Is London too touristy? My honest answer after one more visit

I get asked this before almost every trip I plan for someone: is London too touristy now? Usually it comes from someone who has seen a phone video of the queue outside Buckingham Palace, or a photo of Tower Bridge shoulder to shoulder with selfie sticks, and is wondering whether to spend their time and money somewhere else.

My honest answer is: some of it, yes. Most of it, no. And the two halves of that answer matter more than the average city-break article lets on.

The crowded half is real

If you go to Westminster at midday in July, you will queue. Big Ben photo spots, the front gates of Buckingham Palace before the Changing of the Guard, the security line at the Tower of London — these are not exaggerated. They are the most photographed square kilometre in the country, and they draw the crowds that photograph goes with.

The West End has the same issue for different reasons: Leicester Square and Covent Garden are simply built for foot traffic, tour groups, and street performers competing for the same forty square metres. Oxford Street on a Saturday afternoon is not a relaxing walk, it is crowd management.

None of that is a reason to skip these places. I still think the Tower of London earns its reputation, and watching the guard change outside Buckingham Palace once is worth the elbowing. But if your only image of London comes from these few streets, you will leave thinking the whole city feels like a theme park queue. It doesn’t.

The quieter half nobody mentions

What surprises most first-time visitors is how fast the crowds thin out once you’re ten minutes from the postcard spots.

East London is the clearest example. Shoreditch, Brick Lane and the Columbia Road flower market are a different rhythm entirely — street art, independent food stalls, a Sunday market that locals actually shop at rather than photograph. It is on the Overground and several tube lines, so it is not remote, it is just not on the coach-tour circuit. I send most people here on their second or third day, once the big-name fatigue sets in.

Greenwich is the other one I keep coming back to. The Royal Observatory and the meridian line draw a steady trickle of visitors, but Greenwich Park itself, the Old Royal Naval College courtyards, and the walk down to the river have long stretches where you’ll have the view mostly to yourself, especially on a weekday morning.

Then there are the royal parks around Richmond and Kew — Richmond Park has wild deer roaming an area larger than most of central London put together, and I have never once felt crowded there, even on a warm Sunday. Kew Gardens gets busier, but it is large enough to absorb a full coach-load without feeling it.

None of this is a secret exactly, it’s more that guidebooks lead with the palace and the abbey, and by the time a first-time visitor has done Westminster, the Tower and the West End, they’re often out of days before they get here.

How I actually plan around this now

The pattern I use, and recommend, is simple: front-load the crowded sights with early entry, then deliberately schedule a slower day.

Book the big paid attractions for their first available time slot, generally before 10am, when the tour groups haven’t arrived yet. A walking tour through the historic core in the early morning covers a lot of the same ground as a self-guided visit later in the day, minus the crowds, and gives context you’d otherwise miss. I’ve taken the Royal London Grand Tour on a first morning before and it hits Westminster, the Tower area and the City in one guided loop before the crowds properly build.

Then give yourself at least one day that has nothing to do with a ticketed attraction. Walk Brick Lane, sit in Greenwich Park, take the boat down to Richmond. If you’re a Harry Potter reader in the group, the London Film Walking Tour threads through some of these quieter streets rather than the main tourist strip, which helps both the crowd problem and the pacing problem at once.

And don’t be afraid to leave the city entirely for a day. Weekend crowd pressure in central London eases noticeably once you get people out to day trips like the Cotswolds or Bath, partly because it thins out the group-tour traffic in the centre, and partly because it’s simply a different, slower kind of sightseeing. If a full day trip is too much, a half-day like the Bath day trip or one of the Cotswolds village tours still gets you out of the density for a few hours.

So, too touristy or not?

I’d put it this way: London’s ten most famous photographs are genuinely crowded, and no clever timing trick will make Buckingham Palace empty in August. But that’s ten photographs out of a city with dozens of neighbourhoods, several major parks, and an entire eastern half that most short-stay visitors never properly see.

If you only budget for the big-name list, you will find London touristy, because you will only see the touristy parts. If you build in even one day for East London or the parks, or one day trip out of the centre, the picture changes completely. I’ve watched this shift people’s opinion of a trip more than any single ticket booking has. It’s less about avoiding crowds entirely and more about not spending every single day inside them.

For what it’s worth, my free things to do list leans heavily on the quieter side of the city for exactly this reason, and it’s the guide I point most repeat visitors to once they’ve done the obvious first-timer route.