When travelling in London get an Oyster Card

If you are traveling to London then you will need to get around once there. London has a prepay travel card system called the Oyster Card. The Oyster card is a blue card about the size of a credit card that you can buy and charge up with money. Then when traveling on the Tube or Bus network in London you simply swipe the card over the card readers and it will let you on, or in to the transport.

- Buses have the card reader in front of the Bus drivers window and it is Yellow.
- Tubes (Underground) has the card reader at the turnstiles before you go into the Tube. This is also Yellow. At the Tube gates you may be shown the balance of your card.

What is so cool about the Oyster Card?
If you spend the whole day traveling around London using the Oyster the card will cap how much you spend. Up until recently you could not pay more than about £5.20 per day max. So if you only take one Bus trip for the day it will cost around .75p and that is all. But if you take the Tube alot and loads of bus trips as well then the most you will pay is the £5.20.

Using the Oyster Card makes travel in London cheaper also as if you pay cash on the Buses it will cost closer to £1.50 as opposed to about .75p on the buses.

You can get Oyster prepay traveler cards (same card just with different prepay settings) which are valid for a weekend or week which also gives you a return trip to Heathrow Airport. Heathrow is quite a hike so this makes it cheaper again. This card allows unlimited travel in this time.

If you run out of money on a prepay Oyster travel card then you can top it up at any Tube Station.