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Best to buy a weeks travel card as an oyster or a pay as you go oyster and top it up as you need. Cash single fares are very expensive

If you will be using transport extensively for 6 days, then you would be better to get an Oyster Card with a weeks travel card on it. You will need a travel card for the zones you will be going into. If you are staying in Central London, a 1-2 zone pass would probably do it for most of the zones. You can get zone extensions at the ticket office if you are going somewhere outside the centre. If you are staying further out, you will need to cover the zone you are staying in to the centre. You can buy an Oyster Card at all stations and a lot of small newsagents displaying the Oyster sign. It will cost you £3 initially, but if you can hand it back to get the £3 back at the end of your trip if you aren't visiting London again (worth keeping if you make occasional trips).

A zone 1 - 2 travel card will cost £25.80 for the week, a 1 - 3 = £30.20, 1 - 4 = £36.80.

A single day travel card for zones 1 - 2 costs £5.60 which adds up to £33.60 for 6 days, so you would really be saving money by getting a weekly pass.

The weekly pass will allow you to travel on buses, tubes and trains within the zones on the card. If you are changing tubes, getting on and off buses etc, you can do this as many times in a day as you like with no extra cost. You can also travel during peak times with no extra cost. with a single trip ticket, you would pay for each trip (if you change to another tube line at a station, you don't pay any extra, the cost is from ticket barrier to ticket barrier at the first and last stations). A bus would cost you £2 per trip no matter whether it is one stop or 10 (but only £1.20 with an oyster card).

On the Transport for London website, there are links to zone maps and underground maps. If you are not certain which zone you are staying in, just ask when you buy your oyster card at the station.

As above, the price depends on how far you travel (ie: through how many zones) day, time. Here is a list of prices from the website: http://www.tfl.gov.uk/tickets/14416.aspx

Personally I found it a lot more cost effective to purchase an Oyster Card. If I remember right, I paid £20 for the card at the time, and this gave me £17 worth of credit. I bought the card from one of the ticket kiosks at the tube station.

That £17 was more than enough to last me for 3 days of frequent usage.

I live in London and definetely prefer the bus, but with the inderground i'm lucky because I can still get a kids day card which is only £2 but I think it depends for adults it depends which zones your travelling in. I would just ask the man at the station info for advice and he will explain.

It works exactly like any rail network. You pay according to the distance traveled, time of day and day of the week. Calculate where you want to go in advance - you'll be paying at a machine, it won't talk back to you. Day passes are cheaper than week passes - miss one day and you wasted money. The underground is not cheap. Buses and taxi are better in some cases.

Peace.