Hi! I'm planning a trip over easter vacation with 2 teens. I'm assuming shops/museums, etc. will be closed on Easter day in London. Can anyone confirm this? (We will be in London Thurs-Mon. and have been there before)

So I thought we might take the EuroStar to Paris for the day- I found out that the Eiffel tower and Louvre are open.

Any thoughts or ideas?

Thanks,

Amy

Easter Sunday is one of two days in the year when shops are not allowed to open (Christmas Day is the other one).

Museums should be open as far as I'm aware.

Note also that Good Friday and Easter Monday are public holidays in the UK. The shops and museums, etc, will be open, though. If you do want to travel, note that it'll start getting expensive very soon (if not already), and that everything travel-related will be horrendously busy. Heathrow on the evening before any public holiday is bad (bad enough that I've taken to working on public holidays and taking a day off the next weekend if I want to go away), but Easter is worse than most, because of the long weekend.

The restriction on shops opening on Easter Sunday only applies to those over 3000 sq ft. That said, it's usually very quiet. I'm pretty sure most museums are open: Bank Holidays usually see an mass exodus of Londoners, with a mass inpouring of tourists and day-trippers. There's also usually a handful of events around the country - nothing remotely on the scale of say, Semana Santa celebrations, but worth looking out for.

My wife and I took our neice to London over Easter a few years ago and I am pretty sure we went to the Tower of London on Easter Sunday as well as had tea at the Dorchester. So I would think museums and other tourist things as well as a lot of restaurants would be open. I think that the Eurostar also wasnt running on Saturday as I recall we had to fly back from Paris the day before Easter because the train wasnt running due to the holiday.

Easter Sunday is very hit and miss for restaurants etc, but most tourist attractions will be open.

Eurostar is very hit and miss over public holidays, though now the first section of the high speed link is open there should be less engineering work to screw up the service.

That was specifically last year, where they were working on the new England-side high-speed line. They closed the Eurostar line on the Easter Saturday, as it's one of the quietest days of the year.

All Bank Holidays in the UK mean train delays, though. Scheduled and unscheduled. Always check.

No, I believe it was 2002.

Ah, how time flies

I'm bumping this thread because I will be in London over Easter. Does anyone have anything to add, or other thoughts? Thanks.

It was a few years ago, but I remember the British Museum and other museums shut on Good Friday and Easter Sunday. Shops are open though and can be busy.

Shops (beyond a certain small size) including supermarkets by law must shut on Easter Sunday. Restaurants and hotels dont count.

Easter Monday is major shopping day.

The airports are packed for outbound flights on Thursday/Friday and the same again for inbound flights on Monday.