Bus tours

How to find short city sightseeing tours by bus in London and other major British cities

Short city bus tours of an hour or four are great for city orientation, especially in larger destinations.

They're also useful for crossing the major architectural sights off your sightseeing list, and cruising past things you want to see but don't really have the time (or, sometimes, the interest) to carve an extra hour out of your already tight schedule to make a special trip.

Almost every city in the U.K. offers bus tours—either city-run tours or private tours. They may last from a 45-minute quickie to a full day of touring and sightseeing, but usually they average 60 to 90 minutes of tooling past the major sights and monuments of the historic center of town, often in an open-top double decker bus. 

Most buses have either a live guide, or recorded commentary available in a dozen languages. There are three main flavors of city sightseeing bus tour:

• The roundabout bus that trundles you past everything in one big loop and you never really get off the bus. These tend to last an hour or two.
• The hop-on, hop-off bus that makes a long circuit (or several overlapping circuits) of all the major city sights. These are hugely useful, as you can jump off the bus whenever you feel like visiting a museum or whatever, then board any later bus when it swings by—buses usually come along every 20 to 60 minutes. In other words, it's sort of a cross between a bus tour and a super-cheap group taxi designed specifically for sightseers. Your ticket is usually good for a full day; sometimes you can get multiple-day tickets.
• The mini guided tour, where everyone gets off the bus at certain key stops and you’re lead by a guide quickly through churches, museums, and other sights. These tend to last at least half a day (3–5 hours).

You can find brochures about these bus tours in any city tourist office, or you might book ahead via one of our partners:

Activities, walks, & excursions

• Viator.com - Best one-stop shopping site for all sorts of activities, walking tours, bus tours, escorted day trips, and other excursions. It is actually a clearinghouse for many local tour companies and outfitters, and since it gets a bulk-rate deal on pricing (and takes only a token fee for itself), you can actually sometimes book an activity through Viator for less than it would cost to buy the same exact tour from the tour company itself. (I once booked a Dublin pub crawl via Viator and later discovered that I saved about $1.50; also, the tour turned out to be sold-out, and they were turning away the folks in front of me in line, but since I had a pre-booked voucher I got in.)Partner
• Londonwalks.com - Since the 1970s, the gold standard in city walking tours and museum tours—and cheap, to boot. Just meet your guide at the appointed time and place (usually a Tube stop), pay your £10 (students or over 65s are £8; under 15 free), and prepare for a good two hours of amazing cultural insight and historic anecdotes. If you plan on taking three or more walks, buy a "Frequent London Walker" card for £2 from your first guide, then each subsequent walk costs £8. They also run popular excursions outside London for £18. Note that the fee just covers the guided tour; you pay for any admissions (or, for excursions, travel expenses) yourself.
• Contexttravel.com - This bespoke walking tour company doesn't even call its 200 tour leaders "guides." It calls them "docents"—perhaps because most guides are academics and specialists in their fields: history professors, archeologists, PhDs, art historians, artists, etc. Groups are miniscule (often six people maximum), and most docents can be booked for private guiding sessions as well. They aren't always the cheapest tours, but they are invariably the best. People rave about Context.Partner
• City-discovery.com - Chief rival to Viator (though with a less spiffy interface and often sub-par text descriptions), representing many of the same tours (at the same prices). However, it also seems to cover more destinations, especially secondary ones. When it comes down to it, City-Discovery and Viator have maybe 70% the same inventory, but then 30% will be completely different (some Viator has City-Discovery does not, other vice-versa) so it pays to check through the offerings from both.Partner