🇬🇧 Europe
London, castles, the Scottish Highlands and the English countryside: the United Kingdom combines history, culture and green landscapes.
The United Kingdom is not one country but four nations under the same crown: England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. In a few hours by train you go from the cosmopolitan energy of London to the cliffs of Cornwall, from the stone colleges of Oxford to the lochs and mountains of the Scottish Highlands. It is a compact destination, extremely dense in history and surprisingly varied for how small it is.
For Latin American travellers it has one huge advantage: you understand everything. The language is the English you studied at school (with accents that are hard at first, especially the Scottish one), public transport is clear, and there is a network of trains and coaches reaching almost any town. On top of that, all the great national museums — the British Museum, the National Gallery, the Victoria and Albert, the Natural History — are free to enter, something that happens in almost no other country in Europe.
The downside is the price: the United Kingdom is one of the most expensive destinations on the continent and London competes with the priciest cities in the world. The good news is that it can be tamed: most of the unmissable things are free, trains bought weeks in advance cost a fraction, and leaving London for Scotland, Wales or northern England brings everything down at once. Watch out for one key detail: since Brexit the United Kingdom is no longer part of the European Union or the Schengen area, and it has its own entry permit.
The local currency is the pound sterling (GBP). It is worth carrying some cash, letting your bank know before you travel and checking the day's exchange rate.
Full converter for GBP →From Latin America practically every flight lands in London, which has direct links from Buenos Aires, São Paulo, Bogotá, Santiago, Lima and Mexico City, plus endless options with a stopover in Madrid, Paris, Amsterdam or Miami. London has six airports: Heathrow and Gatwick handle the long-haul flights, while Stansted, Luton, City and Southend mostly serve European low-cost carriers. Inside the country the train is the best way to move around (London to Edinburgh takes about four and a half hours), but the price depends almost entirely on how far ahead you book: advance tickets go on sale up to twelve weeks before departure and cost a fraction of what you pay close to the date. Megabus and National Express coaches are the cheap, slow alternative, and easyJet or Ryanair are often worth it for hopping to Scotland or Northern Ireland. In London you just tap a contactless card or your phone at the gates on the Underground and on buses, with no need to buy an Oyster. And if the trip continues to the continent, the Eurostar links London with Paris, Brussels and Amsterdam through the Channel Tunnel.
The best window runs from May to September. June and July bring the longest days of the year: in London there is light until close to 21:30 and in northern Scotland the sky barely goes fully dark, which stretches travel days a lot. July and August are high season, with everything pricier and busier, especially in Edinburgh during the Fringe. May and September are the sweet spot: decent weather, more reasonable prices and fewer people. One warning for Scotland: between June and August the midges come out, tiny biting insects that in damp areas of the Highlands can be torture at dusk.
From November to February the country is dark and damp: in December it gets dark at 16:00 in London and even earlier in Scotland. It is not a bad time for cities, museums, pubs and Christmas markets, and prices drop, but the mountains and the countryside deliver little. The rule every British person repeats holds all year round: the weather changes several times a day, so always carry a waterproof jacket and dress in layers, even in midsummer.
British food has a bad reputation and does not entirely deserve it. The must-tries are fish and chips (best on the coast, wrapped in paper), the full English breakfast with eggs, bacon, sausages, beans and tomato, the Sunday roast at any pub on a Sunday — roast meat, roast potatoes and Yorkshire pudding — and savoury pies. In Scotland try the haggis and the smoked salmon; in Northern Ireland, the Ulster fry. And there is one cuisine that is by now as British as the rest: Indian. Chicken tikka masala was invented in the United Kingdom and a curry house is always a good idea. Afternoon tea with scones, cream and jam is a ritual worth doing at least once.
Reference prices (verified July 2026): a pint of beer averages 5.34 pounds across the country (about 7 dollars) and runs around 6.50 to 6.75 in London; fish and chips goes for 10 to 14 pounds (13 to 19 dollars); a supermarket meal deal — sandwich, snack and drink at Tesco, Sainsbury's or Boots — costs between 4 and 5 pounds and is the backpacker's great lifesaver. In a pub you order and pay at the bar, there is no table service, and you do not tip there. In restaurants with waiting staff you leave 10 to 12.5 %, but check first whether the service charge is already added to the bill.
The United Kingdom is a safe destination and tourists rarely face anything beyond an opportunistic crime. The specific precautions are urban and above all London ones: pickpockets on the Underground, on Oxford Street and around the busiest attractions, and phone snatching in the street by people on motorbikes and bicycles, a real problem in central London. The rule is simple: do not walk with your phone in your hand at the edge of the pavement and do not leave your bag hanging off the back of a chair. One road safety detail that surprises everyone: they drive on the left, so before crossing look right (in London it is written on the tarmac).
No vaccine is required to enter from Latin America and tap water is drinkable throughout the country. On health, watch out for a common misunderstanding: the NHS treats emergencies in A&E free of charge, but any follow-up treatment, hospital stay or transfer is billed to non-residents, and it can be very expensive. Travel insurance with good medical cover is not optional. The emergency number is 999 (the European 112 also works) and, for medical questions that are not emergencies, NHS 111 (verified July 2026).
The United Kingdom is expensive and London is the most expensive part. With a hostel, supermarket food and public transport, a backpacker gets by on 60 to 80 pounds a day (about 80 to 107 dollars at the July 2026 exchange rate). A mid-range trip, with a modest hotel and one restaurant meal a day, runs around 120 to 180 pounds (160 to 240 dollars). Outside London everything drops: in Glasgow, Manchester, Cardiff or Belfast the same day costs 25 to 35 % less.
Concrete references (verified July 2026): a hostel dorm bed in London costs between 25 and 45 pounds (33 to 60 dollars) and considerably less in the rest of the country; a single Underground journey in zone 1 costs 3.10 pounds at peak times and 3 off-peak, paying with a contactless card or an Oyster; a city bus is 1.75 pounds with free transfers for an hour (the Hopper) and a daily cap of 5.25; a pint 5.34 on the national average; fish and chips 10 to 14. The national museums are free, and London's paid attractions — the Tower of London, the London Eye, Westminster Abbey — run around 30 to 40 pounds each. The other big expense is long-distance trains: London to Edinburgh bought weeks in advance can be found from 30 to 50 pounds, but on the day at the ticket window it can top 150; Megabus or National Express coaches, far slower, start at 10 to 20 pounds.
The language is English, so the barrier is lower than in any other European destination, although getting used to the accents takes a few days: the Scottish one (especially Glasgow), the Liverpool one and that of northeast England are quite hard at first. Spanish is barely spoken outside very touristy areas. On customs, three things define how people behave: you queue religiously and pushing in is a serious offence; you apologise for everything, even when someone bumps into you; and the pub is the social centre, where you order and pay at the bar and it is customary to buy rounds in turn. Pubs usually call last orders around 23:00 and many restaurants close the kitchen earlier than in Latin America.
A practical detail that confuses everyone: the plug is type G, with three flat rectangular pins, different from the type C/F used in the rest of Europe; if you are coming from Spain or France your European adapter will not work here. The voltage is 230V. For connectivity, the simplest option is an eSIM bought before you travel or a local prepaid SIM from EE, Vodafone, Three or O2 at any airport or corner shop; watch out for this: because the United Kingdom left the European Union, a European data plan may charge you roaming here, and vice versa, so check the coverage before buying. You pay by contactless card for absolutely everything, even on the bus and in public toilets, and more and more places simply do not take cash. Tips run 10 to 12.5 % in restaurants with waiting staff, nothing at the pub bar and rounding up in a taxi.
Before telling this story it helps to untangle a knot of names that confuses almost everyone. Great Britain is an island: the largest in the archipelago off northwestern Europe, the one that holds England, Scotland and Wales. The United Kingdom is a state, and its full name says it all: United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland; that is, those three nations on the island plus the northeastern portion of the neighbouring island of Ireland. And the British Isles is a purely geographical term — the two big islands plus thousands of islets — which also takes in the Republic of Ireland, a sovereign, independent country; that is why many Irish people reject the label "British Isles" and prefer to speak of "these islands" or of "Britain and Ireland". They are not synonyms: you can be British without being English, and you can live in the islands without being from the United Kingdom.
On that small island space one of the densest histories on the planet was built. Stonehenge rose here when the pyramids did not yet exist; the Celts arrived here, then the legions of Rome, then the Anglo-Saxons and the Vikings, and in 1066 the Normans, who would change the language and the laws for good. Out of this corner of Europe came Magna Carta and the first parliament, Henry VIII's Reformation, the revolution that beheaded a king, the steam engine that opened the industrial age and the largest empire that has ever existed, with all its glory and all its horror: the slave trade, India, the Irish famine, the Opium Wars. Travelling the United Kingdom — from the stones of Salisbury to the docks of Liverpool, from the castles of Wales to the battlefields of the Highlands, from Westminster to the murals of Belfast — is to read, written in stone and in landscape, the history of four nations that learned, not without conflict, to live together under one crown.
Read the full history of United Kingdom →Pick a region and open each destination to see what to do, prices and how to get there.
These are the sources we cite most across this country's guides, with how many times each appears. Hard data —tickets, opening hours, requirements, transport— comes from the official source and carries the date we checked it. Restaurant and hotel picks come from guides and reviews, and we say so on each page.
