MLeonard goes to London!!!

[MLeonard]

Originally posted by molly bloom


Sigh. Where ignorance is bliss, 'tis folly to be wise.


Give me some ideas of what your interests are MLeonard, and I'll see if I can come up with some cogent recommendations.

If you like art, for instance, a major exhibition on the work of Turner, Whistler and Monet has just opened at the National Gallery, there's a huge exhibition on ancient, mediaeval and contemporary African art and culture at the British Museum and the Hayward Galleryand other venues, there's an exhibition on the glories of Turkic cultures at the Royal Academy featuring works never before seen outside Turkey, Kevin Spacey is currently appearing at the Old Vic theatre, Patrick Stewart is also appearing in a stage play (began last week), there's several walking tours I could recommend, specific historical sites....


as I said, let me know.

thanks for those! i would like to get to art museums and possibly a play somewhere if i can find tix on the cheap side...

one additional thing i'm interested in is seeing things related to the english romantics. i'm an english major and have a slight obsession with keats and the like (not to mention shakespeare). unfortunately keats was buried in rome, but are there any museums etc. geared towards literature?

and of course there's the night life and shopping too.
i wish i had more time (and $$$)!!!

oh and provost - i probably wouldn't be able to plan anything too specific until i got there

[Clear Skies]

Cheap West End theatre tickets are available on the day from the tkts booth in Leicester Square, and ONLY from there - there are hundreds of half-price outlets around the Square itself, but the only legitimate tickets are sold at the tkts booth.

http://www.officiallondontheatre.co.uk/tkts/today

I heartily recommend Phantom Of The Opera (enchanting), the Complete Works Of Wiliam Shakespeare (hilariously funny) and, if you're lucky enough to be able to get tickets (we waited months), The Woman In Black, which is truly pants-wettingly scary.
(Oh, and DON'T bother with Chicago, it blows.)

As for places to visit...I'm a Londoner, how the hell would I know? :P The Victoria and Albert museum is nice, as is the National Gallery (on the north side of Trafalgar Square). I can't stand the Natural History Museum myself, boring as hell. But the Tate Modern gallery (across the river from St Paul's Cathedral) is most interesting.

However, there are some places you must go:
- Postman's Park, recently made famous by Closer; here's hoping it hasn't been taken over by screaming Jude Law groupies, because it's a lovely, secluded little park with a very touching memorial to unsung heroes. About 2 minutes' walk northishwards from St Paul's tube station.
- Constitution Hill and Constitution Arch; often neglected in the rush for Buckingham Palace, these make a particularly lovely early-evening walk. Hyde Park Corner tube; leads you to Buck Pal and thence along the Mall to Trafalgar Square
- climb the Monument. Gives you the most wonderful view of London. Brilliant photo opportunities. And you get a certificate! What's not to like? Station Monument (don't change at Bank unless you want to spend hours in the bowels of the earth).

Travel tips: use the Tube. You can get day travelcards (zones 1-4 should easily cover wherever you want to go) or a weekly equivalent. There are stations all over the place; nowhere in Central London is beyond walking distance of a Tube station, except the crazier bits of Seven Dials.

The Tube map is a handy fiction that bears no resemblance whatsoever to actual geography (thankyou, Bill Bryson), but the Tube is still the best method of travel in London. Bus routes are incomprehensible, cabs extortionate and rickshaws tacky. The Tube's your best bet. Only not the Northern Line. There's a reason it's a running joke.

And remember that London eats money. At last count I think Tokyo was the only world capital more expensive.

[Provost Harrison]

Travel tips: use the Tube. You can get day travelcards (zones 1-4 should easily cover wherever you want to go) or a weekly equivalent. There are stations all over the place; nowhere in Central London is beyond walking distance of a Tube station, except the crazier bits of Seven Dials.

Hackney?

[The Emperor Fabulous]

Can I come?

And can you pay for me?

[Provost Harrison]

I don't envy you lot coming over here with present exchange rates...

[reds4ever]

@Clear Skies, are you a fellow astronomy geek?

[MLeonard]

Originally posted by Clear Skies
Cheap West End theatre tickets are available on the day from the tkts booth in Leicester Square, and ONLY from there - there are hundreds of half-price outlets around the Square itself, but the only legitimate tickets are sold at the tkts booth.

http://www.officiallondontheatre.co.uk/tkts/today

I heartily recommend Phantom Of The Opera (enchanting), the Complete Works Of Wiliam Shakespeare (hilariously funny) and, if you're lucky enough to be able to get tickets (we waited months), The Woman In Black, which is truly pants-wettingly scary.
(Oh, and DON'T bother with Chicago, it blows.)

As for places to visit...I'm a Londoner, how the hell would I know? :P The Victoria and Albert museum is nice, as is the National Gallery (on the north side of Trafalgar Square). I can't stand the Natural History Museum myself, boring as hell. But the Tate Modern gallery (across the river from St Paul's Cathedral) is most interesting.

However, there are some places you must go:
- Postman's Park, recently made famous by Closer; here's hoping it hasn't been taken over by screaming Jude Law groupies, because it's a lovely, secluded little park with a very touching memorial to unsung heroes. About 2 minutes' walk northishwards from St Paul's tube station.
- Constitution Hill and Constitution Arch; often neglected in the rush for Buckingham Palace, these make a particularly lovely early-evening walk. Hyde Park Corner tube; leads you to Buck Pal and thence along the Mall to Trafalgar Square
- climb the Monument. Gives you the most wonderful view of London. Brilliant photo opportunities. And you get a certificate! What's not to like? Station Monument (don't change at Bank unless you want to spend hours in the bowels of the earth).

Travel tips: use the Tube. You can get day travelcards (zones 1-4 should easily cover wherever you want to go) or a weekly equivalent. There are stations all over the place; nowhere in Central London is beyond walking distance of a Tube station, except the crazier bits of Seven Dials.

The Tube map is a handy fiction that bears no resemblance whatsoever to actual geography (thankyou, Bill Bryson), but the Tube is still the best method of travel in London. Bus routes are incomprehensible, cabs extortionate and rickshaws tacky. The Tube's your best bet. Only not the Northern Line. There's a reason it's a running joke.

And remember that London eats money. At last count I think Tokyo was the only world capital more expensive.

great suggestions! as much as i probably should do the typical tourist stuff i actually hate looking like a tourist when i go "on holiday" so these alternatives are definitely welcome.

i travelled in japan last spring so i'm familiar with exorbitant expenses so hopefully it won't be too much of a surprise.

empfab- once i find a british sugar daddy with a penchant for tall wide-eyed american boys, i'll fly you over.

[Clear Skies]

For the record, I have no problem with tall wide-eyed American boys...

Originally posted by Provost Harrison
Hackney?

My sister lives in Hackney. Now let us never speak of it again.
(And even she is only about ten minutes' walk from a Tube :P)

Originally posted by reds4ever
@Clear Skies, are you a fellow astronomy geek?

Only in the most amateur sense possible, in that I love looking at what small sliver of the night sky you can still see on London nights I can name about six or seven constellations and reliably identify Venus, Mars and Jupiter...beyond that I've forgotten most of what I used to know.
...Just out of interest, what gave you that idea?

Originally posted by MLeonard

great suggestions! as much as i probably should do the typical tourist stuff i actually hate looking like a tourist when i go "on holiday" so these alternatives are definitely welcome.

It's an urban truism that most Londoners have never 'done' London tourism. We had some friends over from California recently and they were gobsmacked to hear we'd never been on the London Eye, never been round the Tower or Buck Pal or anything like that. To which our response was: so what? Those aren't the 'most typical' bits of London, they're the exceptions; to get a real feel for central London you need to spend a day doing all the stuff that matters.

And on the literature front, I have been reliably informed by my amateur-author flatmate that the Globe Theatre not only IS the Globe Theatre but also has a damn good Shakespeare museum and does a decent line in other classic literature.

http://www.shakespeares-globe.org/

Right next to the Tate Modern

[reds4ever]

Originally posted by Clear Skies


Only in the most amateur sense possible, in that I love looking at what small sliver of the night sky you can still see on London nights I can name about six or seven constellations and reliably identify Venus, Mars and Jupiter...beyond that I've forgotten most of what I used to know.
...Just out of interest, what gave you that idea?

'Clear Skies' (ie no clouds so you can use your telescope) is what astronomers wish each other, it's put at the end of letters or emails instead of 'regards' or 'yours faithfully'

clear skies,

reds4ever

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by MLeonard

one additional thing i'm interested in is seeing things related to the english romantics. i'm an english major and have a slight obsession with keats and the like (not to mention shakespeare). unfortunately keats was buried in rome, but are there any museums etc. geared towards literature?

Well, for a real English Romantics feel, you'd have to head north, to the Lake District, or to Wales for Tintern Abbey. Being a more nature centred literary school, they tended not to favour life in the Great Wen.

As for London literary museums, how would the Dickens' House in Camden suit you?

http://www.dickensmuseum.com/

If you're seriously interested in literary London, the best thing that you could do would be to take a guided tour or plan your own walking tour to visit specific residences or places associated with particularly favourite authors or events. Chelsea has connections with Thomas More, the PreRaphaelites and Oscar Wilde, amongst many others, and Bloomsbury was of course home to the Woolfs and others of the Bloomsbury Set.


If you're interested in the Civil War period, then kill two birds with one stone, by going to the Banqueting House in Whitehall. It's a sumptuous piece of architecture, having been designed by Inigo Jones, has a marvellous ceiling painted by Peter Paul Rubens, and is also where 'the man of blood', King Charles I was led out to his beheading one chilly morning.

You will also be close to Horse Guards' Parade, St James's Park, Trafalgar Square, the Cabinet War Rooms' Museum (where you can view the cot that Churchill slept on during the Blitz) and you're but a stone's throw from one of London's World Heritage Sites, the Houses of Parliament (which of course also feature prominently in the paintings in the Turner, Whistler & Monet exhibition).

If you're keen on architecture and modern literature, then I'd recommend that you read Peter Ackroyd's 'Hawksmoor' before you visit. It centres on the architect who was responsible for work to Westminster Abbey and a series of Baroque churches throughout the East End of London and St. Alphege's in Greenwich, and his work is also featured in Iain Sinclair's novels too. The door knocker of one of the houses next to Christ Church in Spitalfields is (apparently!) the very same door knocker mentioned in the first section of Dickens' 'A Christmas Carol'.

Should you be of a more scientific bent, then where you are staying puts you in the right place, but you might also like to check out the Freud Museum which is well worth a visit, and also the Old Operating Theatre Museum and Herb Garret:

http://www.thegarret.org.uk/

which is in Southwark. Southwark of course is where the Tabard Inn was situated, the place from which Chaucer's band of pilgrims set off on their journey to Becket's shrine in Canterbury, and is another area also associated with Dickens.

I wouldn't let a visit to London pass without doing a walking tour of Whitechapel. If you go in the day, you can visit the Whitechapel Art Gallery and Spitalfields (which has a weekly market) and during the night you could take a guided tour and visit the sites associated with the Jack the Ripper murders.

Of course it won't be Autumn, when they occurred, and since the Clean Air Act you can't expect any London Particulars or peasoupers, but it'll be Winter and gloomy enough to give you an idea of what it might have been like. There's also a great range of extremely affordable Bangladeshi food in and around Brick Lane's Bangla Town, and you can see what were once Huguenot churches which then became synagogues for Russian and Polish Jews and now are mosques for the area's inhabitants.

The area has also become something of an artist's colony with galleries and a degree of gentrification, so it will offer you some variety. There's also an enormous market there at the weekend on Saturday and Sunday.


My best advice would be see as much of London as is possible on foot- walking around areas such as Greenwich and Soho, Marylebone and Whitechapel and residential Chelsea will give you a better impression of the various parts of the cities in London.

Oh, and do try to take a trip on the Thames- either to Hampton Court, or to the World Heritage site at Greenwich, where you'll find Wren's regal Royal Naval Hospital, as well as the Cutty Sark, the National Maritime Museum and you can get your photograph taken straddling the Greenwich meridian.

[Gibsie]

I think my sister is going to insist I come visit her on her birthday (Or rather, the weekend around her birthday) the 11th, but I'll be up for any shennanigans!

[Gibsie]

...with you Apolyton guys, not with my sister, you sick freaks.

[child of Thor]

@ MLeonard - go to Swansea instead, its got a cinema

[Clear Skies]

Originally posted by Gibsie
...with you Apolyton guys, not with my sister, you sick freaks.

I'm worried either way.

[Whaleboy]

Originally posted by Provost Harrison


...says the man from Northampton

Touché!

Who knew Whaleboy was such a fan of that dramatic genre ?

I'm using my erotic war novel with two suicides to rail against the existence of the foreskin. Home turf and all that...