Four crucial places to save pounds in London

In a city recently called the most expensive on Earth, where a cup of tea can run you five pounds ($10) and where you are guaranteed at some point to ask how anyone pays $8 a gallon for gasoline, a savvy traveler has to learn London's "secret savings spots." Here's how to save a few hundred bucks:

Phone calls. At Le Meriden Hotel in Piccadilly, a local call from the room costs two pounds per minute. Yes, that's $4 per minute. A local call from the room to a UK cell phone is $6.50 per minute. Want to phone home in America? Get ready to fork out more than $16 a minute. That's $160 for a ten-minute hello. What if you have friends in the middle east? One minute will put you out $30. But wait, there is an escape clause here. There's a pay phone in our hotel (and many on the streets), and a local call costs 40p (eighty cents). That bought us at least ten minutes, and may cover as long as you can talk (we made a call and ran out of things to say before our 40p ran out).

The underground. Your first option: the single fare, which starts at four pounds. That's a whopping $8 one way, inside what's known as "Zone One" (central London). Travel further, and the price goes up a few more pounds. Round-trip fares are a slightly better deal. But what if you're simply heading for the airport or another one-way destination? A local friend told me about the "Oyster Card." "Basically," he said, "tourists in London get hosed." The locally-beloved Oyster Card, on the other hand, available at news shops, will run you a three pound deposit and a minimum five pound "top-off" (that's the amount you put on the card). But once you start using it, a fare costs as little as one pound fifty. That's three dollars instead of eight. Your next option is an unlimited Zone One and Two three-day travel card, which will run you about $30.

Movies. My husband had the passing thought of seeing a film one evening. "It'll cost more than it does in the states," I predicted. After all, everything we've seen so far has cost about double what it does back home. (And restaurant dishes are half as large. Expect it.) We entered the Odeon theater at 40 Leicester Square. Okay, Leicester Square is the Times Square or Champs-Elysees of London. Back home, movies cost one price, within fifty cents, wherever one goes. At Leicester Square, a seat will run you 12 pounds 50 (prices are a little cheaper for less prime seats; cinemas here sell individual seats, as for live shows). That is to say, two tickets for Blood Diamond would put us out fifty bucks. I really don't want to see it that badly. My husband teased the ticket seller for being rich. He said, "It's Leicester Square. They're trying to steal from the tourists. Further out, you'd pay a lot less." How much less? "I pay three pounds fifty," he said. See your movies outside the dead center of London.

Internet. Hooking up to the wi-fi at Le Meridien is about a dollar a minute, and approximately the same fee at internet cafes. But my husband has a Blackberry. For $19 per month, pro-rated (that's $7 for the ten days of our vacation), he opened the phone to international usage, and that includes email. A phone call runs .99 per minute, but e-mail typed from the little Blackberry keypad is free.

We're feeling smug about our fat wallets. After all, London is one place where everyone wants to keep their pounds on them.