Entry Requirements: 

As of January 2025 citizens of most countries including the USA and Canada are required to have ETA, Electronic Travel Authorization – for short term visits (up to 6 months) as a tourist.  Working, studying, or longer stays have separate visa requirements.
You should always check the most recent entry requirement updates from the country you’re traveling to.  For the UK you can find all visa requirements, apply for the ETA, and check for updates at www.gov.uk/entering-staying-uk
The ETA costs £16 and according to the government’s official site usually takes 3 days to process.

Currency: 

The UK uses the pound sterling.  Conversion rates change minute by minute. Banks usually update their exchange rates daily.  Conversion between the US dollar and British pound over the last five years appears to have fluctuated somewhere between .7 pounds to 1 dollar and .9 pounds to 1 dollar.

Getting Around:

England isn’t a large country and the train system is useful and reliable.  Most major cities and towns are all easily reached by train, however to explore the countryside and sights which may be further afield such as castles and manor houses, you may want to rent a car or join a tour.  Don’t let driving on the left side of the road deter you, as long as you’re not in a large city it’s not that bad.  You can take the train to a smaller town and rent the car from there, and these days rentals often come with lane assist to help you stay in the correct lane.  

There are also taxis, and Uber or Bolt available in some areas, although both of these options usually work better in bigger cities and can be hard or impossible to come by in smaller towns.  London itself has an extensive metro system and an army of tourist hop on/off double decker buses.

Lastly, some of the more popular remote sights have their own special tourist buses. These buses, like Hadrian’s wall bus – AD 122, for example or Stagecoach’s open top bus routes in Cumbria’s Lake District are very useful.  

CDC recommendations:

The CDC Travelers’ health website for the UK can be found at https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/travel/destinations/list

Average Weather:

London:

Things of note:

Restaurant reservations, called bookings in England, are de rigor, or put another way borderline mandatory at least for dinner.  I also found restaurant hours in England tend to be more specific and narrow, with more structured timings then I’m used to when traveling.  Often there is a short window during which time lunch or dinner are available.  This can make eating while sightseeing something you need to give a little more thought to than you would while traveling elsewhere. 

 *Keep in mind when checking online, the hours the restaurant is open do not necessarily correspond to the hours the restaurant serves food.  
In England a restaurant can be “open” but this doesn’t exactly mean the same thing it might mean in other places, for instance they may only serve food for one hour but be ”open” all day for a beer or a pot of tea and biscuits.  By the way, if you didn’t already know, Biscuits in England are what we call cookies in America, so don’t ask for butter and jam with them like I did…lol..  🙂