Going to be traveling there for vacation this year.

Already got flights and AirBnB booked.

5-min walk from Gloucester Rd Station so plenty of access to wherever we are going.

Looking online, I see several options for paying for the tube. Contactless with my phone, a Visitor Oyster Card or Oyster Card. Seems like regardless of which I use the cost will be the same?

Visitor Oyster Card has daily caps within a single zone, but we'll be going all over so not sure how useful that will be.

Using Costo Visa for most purchases as they do not charge a conversion fee to convert from $$ to GBP. and it's already loaded on my ApplePay.

Using contactless last summer on my iPhone was very easy. Don't see any reason to use anything else. With that said I didn't know there were the different zones at first so I was a bit surprised by the amounts being charged varying. I figured it out though.

figured out I can set a specific card in Apple Wallet to be 'transit' so it will default to that card.

agracer said:

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figured out I can set a specific card in Apple Wallet to be 'transit' so it will default to that card.

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That's all you need to do. TFL automatically balances your funds out to the periodic caps too over a day or a week if you travel loads.

Do you need to do the double click on your phone to bring up Apple Pay when going through a tube turnstile when doing this?

If you set a card to transport card in your wallet, you don't need to double click

Just did London and Paris over Spring Break. My two cents is that the London Metro is super easy to use with Apple Pay. Double click on the way in and double click on the way out. This was a breeze compared to the Metro in Paris. I looked at the Oyster Card, but didn't see the benefit.

Also, we stayed within walking distance of Gloucester Station and was a great area to be located!

not sure if you are traveling solo, but make sure you have one card for each adult traveling

sts7049 said:

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not sure if you are traveling solo, but make sure you have one card for each adult traveling

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yes, set up the wife's phone for transport same as mine.

Express Transit is the setting in Apple Wallet, makes it where you do not have to double click at tube stations (works in quite a few cities now).