London Night: What to Do After Dark
A guided tour takes ninety minutes to four hours. A London evening is longer than that, and the hours either side are where people either have a very good night or stand outside a closed building wondering what to do. This page is the rest of the evening.
It is organised by the clock rather than by category, because that is how an evening actually happens. London night time tours covers the tours themselves.
Five to seven: before the tour
This is the awkward window. The museums are closing, the restaurants are not busy yet, and most tours have not started. Two things work reliably: an early dinner somewhere you booked, or a walk along the Embankment while the light goes, which costs nothing and is the best free hour of a London day between October and March.
If you are booked on a cab tour with hotel pickup, use this hour to eat. If you are meeting a walking tour in Whitechapel or at Tower Hill, get there early and look at the Roman wall behind Tower Hill station, which is floodlit and almost always empty.
Seven to ten: the tour itself
Almost everything on this market leaves between half past five and half past ten, and the bulk of it goes at half past seven. Between October and March that is comfortably dark; between May and July it is not, which is worth knowing before you build an evening around it. The darkness table has the month you are visiting.
Ten onwards: after the tour
Pubs in central London mostly stop serving around eleven, so the plan is either a late restaurant, a bar with a later licence, or the walk home along a river that is at its best once the crowds have gone. Soho and the streets around Piccadilly stay busy latest; the City empties completely and is all the better for it.
If your evening finished at Spitalfields, which two of the walking tours do, the market area around Brushfield Street holds up later than most of the East End and Liverpool Street station is four minutes away.
Where to get a view
Free and outdoors: the Millennium Bridge for St Paul's, Waterloo Bridge for the best single view in London — the City one way, Westminster the other — and the south end of Westminster Bridge for the Houses of Parliament straight on.
Paid and indoors: the observation decks run later than the historic attractions and are the one category of London attraction genuinely open at night. Book them directly; none is included in any tour listed here.
The one people miss: the terrace outside Tate Modern, which faces St Paul's across the river and is open to anyone.
Eating and drinking after a tour
Borough Market's restaurants and bars run past the market's own hours and sit directly on the two-hour cab route. Soho is the safe answer for anything after ten. Covent Garden is busy but early, and much of it is winding down by the time a night tour finishes.
One reviewer describes their black cab guide detouring to what he considered London's best fish and chips. That is the sort of thing a private driver will do if you ask, and nobody thinks to ask.
If it rains
It will, some of the time, and it matters less than you think. The walking tours run in all weathers and say so; the lower deck of both buses is enclosed; the cab tours are a cab. Wet roads are what photographers actively want, because every light in the city appears twice.
The genuine wet-weather alternative is a theatre, which is the one thing London does at night that is entirely indoors and entirely unaffected. Book it before you travel — the good ones sell out and the booth queues on Leicester Square are a poor substitute for having decided in advance.
| If your evening is... | Do this before | Do this after |
|---|---|---|
| A 90-minute bus circuit | Eat early near your departure point | Soho, or the river on foot |
| A two-hour river cab | Walk the South Bank at dusk | Borough Market |
| A Ripper or ghost walk | Tower Hill Roman wall | Spitalfields, then Liverpool Street |
| A photography walk | Arrive an hour early for blue hour | Waterloo Bridge |
| A four-hour cab tour | Nothing — it fills the evening | Straight to bed |
The cheapest good evening in London. Waterloo Bridge at dusk, walk east along the South Bank to Tower Bridge, cross, come back on the north side. About two hours, free, and it takes in most of what a bus route shows you. The full route is written out here.
For what each landmark looks like lit, the attractions page goes building by building, and what to expect covers the tour hours themselves. Departures are on London Night Tours.
Tours that fit around a whole evening
The Ultimate Jack the Ripper Tour (Private Group Booking)
Private groupGuide included
From $364 per group (up to 15)
Private Panoramic London Night Tour
Private groupTransport includedGuide included
From $247 per person