Our 3 Day London Walking Itinerary

May 12, 2023 | Sapphire Blue Travel Blog

Our latest 3 Day London Itinerary

We have recently returned from a trip to London and Ireland, and in this blog, we will focus on London. This was our 5th visit to London and the perfect place to celebrate our return to international travel. Just landing from Australia, we made the most of our time in this amazing city. After all that had unfolded over the last three years, we were excited to be back in London. London is a big city, but with the help of public transport to get to areas, it is still a very walkable city. Our three days were achieved primarily on foot, with trains, buses and taxis used to help our tired feet and tie our broken-up itinerary together.

We Chose to Stay close to St Pauls at the Club Quarters Hotel St Pauls, and this was a really convenient spot. Once we had our accommodation, I worked our Itinerary around that location. Our trip was about being somewhere we loved and getting video content to show off this city through our eyes. We did our best to hit some of the big must-see stops while making time to explore places we had not experienced before.

Planning tip: When planning your time, try and visit places within the same area on the same day. It helps reduce stress and travel time.

When we have to cut across a city, we try and do multiple stops in that area to make it worthwhile.

On our latest trip, we had three days in London. Due to jet lag and changing our minds one day, the final itinerary was different from my pre-trip plan, but we still managed to see what we wanted and kept it ordered and achievable. Being flexible is often key to making DIY trips successful, even if, like me, you like to over plan. Below is our final itinerary and how we broke up our sightseeing.

You are never going to see it all, so have your must-see sites, and then some extras just in case you want to change it up. Some sites may need to be dropped, but that is ok.

It is better to enjoy what you visit than rush and not enjoy anything.

Have your itinerary handy, so if you want to change things up, you still visit the places of interest to you.

Let the adventure begin.

Day 1 Let the Adventure begin at The City of London and Borough Market.

As I said before, this was a fly-in day, and I did over-plan our first day. Arriving at 5 am, after a 16.5 hours direct flight from Perth, Australia, we had a long day ahead of us. Our room was available when we arrived, which is always a bonus, and later in the day proved a real blessing. If you want to check out our flight, here is the link.

Walk around St. Pauls Cathedral and have breakfast at a local cafe

Cross the Millennium Bridge taking in Views of the Thames and the South bank

Walk from South Bank past Golden Hinde to Borough Markets

Enjoy the Markets and sample some goodies

After this, we ended up heading back to the hotel and slept for a couple of hours.

Refreshed, we walked from St Pauls to Postmans Park

Postman’s Park was a tranquil surprise.

We caught a bus to Aldergate, where we checked out a part of the London wall and took in the Tower of London and Tower Bridge.

Train from Towerhill to Temple.

We walked from the Thames through Middle Temple to the Temple church.

Heading to Fleet Street, we walk back towards St Paul’s Cathedral, stopping in at the Cheshire Cheese pub for a look on our to the hotel.

Dinner at the hotel

As travellers, we need to be flexible, and we tweaked every day of this itinerary for one reason or another. Knowing we had wriggle room on day three, we moved things to that day so that it would be a bit more scattered and spread out.

Here is our Video sharing our experience in more detail on Day one

Day 2 Walking around Westminster, Convent Garden and Trafalgar Square

Day 2 in London

The plan this day was to catch a ferry from Southbank to Westminster, but the ferry wasn’t running. We caught the underground from London Bridge to Westminster.

We enjoyed the restoration done to the Elizabeth Tower before heading on to Westminster Bridge.

Once on the other side of the Thames, we headed to the Covid Memorial wall and made our way along a small part of Jubilee Walkway.

We crossed Lambeth Bridge to get to The Victoria Tower Gardens.

Walking through the Gardens, we stopped by the Buxton Memorial, the Burgers of Calsis and the Emmeline Pankhurst statues. We enjoyed the view of Victoria Tower, named for Queen Victorias Jubilee and watched the action on the Thames.

The Jewel Tower was an attraction I had never heard of before researching this trip, and this was our next stop.

We walked around between the back of Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament, taking in some details on the buildings.

We had a whole walk planned from here to Trafalgar, but when we got to Horse Guards, the crowd was quite heavy, so we jumped on a bus and headed to Convent Garden.

Lunch was at Gordon Ramseys Street Burger

Once fuelled, we headed to Convent Garden to see what treasures were available before taking in a street performer.

Seven Dials was our next stop before dropping into The Two Brewers pub for a cider.

We caught a taxi back up to the hotel, where I did a load of washing. Both of us were thankful for a moment to rest.

Dinner was at a chain pizza place before we caught a bus up to Trafalgar Square and enjoyed the early morning atmosphere before retiring for the evening.

In this video, we share Day Two in more detail.

Day 3 Buckingham Palace, St James Park, Monument of the Great Fire, St Dunstans in the East and more

Today was about visiting those places we missed on the previous days before we headed to Dublin later that evening. Today’s list had a few spots we were both excited to see.

One New Change Viewing Platform Day 3

Yesterday due to the reroute, we cut off a chunk of our walk, so we started with Breakfast near Buckingham Palace to pick up some of that walk.

We visited Buckingham Palace, walked through St James Park enjoying the Animals, and, of course, headed to the Blue Bridge to get the Photo of the Palace and the one back to the Horse Guards Parade.

Walking to St James Park Tube Station was a real surprise, walking past lovely terraces before being met with the massive Station Building.

Train from St James Park to Monument

Back in the City of London, we had a few Wren sites we wanted to visit and one more Market looking for attention.

The Monument to the Great Fire of 1666. This was very impressive.

Walking through More of the city, we walked past those fortunate enough to get tickets to the sky garden platform before arriving at the tranquil St Dunstan in the East Ruin.

From St Dunstan, we made our way to the beautiful Leadenhall Markets. You can visit this covered market anytime, but be aware on Sunday, nothing is open. The building is beautiful, though.

Walking through even more of the fascinating streets, we made our way to our last stop for this visit.

We had tried a couple of times over our stay to go up to the viewing platform on One New Change, and on this occasion, it was open. One New Change takes you up to see a different perspective of the Dome of St Paul’s.

With our list complete, we had lunch at a French cafe before making our way to Dublin.

In this video, we share Day Three in more detail.