Five people, one flat, one week: how to get through it

The first thing to check on a family apartment is the number of bathrooms. Holidays in a shared flat rarely go wrong over anything big; they go wrong at 8am, with five people and one shower, and booking the right apartment fixes that far better than patience does.

Bedrooms and bathrooms

A teenager made to share with a younger sibling for a week will make everyone pay for it, so if the budget stretches, book the extra bedroom. About half the residences we list have three-bedroom apartments and plenty go to four or more, which means a family of five, or a trip with the grandparents, can usually have a door each. Then ask about bathrooms, and whether the main bedroom has its own. Two for five people is the minimum for civil mornings.

Split up, meet for lunch

Trying to take everyone everywhere pleases nobody, and London makes it easy not to. The Natural History Museum and the Science Museum sit side by side in South Kensington with the V&A next door, and the permanent collections at all three are free, so the dinosaur fans can go one way and the fashion students the other before everyone meets at 1pm. The same works across town: one lot takes the river boat to Greenwich while the other does Oxford Street or the galleries, and everyone turns up at dinner with something to report.

Give each person one pick for the week, the youngest included, and build the days round those. A child who knows Thursday is dinosaur day will sit through Tuesday's gallery with far better grace, and the adults get the same deal.

Everyone also needs an hour on their own, four-year-olds included. Indoors that can be a den of sofa cushions for the children and a shut bedroom door for the adults. Outdoors, the Royal Parks do the job: Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens are within reach of most of Kensington, Bayswater and Mayfair, and Regent's Park is handy for Marylebone. A walk round the Serpentine takes about three-quarters of an hour and fixes most moods. If a terrace, balcony or garden matters to you, filter for it early, because not many residences have one and those go first in summer.

Keep to home hours

Children cope with a new city far better than with a new timetable. Keep breakfast, lunch and bedtime roughly where they are at home, put the day's one big outing in the morning when everyone has most patience, and keep afternoons slow: a park, a film in the flat, a nap for the smallest. This is where the kitchen earns its keep. Breakfast in pyjamas is cheaper, and far less of a faff, than marching a family of five into a hotel dining room, and a simple supper at home after a long day heads off the 8pm restaurant meltdown.

A smaller flat than you're used to gets messy fast, and mess frays tempers. Sort it on day one with shoes by the door, chargers on one table and a fridge shelf each for the fussy eaters, and hand out jobs to the children too; an eight-year-old can lay a table and load a dishwasher. On a longer stay laundry is the other flashpoint, so before you pack for a fortnight, check there's a washing machine in the apartment or a laundry service in the building, since not all have one.

London rarely stops you going out, but it does rain. Even July, the warmest month, gets rain on about nine days in an average year, so bring waterproofs for everyone and keep one indoor plan up your sleeve for the grey afternoon that will save an argument.

London weather by month

July is the warmest month, averaging 23°C by day. July has the fewest wet days (9) and October the most rain (80 mm). For sightseeing on foot, June scores best on our combined warmth-and-dryness measure.

Month	Avg high	Avg low	Rain	Wet days	Chance a 7-day stay sees a washout	Record high / low
January	8°C	2°C	74 mm	13	53%	16°C / -12°C
February	8°C	2°C	51 mm	10	43%	18°C / -8°C
March	11°C	4°C	45 mm	9	44%	23°C / -7°C
April	14°C	5°C	54 mm	10	44%	26°C / -3°C
May	17°C	8°C	54 mm	9	39%	30°C / -1°C
June	20°C	11°C	58 mm	9	35%	34°C / 2°C
July	23°C	13°C	52 mm	9	34%	34°C / 4°C
August	22°C	13°C	68 mm	9	37%	37°C / 4°C
September	19°C	11°C	62 mm	9	39%	29°C / 2°C
October	15°C	8°C	80 mm	11	47%	27°C / -2°C
November	11°C	5°C	76 mm	12	52%	18°C / -6°C
December	8°C	2°C	69 mm	12	50%	16°C / -8°C

Calculated NOAA GHCN-Daily observations at the Hampstead weather station, north London (records 1960–2015; averages from about 25 years per month). A wet day has 1 mm of rain or more.