What should I avoid in London?

Most first-timers make their first mistake at Heathrow. The Heathrow Express signs are everywhere in Terminal 5, and a walk-up ticket to Paddington costs about £25 for a 15-minute ride, while the purple Elizabeth line runs the same route in roughly 30 minutes for around £13. The Piccadilly line reaches King's Cross or Covent Garden for under £6, with a rattling carriage and a warm draught of brake dust on the platforms. Don't buy a paper ticket or a Travelcard at the machine either: tap the same contactless card or phone at every gate, and TfL caps your daily spend in Zones 1 and 2 at a little under £10. Each traveller needs their own card or phone, because one card pays only one fare per gate. On the escalators, stand on the right. Commuters at Bank and Oxford Circus will tell you, loudly, if you block the left side.

Three famous sights waste a jet-lagged first day. Madame Tussauds on Marylebone Road charges walk-up visitors over £40 (about $53), then queues you past waxworks under hot lights for up to two hours. Skip it. The London Eye opened in 1999 and costs similar money for a 30-minute rotation, and on a grey morning the glass pod mostly shows you cloud. Sky Garden at 20 Fenchurch Street is free with a timed booking, and Horizon 22 on Bishopsgate goes higher, to the 58th floor, also for nothing; book both a few weeks ahead. At Buckingham Palace, the Changing of the Guard crowd stands 10 deep at the railings by 10:15am, and most people end up watching bearskin hats bob above other people's phone screens. Go to Horse Guards Parade in Whitehall at 11am (10am on Sundays) instead: the mounted Household Cavalry change there, gravel crunches under the hooves, and you get room to breathe.

Leicester Square works as the West End's waiting room. M&M's World sells chocolate that costs far less at any Tesco, and the restaurants around the square serve tired fish and chips at roughly double what a pub two streets north charges; the sugar-smelling American candy shops on Oxford Street are worse, and Westminster Council has spent years chasing them over unpaid business rates and counterfeit sweets. For a proper fry-up, Regency Café in Pimlico plates eggs, bacon and bubble-and-squeak for around £10 under bright tiled walls. In Chinatown, a block from Leicester Square, the roast duck hanging in the Gerrard Street windows is the better cheap dinner. On Westminster Bridge, the cup-and-ball crews plant fake winners in the crowd while a partner works your pockets. Keep walking. Pedicabs in Soho have charged visitors £100 or more for a few streets, so agree the full fare in writing first, or take a metered black cab. London scores 7.8/10 for solo-traveler safety (see the TTDI Solo-Safety Index), and petty theft is the main risk, not violence.

The weather tends to ruin more first days than the scams do. On the morning of 9 October it was 15.1°C under thick cloud with 90% humidity, and it felt like 12.9°C in the wind off the Thames. That damp cold seeps through cotton, so pack a light waterproof and leave the umbrella at home, because it will flip inside out on Waterloo Bridge. British clocks go back on Sunday 25 October, and after that it gets dark before 5pm. Do outdoor sights like the Tower of London in the morning. Save the British Museum for wet afternoons; it was founded in 1753 and is still free to enter.