You stayed in the Russell? When I stayed there last summer, I found the British Museum endlessly fascinating, huge and filled with beautiful antiquities (including the Roman silverware that was the subject of Roald Dahl’s first published story) and, as you mentioned, free. By the end of my visit to London, I thought they’d need a firehose to remove me from the premises. I want to live there.
The British Museum is unparalled. It’s stuffed full of centuries worth of treasures and antiquities looted from literally every corner of the globe. It’s seriously mind-boggling if you’re into that sort of thing.
I’m about to do the tourist guide thing for someone soon, the list I gave her of places she should probably check out are as follows (in descending order of how much I rate them):
You’ve already mentioned the obvious of Big Ben, Parliament, Buck Palace but as you only need to go to them and take pics (there’s no reason to go inside them and sometimes you can’t) then it doesn’t take long to do that, and they’re all within half a mile of each other.
The only thing I’ve done in London that hasn’t already been mentioned is to take a trip to Stonehenge. Take the train to Salisbury (visit the cathedral, while you’re at it), then a bus to Stonehenge.
I also found it to be completely underwhelming. Seeing it on TV made me think those stones are enormous. Not. They could easily have fit in my yard. And they are surrounded on all sides by fields of peacefully grazing sheep. Not at all what I expected.
The sheep and the “fields” around it are more than half of what makes it so cool. The Salisbury Plain is gorgeous–it’s like a blank canvas where you can watch the play of light and shade all day. Wonderful.
I found Stonehenge itself to be odd as hell and yes, diminished. It may have evoked feelings of awe when stumbled across back in the day, but now you are placed on a path, with many other people (all listening to headsets of info about the stones) and made to go round in a circle. When I was there, people got irked if you stopped for a bit–it was a weird exercise in group dynamics.
Stonehenge is intriguing and fascinating but not as a tourist place, IMO.
The British Museum is great. It’s like Epcot’s World Showcase- you get to see potted histories of the rest of the world, all in one convenient location.
The Natural History Museum was my favorite place in London as a kid; way better than the one in NYC, IMHO.
The Museum of Science and Industry is also very cool, but devotes way too much space to steam engines. Once you’ve seen one flywheel, you’ve seen them all.
If the Cutty Sark is reopened (I can’t tell from the website), that’s a lot of fun too, plus there are heaps of (mostly history-related) things to do around it in Greenwich. It’s a tea clipper (tall ship) in dry dock that you can walk around inside.
Oh, and Stonehenge is no fun at all. When I was a kid you could actually walk right up to the stones and get your druid on or whatever; nowadays, you have to stand about fifty feet back. It’s much better for photography but not nearly as cool otherwise. It only takes about two hours to get to Salisbury from West London- hop, skip and a jump by US standards- but I wouldn’t bother unless you want to go visit the West Country (and you should!)
I second a trip to Greenwich. I took a quick boat ride on the Thames to get there. It was a very relaxing outing to wrap-up my last week-long trip to London.
I’ll throw in another vote for the London Eye. Madame Tussaud’s Wax Museum was fun. Plan plenty of time at the Tower of London if you want to see everything. Lots of good museums. I enjoy theater, but there’s not really much difference between seeing a play in London and seeing in anywhere else (IMHO, of course).
You could easily spend a day just walking around the older parts of the city (jumping on the tube or a bus every now and then), looking at the architecture, the statues, and the historic sites.
Personally, my favorite parts of every trip I’ve taken to the UK were out and away from the cities, but since that’s not the question in the OP I won’t elaborate unless asked.
Depends on when you go. I was there at the summer solstice (they take the fences down for the night). It was raining this year, but still mighty cool. The only downside was that I wasn’t the only one to think of it–there were over 10,000 people there at dawn. It was quite a party.
Unlikely there was a fire last year. Any pictures you see on that story do make the damage look worse than it is as a lot of the superstructure was not in place at the time.
Yup. They keep you too far away to apreciate the size, if you want to see a stone circle go to Avebury (which is also not in London) London’s a bit short on stone circles.
The main hull of the Cutty Sark is under scaffolding and tarps as they repair it - there’s literally nothing to see of it at the moment.
You can still easily spend a whole day in Greenwich if your tastes run to history and architecture. Aside from the view from the top of the park, the National Maritime Museum and the Observatory, there’s the Queen’s House, the Old Royal Hospital (don’t miss the Painted Hall) and a Hawksmoor church. All essentially free.
Though it’s worth noting that they’re in the process of overhauling all the galleries and when I was in just last week - showing a Canadian visitor round - everything in the post-1666 half was shut. However, the new versions of the earlier galleries are even better than they were before. And, again, it’s all free anyway.
The fire only took out a small part of it, the majority of it’s in tact. As for walking round it, well, I’m biased because I live near it, but I’d only recommend it if you enjoy shoulder-charging teenage Emo kids out of the way whilst growling “Move, hippies!”
It’s how I spend my weekends. If you spot me, do say hi.