Planning a very last minute trip across the pond

When I was at a big event at the Barbican I stayed at the http://www.thistle.com/hotels/united_kingdom/london/thistle_city_barbican/index.html. Small rooms, friendly staff, breakfast. I walked back and forth to the Barbican (10-15 min) at all times of the night and day and it was totally fine. There is a nearby Tube stop but not *right* there. I took the tube from Heathrow and it was fine. https://www.airbnb.com/s/Barbican--City-of-London--London--United-Kingdom?price_max=145&ss_id=ktnzc5bx if you don't mind that sort of thing, some of them looked nice. Definitely cheaper. I had an iPhone 5. It was unlocked. I got a SIM card at a nearby Carphone Warehouse for 15 pounds and had as much data as I could use (plus a local number for calls/texts) for the whole time I was there. But really, yes, you can probably manage with just wifi. http://ask.metafilter.com/283086/Buying-A-Burner-Smarthphone-For-A-Week-In-London. The Barbican has a library inside it with free wifi, fyi. Get the Citymapper app. Chip and pin card should be fine everywhere. You can get pounds at the airport ATMs. There is wifi at the airport. If you have a bank that is a national bank in the US (Bank of America or similar) they can give you some pounds before you travel. Phone and laptop (I'd bring it?) just need adapters not converters and many hotels (Thistle Barbican definitely) offer adapters if you space bringing them. You can also get them at a Target or someplace in person also. I went to a lot of weird smaller museums many of which were fun (https://www.flickr.com/photos/iamthebestartist/sets/72157645790725537, https://www.flickr.com/photos/iamthebestartist/sets/72157648790497753). Feel free to look at my photos and see if anything grabs you and YES call a meetup, the London MeFites are wonderful. I think it sounds like great fun. Enjoy!

London is full of student residence accommodation that you can rent in the summer, the rooms will be private in a block and look to start from around £50 per night, here is the http://vacations.london.ac.uk/Search.aspx?nightCount=4&arrivalDate=16August%202015&roomCount=1&location=&promotion=&sortRateAsc=False, just search for London student summer accommodation and you will get multiple hits. Regarding credited cards, I would be wary with the amex, not because of the chip, it's just not accepted at a lot of places in the UK that a visa or MasterCard would be, not sure whether this would be a problem with ATM's.

You can wear whatever the hell you like to the theatre in London, so long as the person in front of you can still see the stage. If you wear a giant pineapple hat, you will incite annoyance. If you wear a bright yellow pineapple dress with rips in it and technically people can see your underwear, nobody will care. This is a wonderful city built on a solid foundation of not paying too much attention to other people being themselves. Dress up if that's fun for you, but don't worry about it. London is wonderfully walkable, although it makes sense to get the tube to a place and then walk about from there. Two days in particular that I'd suggest: Day 1: Get the tube to Charing Cross. Walk from Trafalgar Square up the Charing Cross Road to Foyles (pop into Any Amount of Books on the way), then take a left into Soho and wander around there. Move in an easterly direction but do not be tempted to do this along Oxford Street. When you get as far as Selfridges, start moving north along Marylebone High Street (cw: unbelievably posh) and go to Daunt books. Try to end up in Regent's Park. There are quite a few museums and galleries along this route. The National Gallery may not be operational as there is ongoing industrial action. You can fit in your visit to the Sherlock Holmes museum at the end as it's right near where you'll end up. Day 2: Get the tube to Bethnal Green, walk west along Bethnal Green Road until you hit Shoreditch, then head North towards Dalston and Haggerston. You'll get a really nice range of London communities this way, from the remnants of the old East End/Cockney stuff, to the newer immigrant communities, to the achingly cool hipster/artist set. Just pop into places you see on the way and explore. I think you might be able to go horse riding in Richmond Park, so a third day could be that plus the delightful Kew Gardens. If you do go to Kew, go and get a picnic from Newens, the shop everyone calls Maids of Honour. And for the love of god, get an Oyster card as soon as you hit British soil. Load it up with money and then just tap it on the yellow round things to enter and exit the tube. If you go on a bus you only need to tap when you get on. Do not, do not buy paper tickets. Everyone will hate you and you will hate yourself and you will hate everything and much misery will rain upon our fair city. Oyster. And yes, as citands said, Citymapper, the app that is quietly running London behind the scenes, we all just do what it says mechanically. I only wrote this because Citymapper told me to.

get an Oyster card as soon as you hit British soil. Load it up with money and then just tap it on the yellow round things to enter and exit the tube. Just FYI for Americans who would never believe this: You can return your Oyster card at the airport on your way home and they will GIVE YOU BACK YOUR MONEY that you had on it. Oyster works for bus-and-tube. Load it up and have fun exploring. I went to London by myself for the first time last year and the second time this year with my sister. Go to meetups, have fun exploring.

You guys are amazing! All of your answers have been super helpful, and I'm feeling much more excited and a lot less nervous. Tickets are booked (can't believe I'm leaving in a little over 48 hrs!), so it looks like this is definitely happening. I should have mentioned that I also have a Visa Credit Card in addition to the Amex and a Bank of America debit card, and I'm taking all of those with me. It sounds like the lack of a chip and pin won't be as big a deal as I originally thought. I'm going to go to Bank of America to get some pounds before I leave since it will be one less thing to stress about. It sounds like it's worth it to get the sim card, so as long as I can get my iphone unlocked, I'll go with that. I've got to do some packing and run some errands, but I'm going to come back later and mark best answers and start planning out what sights I want to see based on all of your amazing recommendations. If anyone has anything else to add, I'll definitely continue checking on this thread. Thank you all so much!

As of 2013, American-style swipe cards were fine everywhere I tried to use a credit card in London even though the entire internet was in a panic about needing a chip + pin in Europe. Hopefully someone who's been more recently can confirm that's still true. Your amex is likely not a true chip + pin unless you requested one specially (standard amex cards just have chips but not the chip + pin system). If you have time, pick up some pounds at your local amex or FX place before you go so that you don't have to worry about it right when you're getting off the plane (but yes, you can definitely change money at the airport if you need to). I've done a lot of roaming around London on my own since I was a teenager, and have always felt 100% safe (I am a woman, but grew up in a not so great neighborhood, so my take on that may be different than yours). I usually buy a package of international data and texts for my phone before I go (buying a sim card is a better value, but I usually can get away with the $25 package for a week away so it's not too bad), just in case I get totally lost and want to use phone data to get directions. A London A-Z can also be very handy if you just want to wander without worrying too much about getting lost/using phone data - any newsstand should have them and they're pretty inexpensive. As for things to do, Borough Market is a spectacular place to get lunch and is a very short walk from the Tate Modern (yes, it's a giant tourist attraction, but it's also wonderful) as well as the Globe, Golden Hinde and about a zillion other tourist attractions. You can walk along the river and then across to the Tate Britain if you want to spend most of an afternoon walking and looking at art. If you like clothes shopping or fabric/yarn crafts at all, go to Liberty. Foyles is a great/huge bookstore. Clerkenwell is good for walking around/restaurants, but there are tons of great neighborhoods to walk around in. I'd just pick a couple of attractions you want to see and plan to spend some time exploring before and after.

1) I've stayed at https://www.imperialhotels.co.uk/en/imperial in Russell Square multiple times; it's just down the block from the Russell Square tube station (Piccadilly Line) and a short tube jaunt from there to the Barbican. A single is in your price range, but will be small (as in, "wow, I think I'm in a cupboard" small). http://www.premierinn.com/en/london-barbican-hotels.html is a budget line with a number of hotels near the Barbican. Ditto jessamyn's suggestions. 2) For an evening performance in London, I usually wear professional clothes (skirt/nice top/blazer/boots); what you describe sounds fine. I'd check weather.com to see what the London weather is doing. It's now in the warm(er) season, so lots of 70-degree temperatures. 3) I would bring multiple cards, as I found during my stay this summer that some cards absolutely would not work in some places and absolutely would work in others (using a US card to top up an Oyster card proved to be a massive hassle--you will, incidentally, want an Oyster card, even for a short stay). A chip is a plus, but most UK readers can handle swipes. I converted my cash while I was in the US, but it's easy enough to do while you're at Heathrow (there's a Thomas Cook near the baggage claim exit, IIRC). I made all my phone calls using Skype--just remember to set up a credit line ahead of time. http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0080R95XI/metafilter-20/ref=nosim/ are the adapter plugs I use. They are also quite easy to find in the UK, thanks to all the tourists. Yes, bring all the original prescription bottles. Depending on how budget your budget hotel is, they may or may not have shampoo, so keep that in mind. 4) Bookstores! Here's a http://www.thelondonbookshopmap.org/. I love Foyle's (new books) and Skoob, Any Amount of Books, Quinto & Francis Edwards, and Judd Books (secondhand). There are lots of beautiful parks (e.g., Hyde Park). But London itself is very walkable--I like to walk from the British Library down to Russell Square and then over to Covent Garden. I don't know how much museum-ing you did when you were there with your family. The British Museum and the National Gallery are gigantic, of course, but the National Portrait Gallery is very manageable if you have to be economical with your time, as is the Wellcome Museum. 5) As a small single woman, I've never felt at all unsafe, even relatively late at night (usual precautions aside, like keeping a close eye on my purse). If you're around the theatres, those areas are going to be busy well into the night, including the tube stations.

If you have an unlocked smart phone, and you're used to using it a lot, it is totally worth buying a SIM and some data. Google maps for getting around is unbeatable, especially the public transport option, and also following the blue dot. Go to a phone shop, they can sort you out in about 20 minutes generally. Bare minimum, download the London version of CityMaps2Go. The blue dot on that works without internet (it's magic). Your clothes sound fine, but remember a cardigan, umbrella and pack some tights too, just in case the weather does stupid things. Catch the tube (or bus) to the theatre. Everyone else will. Have a read of the https://tfl.gov.uk/fares-and-payments/contactless/what-are-contactless-payment-cards?intcmp=8610 - it looks like you should be able to use your AMEX directly at the ticket gate to get on the tube, but depending on fees, it might be worth getting an oyster. Or ask around, one of your friends might have one from a previous trip. Have a good read of the AMEX terms of service when it comes to overseas transactions. If the fees are crazy, look into a prepaid travel visa card (personally, I just eat the fees, but it sounds like you're travelling on a tight budget). If you like the theatre, you can try and get http://www.timeout.com/london/theatre/cheap-and-last-minute-london-theatre-tickets. We got 12 pound tickets at 10am the day of for "The curious incident of the dog in the nighttime", which was one of the best plays I've ever seen. If I were in London by myself, I'd stalk the day tickets and half price booth at leicester square, and see a new thing every night! The Tate Modern is great and free, and the cafe at the top has one of the best views in London. The East end can be good for walking in, especially if you like street art. My sister had a street art app, and we went Banksy Hunting - I don't think we found any, but we had a good time wandering the side streets near brick lane. I feel perfectly safe wandering the centre of London at night. You can buy adapters at the airport. I assume you just need a laptop and/or phone. I take one, and charge my phone off my laptop. Check that it can handle 240V (it should say somewhere on the cable/plug). Print hard copies of things you might need. In the case of a technology fail or bag losing incident, it is invaluable to have maps for where you're staying (including contact details), copies of your passport, phone numbers to cancel your credit card etc etc in hard copy. Leave a copy at home too. Have fun. London is awesome.

2) The last time I was at the Barbican, there were people doing the nice jeans & jacket thing, dresses, some people were 'dressed up', some were not. There are a lot of tourists there - you'd have to put in some effort to stand out.