When you visit London, you may want to spend the day touring various museums and the evening enjoying a good play. There are many major national museums and galleries open daily for you to enjoy, offering shorter hours on weekends than weekdays.

To get the most out of your dollar, consider purchasing a money-saving pass called the London GoSee Card. This card is valid for admission to many of London’s major attractions, including Apsley House, Barbican Art Gallery, Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre and the Design Museum. It can used from 3 to 7 days. An adult 3-day card costs £16 ($26) and a 7-day card goes for £26 ($42). Cards can be purchased at British tourist information centers, London Transport centers, airports, as well as various attractions.

Dickens’s House
48 Doughty St., WC1
Telephone: +44 171-405-2127
Tour the 19th-century dwelling which served as home where Dickens wrote Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickleby, as well as completed The Pickwick Papers. Here you will be able to view his study, manuscripts, personal relics, as well as first editions of many of his best-known works.

British Library
96 Euston Rd.
Telephone: +44 0171-412-7222
When you visit this attraction, you will be able to view Shakespeare’s First Folio of 1623, a Gutenberg Bible, printed circa 1455, the Magna Carta (1215), as well as the rare Lindisfarne Gospels (c.700). Here is where you can find the earliest surviving manuscript of Beowulf and original manuscripts produced by greats, such as Jane Austen, Thomas Hardy, Lewis Carroll, Virginia Woolf and George Eliot. There are also many religious, historical, and musical works in the handwriting ranging from greats such as Leonardo to Sir Paul McCartney.

British Museum
Great Russell St., WC1
Telephone: +44 0171-636-1555
Two million years of world history and civilization are held within the walls of this great museum. Here you can explore and experience artifacts dating back to prehistoric times to the present. Antiquities from Egypt, Greece, Rome, Western Asia, and Great Britain await your curious eyes and mind. Here is where you will find the Rosetta Stone and the Elgin Marbles.

House of Detention
Clerkenwell Close, EC1
Telephone: +44 0171-253-9494
If you want a real scare, visit this prison from the 18th and 19th centuries. Come for the 40-minute guided tour and spend a bit of time browsing the research center, which holds over 19,000 prison records and accounts.

Museum of the Moving Image (MOMI)
South Bank Centre, underneath Waterloo Bridge, SE1
Telephone: +44 0171-401-2636
Calling all film buffs! This great museum deals with the history of film and television. Here you will find well-illustrated exhibits featuring the evolution of silent movies, newsreels, sound recording, television and anything else regarding the audiovisual world.

National Gallery
Northwest side of Trafalgar Square, WC2
Telephone: +44 0171-747-2885
Here you may happen upon one of the greatest collections of western European painting, created between the 13th to the 20th century. There are over 2,200 works for you to enjoy, including creations by Leonardo, Rembrandt, Botticelli, Giotto, Velazquez, Monet, van Gogh and Rubens.