The Original Tour London Sightseeing a fabulous way to see the best of the capital (The Original London Sightseeing Tour)

Member Name: chrisc92

Product:	The Original London Sightseeing Tour
Date:	07/08/09 (57 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good value for money, stop off to look around and hop back on again

Disadvantages: Not great if wet, and you have to be on the top deck to see London properly

There are 2 very similar sightseeing tours of London - The Original Tour and The Big Bus and are very similarly priced at £24 and £25 respectively. Each offers a hop on or off service with a free boat ride on board City Cruises from Westminster Pier to the Tower of London Pier or to Greenwich (return) and a ticket valid for 24 hours.

Sue (my partner) and I chose The Original Tour as we were planning a hectic few days in London and with everything else going on wanted to keep costs down - this we achieved by using up a lot of my old Tesco clubcard vouchers, and for this we only actually paid £8 which in view of what we got for our money was absolutely excellent value.

This particular tour is split in 3 - The Original Tour (yellow), City Sightseeing Tour (red) and Museum Tour (Blue) as well as 3 connecting routes - Loop Line (green), Station Connector (Black) and the Capital Connector (pink - which only has limited running times).

We began our journey Tuesday morning from the District Line at Earls Court and as we began we both had an uncontrollable urge for the loo, so we thought we'd venture to Gloucester Road where we could pick up the tour and meet our other needs. WRONG! In such a busy area only one loo existed on the middle of the street and in such an embarassing place that everyone would know where you'd been, and despite walking up and down nearby streets not one was to be found and at 10 in the morning venturing into a pub was not a good idea.

In case anyone from either tour company is looking at these sights - what about including the loos in your tours!

Anyway I digress. We picked up the tour at Gloucester Road which is part of the museum circuit. We were handed a pair of headphones and the bus we caught had multi lingual plug in sockets so that you could understand the sights as you were passing them. We intended to take the blue route as far as Piccadilly Circus and then transfer to the yellow one. On the part of the blue tour we went on we passed the Natural History Museum and Victoria and Albert as well as taking in Harrods and Harvey Nichols in Knightsbridge and Apsley House (former home of the Duke of Wellington - also known as No 1 London). The weather was not great and there were frequent light showers whilst we were on the first bus, but without doubt if you are doing a sightseeing tour by bus you have to be on the top deck.

As we had planned we transferred from the blue tour to the yellow one at Piccadilly Circus and had a very minor walk between stops - after the driver ran over to get our change from their main office.

The yellow route takes in many of Londons attractions including marble arch, Trafalgar Square, Westminster - Houses of Parliament and Abbey, St Pauls Cathedral along the Embankment and across Tower Bridge to the Tower of London at Tower Hill and of course around Buckingham Palace.

There is an awful amount to see and do on this tour and unless you do it for yourself you really won't understand just what great value is offered on this tour.

In our case, as I mentioned near the start we were a little in need of the loos, so we left the tour at Westminster and after a while walked to the pier and hopped on the cruise. We were a little sceptical as we'd planned to visit another attraction at 3pm but it wasn't an issue as we sailed down the Thames towards the Tower of London. Initially Sue was happy to just go as far as the Tower, but she felt she wanted more so we expected to go as far as Greenwich and then get the boat back at least as far as the Tower where we could use our zone 1-2 passes. It tuned out the boat was only going as far as the Tower anyway.

We could have picked up the bus from there, but we decided to take the underground and pick it up back at Westminster - it sounded a good idea particularly as they do say you can hop on or off at any of there stopping points. Buses are normally every 10-15 minutes, however whether due to congestion or other reasons it was a good 30 minutes before the bus arrived and we were a little worried about getting a seat after watching at least 3 other of their tour buses going the other way over Westminster Bridge absolutely full. We were lucky and our bus had plenty of seats but getting a top deck seat anywhere other than the start point is a risky business.

We completed our tour and after disembarking took the underground to our other destination - at Baker Street.

We could have reused our tickets the following morning to get to our next destination, but we thought it would take too long as we were cramming so much in anyway.

Definitely I would recommend either of the 2 sightseeing bus companies to anyone and it would be difficult to choose between them. Certainly for me it was the Tesco vouchers that did it, but the next time we go we will take our time to see London properly. They are certainly worth 5*

For more information:

http://www.theoriginaltour.com/

Summary: A fantastic way to spend a whole day