It’s a great view. Down the hillside are also some ancient burial mounds, the remains of a tree that was there in Elizabeth I’s day, and Queen Caroline’s bathtub over by the rose garden. But there’s nothing to see of the Roman ruins up on the hill-top–just a plaque about the Time Team dig there.
If you go at the right time, you can chat with Dr. Watson.
It’s “moops”.
I spent a day and a half in London and all I was see Hyde park (twice!), see the monuments near Green Park, and see Tate Britain (not modern: the one on the north side of Vauxhall Bridge.) I would have done slightly more except I thought that the Tate opened at 9 but it was really at 10, and there wasn’t anything to do around there except walk across the Thames and wonder what the unmarked MI6 building was. Thankfully their wifi worked even outside the museum. (And walk a bit of John Islip street which is gorgeous at least when I was there in the summer.)
At any rate, I’d recommend Tate Britain. It actually has a great variety of eras represented, with even a modern wing, which was exactly enough for my tastes (I wouldn’t enjoy an entire museum of modern art, but just a gallery and a half is enough to add a little variety.)
There’s a village in England called “Drunky Smurf”?
You know, I could almost believe that. 
The London Dungeon is fun, if your tastes run in a more macabre direction.
I’m an art kind of guy, so I haunt the National Portrait Gallery (the Aleister Crowley and Mervyn Peake paintings are favorites, because I enjoy weirdoes), and the OLD Tate Collection. I could spend a day in the 19th and early 20th century rooms alone, and an hour in front of Jacob Epstein’s massive “Jacob Wrestling with the Angel.”
Don’t skip Somerset House and the Wallace Collection, which contain several masterpieces that make you say “WTF is this doing HERE?” Manet’s “At the Folies Bergere,” for example.
I’m also a big WWI buff so I love the Imperial War Museum and the dozens of monuments scattered around the city. Don’t miss the once-controversial Artillery Memorial, just SW of Hyde Park.
You can also stroll aimlessly and read all the blue historical markers affixed to buildings. Fascinating.
Some things we did (about ten years) ago that haven’t been mentioned:
the Ceremony of the Keys at the Tower of London. It’s when the warders “lock” the tower for the night, so it happens at 9:30 PM. It’s cool, plus you’re next to Tower Bridge and the Thames at night. Back in 2005 then we had to send a postal mail (from the US) with a international postal coupon attached for the return of the tickets. Now they’re totally online, but fully booked until July 2018!
the Beatles walking tour
no love for Madame Tussaud’s here?
I especially liked the National Gallery, since I had this Eyewtiness DK: Perspective book which explained many of these paintings and the evolution of realistic perspective in paintings.
One of my favorite things to do when I go to a city like London is check out some of the oddities that don’t make most travel guides. Check out this guide to London sites.
I’ll be in London from Sept 2 until Sept 10, if any London dopers want to meet up. Staying at a hotel one block away from Trafalgar Square.
Oooooo! Walk north on St. Martin’s Lane to Cecil Court and window-shop in the excellent rare bookstores. I can’t afford to buy anything there, but looking is free. There’s also a great occult bookshop right in the middle of the lane, south side – the best I’ve seen since Sam Weiser’s of New York closed down years ago.
Then walk south down Villiers Street toward the river and stop at Gordon’s Wine Bar, in business for four hundred years. The subterranean interior is damp, dark, cavelike and claustrophobic, so just order a coup of port, dry sherry, or Amontillado (they’ll draw it from the barrel) and carry it back upstairs to sit outdoors in the breezy alley.
Already done both of those things on prior trips. :). Bought my significant other a really nice first edition of one of her favorite authors last time I was there.
Love Villers Street. One of my favorite things to do on a sunny day is grab something to go from Herman ze German, and go sit in the little park there near Gordon’s Wine Bar.
This is probably the single most accurate post.
Plenty of places have military museums, art museums, etc… and some places have historical and anthropological museums. But none of them stack up to the British Museum.
It’s unlike anything else in the world.
Another vote for the British Library treasures.
Decide on a set day per week/fortnight/month, get out your map, stick a pin in it and look up what’s in that area and just go.
E.g., South Kensington - V&A, Natural History and Science Museums and the parks.
Bloomsbury: British Library of course, but also the Wellcome Collection, the Dickens Museum, the Foundling Museum (leave the British Museum for a day on its own)
South Bank: Tate Modern and Borough Market, of course, but just have an explore around the Festival Hall and the Hayward Gallery.
In my childhood, the thing to do on a rainy day was just to get on a bus and go to the end of the route to see what’s there, even if you only got straight back on the bus to come home again.
Walk around Soho, the area between Tottenham Court Road, Charing Cross Road, Regent St and Oxford St (but avoid Oxford St itself)
In Soho there is:
For guitars and music: Denmark St
Restaurants, pubs, cafe: anywhere - there are hundreds
Shopping - Regent Street and all over Soho
Music - Ronnie Scotts <<<<<< DEFINITELY GO HERE (and little clubs)
I could spend all day there.
Also:
National Portrait Gallery & National Gallery (on Trafalger Square)
Tate Modern/Globe/Great walk along Thames (all on South Bank)
Camden Market and then take barge to Regents Park
I live in London but do occasionally get out and about.
Despite it being a giant chainstore, **Waterstones Piccadilly **is also good for hours-long book browsing (but good luck finding a working toilet anywhere in the building).
Meh. I’ve been twice and the cheesy-tourist-trap aspects make up far too much of the tour, and the rest of it is mostly Victorian reconstructions of what the Tower used to be. Personally, unless you really want to see the Crown Jewels I would suggest just passing by the outside of the Tower (preferably by boat - **get a Thames Clipper **or similar to or from Greenwich Pier up to, say, Westminster or the Eye, as it’s a nice ride with plenty to see (and a coffee bar onboard).
There are plenty of good suggestions here, but here are a few more:
**Afternoon tea at The Wolesley. **Never mind the tourist traps of the neighbouring Ritz or Fortnum & Mason tearooms; The Wolseley is the bee’s knees and surprisingly reasonably priced, all things considered. Reservations recommended but not required.
If you want a more intimate museum experience, try the **Benjamin Franklin House**near Charing Cross Station. They don’t have any Franklin memorabilia, but what they do have is the house itself, which is largely unchanged from Franklin’s day, and live and recorded actors to take you through Franklin’s years in London. As someone who grew up near Philadelphia I thought I knew Franklin’s life well but this had a lot of surprises. The tours/performances are at set times and seats are limited - again, calling ahead is recommended.
Another home/museum: Sir John Soane’s Museum. Soane was a Georgian architect with a penchant for collecting all kinds of stuff.
If you’re in Greenwich, normally I’d recommend seeing the Painted Hall but right now it’s full of scaffolding as part of restoration work oh wait, that’s a good thing…. Definitely a unique and limited-time experience.
Abbey road
The tour is really good. So much so that I might well do it again when more the restoration has been done. But it does help if you’ve seen the Hall without the scaffolding.
Pubs with darts are a dying breed-- not something you can easily find in a pub in town.
Besides, pub quizzes are more my speed. Playing it in SE5 can be BRUTAL as it is smack dab in the middle of King’s College Hospital, Goldsmiths, and UAL.
Or “brutal” because you’re in Camberwell and someone might kick your head in. 
But no, I haven’t seen a pub with darts in it in London for many years. Hell, it’s getting hard to find a (non-Wetherspoons) pub around here that hasn’t become a trendy gastropub selling £12 cheeseburgers - like the Bodysnatchers, one by one they’re all being converted…
I went to Madeira for a week and dressed for hikes every day only to end up drinking at local hole-in-the-wall bars instead.
If she comes again, she should really see Grimaldi’s grave if she hasn’t already because there’s a piano that you can jump on ala the movie Big.
My local (in SW19) has pool and table tennis but no darts, despite it being somewhat out in the sticks and being an independent off the main road. I suppose I could venture out to a country pub but, you know, country.
And Peckham/Camberwell isn’t that rough! It’s so gentrified now, they play classical music and have an honor system library at Oval station XD