LONDON PASS AND OYSTER CARD: TRAVEL HELPERS

If you are budget travelers like my friend and I are, the London Pass and the Oyster Card are two of the value-for-money purchases we highly recommend that you  buy when travelling to London as tourists.

I came across the London Pass while browsing the net about London. I actually already wanted to buy one online after reading the benefits of having one while in London. However, I had second thoughts because when you purchase it online, you still had to go somewhere in London to redeem the pass. Since I had no idea yet how to go anywhere in London at that time, I decided against buying it.

My friend and companion in the trip also brought up the idea of buying the pass online before leaving for the trip. And, although I still had my reservations on the idea, I gave her the nod and just positively thought that we would surely find  our way and be able to redeem our London Passes. 

But my friend, too, was not able to buy the London Passes online. Attending to last minute things at work before our trip prevented her from doing so.

Finally, upon setting foot at Heathrow airport (Yay!) and having passed through customs and collecting our luggages, we were deciding whether to grab some food before leaving the airport, when lo and behold there it was, our eyes suddenly landed on a desk selling London Passes! My friend and I immediately went to the desk and inquired. After some discussion, we settled to purchase one for each of us  a 2-day London Pass worth GBP54 each or P 3,600+ each.

Since the London Pass is available at the airport, it would be better to purchase it from there and do away with the inconvenience of redeeming (especially if it is your first time to be there) if purchased online.

The three benefits of the London Pass we enjoyed:

1. It gave us entry at no further cost to a choice of 60 favorite attractions in London. So our problem then was how to plan to visit all those 60! One nice problem to have : ).

2. It enabled us to beat the queues at selected attractions.
Definitely one cool reason to get the London Pass!

3. When entry to the attraction is normally free to the public, the London Pass gave us more great offers such as free entrance to exhibitions. An example would be the exhibition of famous bridges in the London Bridge which I will tell you about in my succeeding posts.

Source: The London Pass guide book

The Oyster Card, on the other hand, is similar to our LRT and MRT value cards except that in the Philippines we cannot use our LRT/MRT value cards to pay for other means of transportation like public buses. The Oyster Card is the cheapest way to pay for single journeys on bus, tube (or what they call the London Underground), tram, DLR, London overground and most National Rail Services in London. http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tickets/14836.aspx

Purchasing an Oyster Card also gives one convenience not having to queue every time one needs to ride the Tube.

Note: The Oyster Card can be purchased right in the ticket booths found in the Underground Tube line which can be accessed through the airport.

So on your trip to London, be sure to grab these two important passes!