I’m going to be in and around London for about a week this December, and I’d love to know what you folks would recommend seeing or doing while I’m there. I’m already planning to spend at least a day at the British Museum; I’m a sucker for antiquities. I’m also in the theater industry, but I gather that the Globe is closed for the winter, so is there something special playing in the West End that I should look into? Know of any special out-of-the-way things that are worth seeing, or overhyped things that aren’t? Let me know!
I loved the Tower of London and the V&A museum when I was there.
Also if you go to Soho visit http://www.thestarcafe.co.uk/ - I was there years ago and had a lovely lunch there. They had excellent pie.
The London Pass is a great tool to see lots of London. I’m a Londoner but haven’t lived there since my 20s; the last time I was visiting family in the area I used the 6 day pass. Before I started using it (and on each evening) I used the guidebook/map to plan what I was going to visit the next day. Leaving at 9am and returning around 7pm (and eating on the go) I got plenty of use out of it.
I’d recommend;
The Tower of London - has a lot of historical antiquities, 3/4 hours easily spent here
St Paul’s Cathedral - beautiful and very expansive inside
The Globe is advertised as open from 10am to 5pm in December, historically very thorough (warm inside)
Churchill’s War Rooms and Britain at War Experience were interesting (and warm). Winston Churchill’s Britain at War Experience closes at the end of 2012 due to redevelopments in the local area
The London Bridge Experience more catered for kids or young-at-heart adults (‘edutaining’, fun and warm)
The Tate Modern is always worth seeing
The Old Operating Theatre was cute and had a Victorian pharmacy, herb garret and operating theatre (warm)
If you have the time Kensington Palace and Windsor Castle (especially) are memorable and very well-maintained, but they both take up a good part of the day. I managed to fit them (and London Zoo, Wimbledon Tennis Museum and a cruise on the Thames) in along with 30-odd Tube (subway), half a dozen bus, and 15 train journeys.
As I said I ate when I was hungry and where ever there was food available - definitely not a gastronomic tour!
In a week you can easily see 20 or more sights by planning your days and keeping your tourism to the center of town. With the pass you get a personal map like this one to help you plan the most efficient route.
For example I would plan on reaching a venue that had Fast track entry when the doors opened; eg Day 1 arrived at the Tower at approx 9am, then went to Tower Bridge around 12 midday, then grabbed a bite, off to Churchill’s Britain at War Experience, then a coffee and a bite, HMS Belfast, more coffee, Southwark Cathedral and home. The next day I started just up river from there and continued in the same vein.
Royal Albert Hall has Christmas Carol evenings throughout December if you need to get into the CHristmas spirit.
Seconding the recommendation for the Churchill Museum. It’s terrific.
There is so much to do in London for Free, At least half a dozen world class museums and galleries could keep you entertained for 6 days without spending a penny.
However, though I’ve never used it, looking at the cost of the London pass it seems fairly reasonable and covers lots of great stuff that is worth paying for (HMS Belfast is great and a particular tip for me.) Getting the 6-day with travel card pretty much gives you the freedom to go wherever the hell you want and you’ll be free to just dip in to paid attractions for a short while without feeling short-changed.
It doesn’t cover things like the bus tours, dungeon and Tussauds but then they are pretty crap anyway and you won’t miss out by not doing them.
Things not to miss? The National Gallery, Natural History Museum and the V&A.
Get drunk in a pub.
Go see as many theater shows as possible - tickets far cheaper than on Broadway, and you might even catch a show before it shows up on Broadway and can impress your friends by telling them how it is/was!
Get drunk in a pub.
Find some good Indian restaurants - lots of them there - but be sure to avoid the pub food.
But after dinner, go get drunk in a pub again.
Some very cool shopping - bookstores are great, lots of antique shops and you might ask if there is some kind of flea market/open air market nearby to see what they have to offer. You could easily find some stuff they consider junk, and get it cheap, that we would love to have in a home in the US.
Now go back to your pub and meet up with the friends you made on your last three visits and get drunk with them again!
Don’t forget to pick up some of those great, tacky souvenirs! Plates with Princess Diana on them, coffee mugs with William and Kate, etc. They are truly appreciated by friends and family in the US!
Have fun and report back when you return!
We rather enjoyed the London Transport Museum.
Have dinner at Veeraswamy.
Tate Modern, the V&A, and St. Peter’s all sound like great ideas. Unfortunately, London is the first week of a month-long trip, and I can’t haul lots of souvenirs all over England, Ireland, and France. Tell me more about the Belfast– that sounds like a fun idea!
‘The Tate’ is a must! You can walk across the Millennium Bridge from there and take a ride on the London Eye (touristy, hokey, but still cool).
Westminster Abbey and St. Paul’s Cathedral are also part of “THE” London experience that you can’t miss!
Day trips to Windsor (about 45 minutes by bus) to visit Windsor Castle and the surrounding town are very common…and boring as hell! If they didn’t serve alcohol on every corner (in Windsor, London and pretty much everywhere in the UK), I would have died from boredom on that day trip…
One of my favorite things was visiting the village of Greenwich and standing on the Prime Meridian. Greenwich is a charming area with very nice people and a break from the uber-urban pace of London. It’s only a six mile cab ride from Charing Cross. BTW, if you don’t know what/where Charing Cross is, take a few moments to familiarize yourself with it. It is often used as a reference point.
Picadilly Circus is London’s version of Times Square- worth a few hours, go in the evening.
A visit to Knightsbridge is also essential to the London experience. It is the London version of the Upper East Side and Beverly Hills. A quick visit to the Harrods and Harvey Nichols (think Barneys, Neiman Marcus and Saks) is one of the coolest things you’ll ever do! Especially if you’re a fan of the show AbFab, which included a visit to one or both of the stores or at least a mention of them in almost every episode.
My absolute favorite thing about London (besides over-the-counter availability of Tylenol with Codeine and the entire city’s aversion to sobriety) is ‘The Tube’, aka ‘The London Underground’ - the London subway system. It is an absolute marvel of modern engineering and, especially for me being from Atlanta where public transportation is a joke, it is astounding to see just how perfectly integrated and efficient mass transit can be!
A phrase you will hear many, many times while riding ‘The Tube’ is, “Mind The Gap.” Each time the automatic doors open at each stop, an automated voice will loudly announce “Mind The Gap”. It is a caution to be aware of the gap between the subway car and the station platform (a few inches wide).
A few other things to know- a line is called a “queue”, “There’s a queue waiting for the museum to open.”
A trash can is reffered to as a “bin”- the words “Bin It” appear on public trash receptacles.
Slang you might need or want to know-
Slag- a whore
Fag- a cigarette
Poof- a gay man
Bloody- the most versatile and useful British swear word- Bloody Hell
Bollocks- technically means testicles, but usually means ‘Bullshit’
Piss Off- “Go Away”!
Sex On Legs- A very attractive person
A final note- You will be VERY HUNGRY for the duration of your trip! The food in London is horrible! I almost starved to death the first time I went there. I finally taught my hotel bartender how to make a decent Bloody Mary, so I had tomato juice and a celery stick for breakfast (or a few of them). I also found a bar that made tolerable vodka martinis (not freakin’ gin) and survived on the cocktail onions and olives! :smack:
Greenwich is indeed a lovely place to visit, tranquil and green, and you can take the river ferry there from up river (it also stops very near the London Eye and Tower, amongst others). Also Picadilly Circus is great to visit, there are a few super museums nearby.
Might I be so bold as to guess you visited London quite a while ago, Beelzebubba? I don’t live there anymore but I think a few things have changed since you were there.
The most obvious is the food; London has 44 Michelin starred restaurants and thousands of good places to eat. Also the bins were mostly removed a long time ago, in response to the IRA using them :eek:. The last occurrence, though, if memory serves me right was in 1996 and they made peace with England in the Good Friday Agreement in 1998.
As to slang, ‘poof’ has long disappeared from local parlance (being viewed as very politically incorrect), as has ‘slag’. Utter either in company and expect astonished faces all around.
appleciders I spent a couple weeks in Belfast in 2004, but it was for work. I stayed at the Europa Hotel - Europe’s most bombed :eek: (again the IRA :rolleyes:) and spent evenings in the Crown Liquor Saloon opposite, drinking with locals and listening to their amazing, unbelievable stories about their lives in Northern Ireland.
I did the bus tour of The Falls Road and spent a few hours in the city center, but not much else. It’s very safe - apparently the most militarized zone in Europe (almost all plain clothes so you’re not aware of them), so the ‘special forces’ guys in the bar told me
Really?
The Horniman Museum is quite good - you’ll need an ‘all zones’ travel pass to get to it, as it’s out a couple of miles to the south of the city centre, but it’s a proper ‘old school’ museum collection, comprising a large number of fossils, natural history specimens, musical instruments and anthropological items (and more) that were once the extensive private collection of a Victorian gentleman.
If you do go there, make sure you walk up to the bandstand - there is the most magical view, across the treetops, of the glittering towers of the central city - it’s quite breathtaking.
I’d say that Charring Cross is the reference point, at least when giving road distances to London from other places.
I’m shocked at this. London probably offers the best selection of restaurants in the world! Perhaps you just went into the touristy cafes without exploring the genuinely amazing cuisine around town. Perhaps with this in mind the OP should find some good recommendations, but don’t bother looking for English food - take advantage of the world cuisine and go for the countless vietnamese, brazilian, indian, italian, african, thai, french, mexican, scandinavian, chinese, persian, spanish, crossover restaurants that fill London’s street.
Ignore the scare about the food. You can eat very well and very cheaply if you avoid the tourist traps. What’s more, the variety is greater than you’ll see in pretty much any other city in the world. (New York perhaps the exception)
As for Charing Cross, what people haven’t mentioned is that it provides a good reference point because it is located right next to Trafalgar Square.
Taxis are great and the cabbies are excellent, the price isn’t too extortionate (e.g. I took one from St. Pancras to Pall Mall for £10 a couple of weeks ago). However for big trips from, say, Charing Cross to Greenwich, use the tube. Especially if you already have a travel card.
And Greenwich is great. The Maritime museum and Observatory are both free and close by is the brand new cable car across the Thames. I haven’t been on it yet but perhaps other posters have.
I mentioned avoiding the bus tours, again, if you have a travel card you can take a double decker bus anyway and get most of the benefit of a bus tour at a fraction of the cost.
Excuse me if I missed it but I don’t think anyone has specifically mentioned the Science Museum yet - right next door to the Natural History Museum and to my mind, more interesting (not that the Natural History Museum is not). If you are at all interested in science, go. If you’re not interested in science, go anyway.
I’m not really into musicals but I really enjoyed The Lion King at the Lyceum theatre. I have heard that “We Will Rock You” is excellent as well, even if you’re not a fan of Queen.
Theatre: look up timeout.com before you arrive to check out the latest offerings. If you work in theatre you are in for a treat – London tops everywhere for not just big West End blockbuster musicals but for every imagine-able style and venue.
http://www.timeout.com/london/theatre/
If you do want to see a big show, then there’s a half price tickets booth in Leicester Square (http://www.tkts.co.uk/). Go in the morning to see what’s available that day. Make sure you go to the ticket booth linked which is in the middle of the square and NOT one of the many ticket hatches dotted around the edge of Leicester Square.
While we are talking about Leicester Square and food, don’t for God’s sake eat anywhere in the square as it is purely chain restaurants for tourists. No Londoner would eat here. London has some spectacular food, but I think a lot of tourists don’t do their research and end up in total tourist traps. Read Time Out and Hardens for reliable restaurant reviews.
That’s right, Charing Cross officially marks the very centre of London.
(you should probably read this in Michael Caine’s voice)
Near Charing Cross Road is Tottenham Court Road, an unassuming street with some clothes and electronics stores. The computer places are highly recommended by Londoners. I got my laptop there and have been happy with it since (2 years ago, a Sony but they have other brands there).
Also the exchange places on Oxford Street often will give you better rates than the banks, surprising but definitely true. I’ve exchanged Euros, Dinars and Riyals there and got better rates than the banks or the post office. You need to ask around but the closer you get to Oxford Circus the better the rates get. Don’t accept anything from the people behind windows that are almost on the street, only speak to the people at the back of the tourist shops. Obviously take care and if you decide to not go ahead with the exchange the guy won’t feel offended.
Shopping in central London is expensive, obviously, but the high-end stuff from popular chains is dependable. I wouldn’t advise buying anything ‘antique’ because you can get the same in Madrid, Paris or Rome for less.
I was there in 2004 for 10 days, 2007 for a week and I’ve spent a few weekends there since then on my way to/from other destinations. Perhaps a more accurate (but far less dramatic) statement would be that casual (quick, inexpensive) food is atrocious! Thankfully, I found an awesome Vegetarian Chinese restaurant where I ate at least one meal a day and sometimes twice!
I suppose I just remember the bins from the first trip and didn’t notice their absence in subsequent visits? Where do people put their rubbish now?
Actually, the people saying “poof” and “slag” were at a gay bar (Brompton’s), so perhaps they were meant as terms of endearment? :eek: