” which was actually just a sausage and several cheese sticks, when it dawned on me that despite my best efforts I may have accidentally become a dirty backpacker. Combined with the brief thought I had later while drying my hair with toilet paper that it would be a lot easier if I just shaved my head, that morning represented a low point.
Luckily, dirty backpacker or not, I escaped London three sandwiches, two plug adapters, and at least 15 miles of walking later but only £25 lighter. Mission success!
