London in a Day Tour for Kids with Context Travel

Review: London in a Day Tour for Kids with Context Travel

Are you planning on visiting London with kids?  If yes, there is no better way to get a quick introduction to London than with Context Travel, on their London in a Day Tour for Kids, an essential primer to London and its unique history.

On this tour with Context Travel, you will explore London with hands-on, interactive activities, led by an expert local guide or scholar specially trained to work with children.  You'll start your morning off at the Tower of London, grab lunch and then head through Borough Market, making your way back and forth across River Thames to St. Paul's Cathedral.

Along the way you'll be given an amazing history lesson, as well as insights into everything you are seeing.  Kids will love exploring their surroundings with their expert guide and they won't even know they're in a living history class, learning all along the way.

What is Context Travel?

If you're not familiar with Context Travel, they provide experiences for travelers who love to learn and offer private and semi-private walking tours in more than 60 cities around the world.  Context Travel guides are simply some of the best in the world, with 80% of guides having advanced degrees and all are professionals in their fields of expertise; they are historians, archaeologists, chefs, architects, and artists who are deeply passionate about their cities and subjects.  The Context Travel guide network has grown from a small group of scholars in Rome (where the company started) to over 1,500 guides worldwide. 

London in a Day Tour for Kids 

The 6-hour London in a Day for Kids tour is the perfect fun-filled adventure for children and families to explore the English capital.  On our tour, we were led by Jane, a specially-trained family guide, who provided great history and insight into everything we learned about.

Together with Jane, we explored the most charming sites in the city including the Tower of London, Borough Market, St. Paul’s Cathedral, and more.  Tickets to the main venues were pre-purchased for Tower of London and St. Paul’s Cathedral, making it quick and easy to get inside.  It was a fun-filled day of history, facts, stories, exploration and London adventure that the kids still remember to this day.

Sites Visited on our Tour 

• Tower of London
• Borough Market
• South Bank 
• Globe theatre exterior
• Tate Modern
• Millennium Bridge
• St. Paul’s Cathedral 

Itinerary: London in a Day Tour for Kids 

Our day of British adventure in charming central London began with introductions near the Thames River near our first site, the historic 900-year-old Tower of London castle.  We were given a quick introduction to how our day would be spent, as well as a primer on the history of London and the role the Tower of London has played in it.

Visiting the Tower, we discovered its vast history and many purposes it has had across centuries, including being a royal residence, guarding the crown jewels, housing the royal mint, holding many famous prisoners, and more.  As we traveled back in time exploring the Tower, we also learned of the stories of the famous executions that happened here and the significance of the ravens, which the kids found fascinating.  

Due to venue rules, guides were not allowed inside some areas of the Tower of London site, including the White Tower and the Jewel House, where the Crown Jewels are securely kept.  The line looks long to see the crown jewels, but it goes by very quick.

After learning all about the Tower of London, we grabbed lunch just outside at a small cafe kiosk overlooking River Thames and the Tower of London.

After lunch, we continued our explorations and crossed the river on Southwark Bridge into the South Bank and began exploring the bustling Borough Market filled with endless delicious snacks, delights and choices.

Along the way, we stopped to grab snacks, coffee, ice cream and learned about the Globe Theater and Tate Modern, before crossing the Millennium Bridge, making our way to St. Paul's Cathedral.

The walk across the Millennium Bridge towards St Paul's Cathedral is very picturesque and a great photo location.  St Paul's Cathedral, one of London's most iconic architectural masterpieces, is known for its world-famous dome that to this day dominates the skylines of the city.

We learned all about the church including the painstaking cleaning process that went underway once the coal plant at Tate Modern was decommissioned (now a museum), how the church is the seat of the Bishop of London and the crypt underground is the final resting place for many historical and famous names in English history. 

Overall Impression

I am big fan of taking tours when we are visiting a city with the kids whether it's with Context Travel or another company.  There is no better way to get acquainted with a new location and learn so much about it in a few hours.  Our expert tour guide for London, Jane, was able to answer so many questions the kids had about everything we were seeing and learning about.  We spent a pleasant day with her that started at the Tower of London and ended after going inside St. Paul's Cathedral.

This London tour with Context Travel was was private and only for our family of four.  If the tour was larger, I feel it would be much harder to get around the crowds and I don't think we would have been able to learn so much about London in six hours with more guests competing for questions and time with the guide.

On our London tour, we learned so many interesting historical facts about this incredible city, discovering how it grew from a small city to a world capital of art, theater, food, and culture in general.

I can't recommend Context Travel tours enough, especially if you're traveling with young kids.  While the price of the tour isn't cheap, you get what you pay for and if anything ever goes wrong you can rest assured that Context Travel will be there to help support any issues that could arise.

In all transparency, this Context Travel tour was paid for by us (with a 20% TA discount) and including all tickets for the Tower of London and St. Paul's Cathedral, the total still came out to $840 for our almost seven hour tour for our family of four.  The memories we made along the way and all of the interesting facts and history we learned, made for a priceless day of exploration and learning.