Most London hotels will not give you a room before about 3pm, so the first job of an arrival day is getting rid of your bags, and the second is staying awake until a normal bedtime. Everything else is optional. Plan one outdoor thing, one meal and nothing that has a fixed start time.
This page is about the six or seven hours between clearing passport control and being able to lie down. It is not about how to get from the airport, which our airport pages cover route by route, starting with every Heathrow option compared. It is about what to do once you are in the city with a suitcase and no room.
The single most useful thing to know is that this day is where people damage the rest of the trip. A timed museum ticket booked for 4pm, a show at 7.30pm, or a day trip on the morning after a night flight: each of those looks efficient when you book it and is miserable when it arrives.
Bags first, and what that costs
Almost every London hotel will store your luggage before check-in and after check-out, usually free, and that is the cheapest answer. Ask when you book rather than when you arrive, because a small hotel with no lobby sometimes cannot. Our guide to early check-in and bag storage at London hotels has the wording that works.
If your hotel is nowhere near your first stop, the station left-luggage offices are the fallback. Nine London terminals have one, all open 07:00 to 23:00 seven days a week: King's Cross, St Pancras, Paddington, Euston, Waterloo, Victoria, Liverpool Street, London Bridge and Charing Cross. Expect £10 per item for up to three hours and £15 for up to 24 hours. Victoria is priced differently, at £10 for up to six hours.
App-based storage in shops and hotels, booked through services such as Stasher or Bounce, runs at roughly £1.50 to £4.50 per bag per day. That is a large saving on a station office for anyone leaving bags all day. Left luggage at London's stations compares the two properly.
Victoria Coach Station stores bags by the hour. Its own left-luggage counter, opposite the ticket office, charges £2 for up to an hour and £5 for one to three hours, which is the cheapest short stop in central London if you are already there.
Photo: wuppertaler · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons · resized
The first hour, by airport
What you can realistically do on arrival day depends less on the airport than on how long the journey in takes and how much it costs once you are tired enough to stop caring.
| Airport | Fastest sensible route | Time and fare |
|---|---|---|
| Heathrow | Elizabeth line to Paddington | 28 minutes; £14.60 pay as you go. Step-free from train to street at every Heathrow station |
| Heathrow, cheaply | Piccadilly line | About 47 to 48 minutes to Piccadilly Circus; £5.90 at any hour |
| Gatwick | Southern or Thameslink | 30 to 45 minutes; £19.20 peak or £10.70 off-peak with contactless or Oyster. Gatwick Express is £24.00 and does not count towards any cap |
| Stansted | Stansted Express to Liverpool Street | 48 minutes, every 15 minutes. Contactless works; Oyster does not |
| Luton | Luton DART, then train to St Pancras | DART 4 minutes, then 22 minutes non-stop. Contactless works; Oyster does not |
| London City | DLR from Zone 3 | £3.90 peak or £3.30 off-peak to Bank |
The detail behind each of those, including the times of the first and last trains, sits on the relevant page: Gatwick to central London, Stansted to central London, Luton to central London and London City Airport.
Two fare traps catch arriving visitors. Oyster is not valid to or from Stansted or Luton, although contactless is, and the Luton DART is charged separately unless your rail ticket is booked to the station called "Luton Airport" rather than "Luton Airport Parkway". Our comparison of Oyster and contactless explains which to use before you leave home.
When a taxi is the right answer
We would normally send you to the train. There are three arrival-day situations where a black cab earns its money: a night flight with small children, more luggage than adults, or a hotel that is a long walk from the nearest step-free station. A black cab between Heathrow and central London costs £70 to £120 and takes 30 to 60 minutes, all tariffs included, and every London taxi must accept contactless card payment with no surcharge.
Split four ways after a nine-hour flight, that is not an extravagance. Our guide to black cabs, minicabs and ride-hailing apps covers the licensing checks worth making if you book a minicab instead.
Landing before 10am: the best arrival there is
An early morning arrival gives you a whole usable day, and the mistake is treating it like one. You have been awake since the middle of the night in your own time zone.
Drop the bags, then do something that involves walking outdoors in daylight and no tickets. The NHS advice on jet lag is short and worth following: change your clock immediately, get outside in natural light during the day, set an alarm rather than sleeping in, and do not nap. A park works better than a museum, because a warm gallery at 11am after a night flight is where people fall asleep standing up.
From a Heathrow arrival, the Richmond direction is the sensible one, because you are already in the west. The Isabella Plantation inside Richmond Park is free, gated, flat once you are in it, and about as quiet as London gets. From Gatwick or Luton you are arriving into the centre instead, and the river path is the easier version of the same idea.
Landing between midday and 3pm: the awkward one
This is the arrival that produces the six-hour gap in the title of most people's questions. The room is not ready, it is too late for a museum you care about, and too early to eat.
What works: one long walk, one sit-down coffee, and an early dinner at 6pm rather than 8pm. What does not work: a paid attraction with a timed slot, because you will be late, and a sightseeing bus, because you lose half of a 24-hour ticket to the evening and most of the rest to sleep. If a bus tour appeals, buy it on day two instead, and read our comparison of the hop-on hop-off operators first.
An ordinary red bus does the same job for £1.75, rising to £1.85 on 1 November 2026, and the Hopper fare gives you unlimited bus journeys within an hour of touching in. Sit on the top deck at the front. Our list of bus routes worth riding for the view names the ones that pass the most.
The first bus of the trip is the cheapest sightseeing in London. One £1.75 fare buys an hour of buses under the Hopper rule, so you can get off, look at something, and get back on the next one without paying again.
Landing after 6pm, and after 11pm
An evening arrival is simpler: go to the hotel, eat near it, and sleep. Do not plan anything. The one decision that matters is whether public transport is still running when you land, and that depends on the airport rather than the hour.
The Piccadilly line runs a night service on Friday and Saturday nights only, and only on one branch: Cockfosters to Heathrow Terminal 5. There is no night service to Terminal 4 and none on the Uxbridge branch, so a Terminal 4 arrival at 3am cannot use it. The N9 night bus runs from Heathrow Terminal 5 and the Central Bus Station to Aldwych by way of Piccadilly Circus and Trafalgar Square. Our page on late-night and early-morning airport transport works through each airport, including the ones with no public transport at all in the small hours.
Arriving in the dark half of the year
From late October to late February, an arrival after about 4pm happens in the dark, and that changes what an arrival day can be. There is no daylight to use for the jet lag, and the outdoor first walk becomes a lit street rather than a park.
Two things work better in winter. The first is a lit walk with something to look at: the South Bank between Westminster Bridge and Blackfriars is continuous, flat, and busy enough to feel safe. The second is a museum that stays open late one night a week, which gives you a warm hour indoors without a timed ticket. Our guide to London in winter has the daylight figures month by month.
What to book before you fly, and what not to
Book the airport journey only if it is cheaper in advance, which mainly applies to the Heathrow Express and to Advance rail fares. Book nothing else for the first day.
Day two is different. That is when a timed ticket pays off, because the queue you avoid is real. Our page on how to avoid the crowds sets out which hours at which attractions are worth booking for, and our four-day itinerary assumes exactly this shape: a soft first day, then three full ones.
Frequently asked questions
What time can I check into a London hotel?
Mid-afternoon is normal, most often 2pm or 3pm, and some budget chains do not release rooms until 3pm at the earliest. Nearly all of them will take your bags earlier and store them securely, so arriving at 9am is not a problem as long as you do not expect a bed.
What should I do on my first day in London if I am jet-lagged?
Get outside in daylight, keep walking, eat at local mealtimes and go to bed at a local bedtime. The NHS advises against daytime naps and suggests setting an alarm to avoid oversleeping the next morning. Avoid anything with a fixed start time and anything that involves sitting in a dark warm room.
Is it worth buying an Oyster card on arrival?
Usually not. A standard Oyster card costs £10.50 and the fee is not refundable, and a foreign contactless card or phone gives you the same fares and the same daily caps. The exception is a family needing child fares, because no discounts can be applied to contactless.
How much does left luggage cost at a London station?
About £10 per item for up to three hours and £15 for up to 24 hours at the nine main terminals, which open 07:00 to 23:00 daily. Victoria charges £10 for up to six hours. Storing bags through an app in a nearby shop is far cheaper, at roughly £1.50 to £4.50 a bag per day.
Can I see anything useful in six hours on arrival day?
Yes, as long as it is free, outdoors and has no entry time. A river walk, a park, a market and one bus route from the top deck will fill six hours comfortably and cost under £5. Save the ticketed attractions for a morning when you have slept.
Sources
- NHS - Jet lag (checked September 2026)
- Transport for London - Heathrow on the Elizabeth line (checked September 2026)
- Transport for London - Night Tube (checked September 2026)
- Transport for London - Victoria Coach Station facilities and left luggage (checked September 2026)
- Transport for London - Taxi fares (checked September 2026)
- Stansted Airport - Getting to and from by train (checked September 2026)
- London Luton Airport - Luton DART (checked September 2026)