Tag Archives: London tourists

I rest my case

10 February, 2023 Gibson Square 2 Comments

When a woman with a small pull-along airline case asked for ‘The Griffin’ I naturally took her to the sleazy pub conversion in Clerkenwell. On arriving my passenger got out and walked past the thickset tattooed bouncer on the door, as another heavily made-up young woman got in with the ubiquitous suitcase full of stage outfits and asked for Brown’s – a well-known strip club in Shoreditch. With that, girl number one returned wearing a rather startled expression to inform me accusingly that it was certainly NOT the Griffin pub she wanted. The moral of the story: Don’t always assume small flight bags are full of G-strings.

Londoners have fallen in love with these modern versions of a valise and they’re everywhere, some owners couldn’t imagine life without them.

They are usually found directly in front of you, carried up escalators, squeezed into lifts or pulled down the pavement. Stand in any tube station or on any street corner, particularly on a Friday or a Monday, and one of these beasts will come lumbering into view within seconds.

London is full of people trying to get somewhere else, escaping the capital for a weekend break. At first glance, the wheelie suitcase appears the perfect solution, but as diamondgeezer points out, the traditional suitcase is carried by the side, adding only width. The new wheelie suitcase trails behind, adding just depth instead. The surface area of ground covered is therefore noticeably greater with a wheelie suitcase than it is with the traditional handheld model. Even worse, this surface area increases the shorter the traveller pulling the suitcase along. If you’re six-foot-something then the handle of the wheelie suitcase points pretty much straight up, which isn’t too bad. However, if you’re four-foot-nothing then the handle is much closer to the ground, so the wheels lag a lot further behind. It’s a simple matter of trigonometry.

Put bluntly, a group of tiny tourists can clog up a tube station in seconds. If you really have to have one, please just hold it upright, or get a taxi.

Anecdote taken from EveryoneIs Entitled To My Opinion available from Amazon.

Puppydog tails

Confused?

25 March, 2022 Gibson Square 4 Comments

Have you ever wondered just how confusing London appears? Nothing functions as it should or is where you think it is.

For instance, despite its name, the Circle Line is not exactly circular. Queensway Station is in Bayswater while Bayswater Station is to be found in, you guessed it, Queensway. Harrods isn’t in Knightsbridge and the immoveable Greenwich Meridian Line has well moved.

How about Green Lanes, which isn’t named after a green lane and is only spoken of in the plural, even though it’s just one very long road.

There are two Finsburys which are in different places, with very different house prices.

Take the Thames, which meanders so much that in places the North side is further South than the South side.

For The Knowledge boy, there are the hospitals that need to be found which aren’t where they’re supposed to be. Hammersmith’s is in White City, Charing Cross’s is in Hammersmith and the Chelsea is nowhere near – you get the idea.

Let’s get off the road and go Underground. To go south into the West End from King’s Cross you have to go north to Euston, except that Euston is actually West. Blackfriars is the only station that’s on both sides of the river. Oh, and its trains are only half the length of the station platform so you could miss it even when you’re on time to catch it because you’re at the wrong end.

Try Baker Street underground instead; to exit the station you have to go down to another platform going in a different direction, then back up and along yet another tunnel – and it’s really badly signposted, so you’ll probably end up somewhere else. Mind you I was once called a crook by a customer asking for Baker Street when she wanted the Sherlock Holmes Hotel and I dropped her off outside the station.

Until not long ago, a cab could drive right onto the platform at Paddington station, but now there’s no parking anywhere and they’ve separated rail and tube lines so that connections are a nightmare.

Some tube stations are so close together that it’s faster to walk. Others, like the one in Westminster, are ten minutes from the next station.

Tourists get very confused by London; apparently, the most common mistakes are not standing on the right on escalators, mixing London Bridge with Tower Bridge and the Museum of London with the British Museum, and err… public drinking in the street.

The national dish is curry, in London we have things like pop-up urinals and Belisha beacons denote pedestrian crossings.

No Londoner has ever eaten in an Angus Steak House or been to The Mousetrap.

Streets that continue across their ends and the house numbers that alternate except when new buildings have changed the numbering systems or numbers which run sequentially or alternately.

So come to London and – in the nicest possible way – get lost.

Thinking allowed

London’s less attractive attractions

5 September, 2017 Gibson Square Leave a comment

If you like to visit London attractions – and I use that word advisedly – TfL have usefully compiled a list of the top 10 by visitor numbers. Most have been visited by locals at least once, and if you have children, 3 on the list are compulsory. The list is not what you would expect when you see the queues outside more famous venues during summer months. But, I suppose, during winter the locals boost the numbers on the TfL list:

1. British Museum

2. Somerset House

3. National Gallery

4. London Eye

5. Tate Modern

6. Tower of London

7. Natural History Museum

8. Victoria and Albert Museum

9. Science Museum

10. Madame Tussauds

[T]ourists, on the other hand, seem less discerning in their choice, or should that be they are easily persuaded by the advertising. So here is the tourist bucket list of London ‘attractions’ with a few pithy comments from me:

Madame Tussauds
What makes this place so popular? Well, if this your thing, you can stand face to face with exact wax replicas of famous people. To get to see a waxen immobile David Beckham requires an extremely long wait that can last hours. Not only that the queue is situated in the most polluted place in London, so bad there is a monitoring station opposite. So if paying £30 to see some inanimate objects is your thing Tussauds is a must. If however, you don’t want to risk getting a lung infection, pay £50 for a fast track ticket.

Changing The Guard
The ceremony lasts about 45 minutes between 11.00-11.45am on Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Sunday from January to March, weather permitting. Now don’t get me wrong, I support the armed forces as much as any Englishman, but does ‘weather permitting’ mean soldiers don’t like fighting in the rain? Anyway, at least this attraction is free.

M&Ms World
A temple to colour and sickly chocolate. Descend into the basement for a Dante’s Inferno of psychedelic overpriced confectionery. Visit the LEGO store opposite if the kids really crave to go shopping.

Hop On Hop Off Bus Tour
Choose between a recorded script available in 12 languages or a real person – who’s not a Londoner – the tour manager has just memorised the English script. Better book a London cab tour conducted by someone who’s spent years learning about London or a Blue Badge Guide with a qualification in London’s rich history.

The London Dungeon
The London Dungeon is a macabre and frankly terrifying place to visit. The queues are as long as Tussauds but at least, as you wait, you can smell the Thames instead of diesel engines. The people who work there put on a horror show – there is no claim to any sort of historical accuracy – billed as a tour through 1,000 years of London brutal and filthy history. Want to be entertained about murder? Go see the Mousetrap.

Harrod’s
Once the icon of a London department store, claiming where you could buy anything from a thimble to an elephant. The Harrod’s of yesteryear has changed. After a succession of foreign owners, Harrod’s is not very British anymore. In the weeks leading up to Ramadan, it’s surrounded by very expensive, illegally parked, Middle Eastern cars. Hang around after closing to watch them race around Knightsbridge. Now Harrod’s has become a very high priced department store for wealthy foreign shoppers. Take a selfie outside its ornate frontage and walk on by.

Piccadilly Circus
If you wish to spot a ‘real’ Londoner, don’t go to Piccadilly Circus. The last time Londoners congregated here was on VE Day in 1945, but every tourist seems to head here first. Why? It is essentially a busy junction permanently jammed with traffic, with several huge illuminated signs, even these have been switched off this year for maintenance. French exchange students have lunch on the steps of the Eros statue at exactly the same time. Perplexing, but suppose it’s one of the few public spaces in London which doesn’t commemorate our victories over their nation.

Ripley’s Believe It or Not
Most of the artefacts stretch the reality of truth and have no historical basis. The exhibits are tired and showing their age. And No! I don’t believe it. If you have an overwhelming desire on your trip to London to see pickled body parts consider visiting the Hunterian Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons which features thousands of genuine preserved animals specimens.

Boris Buoys
The last vanity project by our Foreign Secretary. Once you’re past the cranes and concrete, you can’t fail to notice the in-your-face Emirates branding. A master class in advertising their brand and if having their name plastered everywhere is clearly not enough, they’ve decided to try and convince everyone this is a flight. Only used by a handful of commuters, mostly the buoys are empty and to reinforce its lack of passengers the ticket office at North Greenwich station has closed for good. Don’t book a cabin for your exclusive use at £88 you’ll probably be lonely in your buoy on your ‘flight’.

Abbey Road Crossing
It’s THAT crossing which featured on an album cover of an LP pressed before anyone posing for their photo on the crossing today was alive. I doubt if anybody could remember the tracks, I can’t, and I was alive when the original was released. Check out the CCTV live coverage if you must. The irony is that Paul McCartney (he’s the third in line, in case you don’t know) lives nearby and often walks past unnoticed.

And my list in case you asked:

1. St Paul’s Cathedral

2. Houses of Parliament (not now they are encasing it with scaffolding for the next 5 years)

3. Buckingham Palace (when open)

4. Tower of London

5. St James’s Park

6. Shakespeare’s Globe

7. Westminster Abbey

8. Natural History Museum

9. British Museum

10. River Thames
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The opinions expressed here are solely those of Gibson Square, they are not recommendations nor endorsements. This is not a sponsored post. If you disagree with me please comment.

Thinking allowed

Cockney not spoken here

22 November, 2016 Gibson Square Leave a comment

Some places in London the indigenous populace is almost non-existent.

Your Dad might have dragged you these tourist destinations when you were young and nowadays you cannot dissuade your out-of-town friends when they insist they be taken to the ‘real’ London when visiting.

These tourist hot-spots mainly serve two functions. First they bring in much needed money keeping the Capital functioning.

[B]ut secondly, and more importantly, they serve to Hoover up tourists ensuring that the best that London has to offer is relatively empty for us to enjoy.

Madam Tussauds

The most popular tourist hot-spot is that waxwork emporium on the Marylebone Road. Thousands queue outside waiting for a chance to take a selfie with Michael Jackson or David Beckham, not with Rolf Harris who curiously is now absent. Those possessed with forward planning have even stumped up extra to bypass the queue, little do they realise the highlight of the visit is mingling with others while standing in the most polluted place in London. With three-and-a-half times EU limit for nitrogen dioxide, a toxic gas linked to asthma, lung infections and other respiratory problems the Baker Street Marylebone Road junction has no equals, it’s a chance to really take home a long lasting London souvenir – emphysema. The last time Tussaud’s was worth a visit on a wet Sunday afternoon was over 10 years ago to experience the London Planetarium, this now houses the dubious 4D superhero experience.

Rickshaws

If getting down and dirty with London’s traffic is your thing, a ride in a rickshaw ticks all the boxes. With an exhilaration of an Alton Towers ride, experience travelling up one-way streets against the prevailing traffic and luxuriate in the knowledge that your transport of choice is the most expensive in the western world. Occasionally drunk Londoners might be found hanging for dear life from one of these vehicles, but the frisson of fear is lost when inebrated.

The Cable Car (Boris Buoys)

This ride designed on the back of an envelope by the unlamented Mayor is designed to take you from a spot you’re unlikely to visit to a destination you have no reason to seek out. Along the way you experience a bird’s eye taste of being hit by a fast moving jet. Aircraft take off from London City Airport their pilots aiming their craft directly at you. Not a cheap thrill but you are comforted by the knowledge of re-experiencing the sight of the Silvertown scrap yards on your return trip.

Tower of London and Tower Bridge

For just under £100 you can take your family to the Tower of London and Tower Bridge, admission to the Monument is thrown in for good measure. It’s not the London Bridge erroneously thought by many a tourist, but Tower Bridge and by London’s timeline, almost new – opening as recently as 1894 when the Prince of Wales really did open it. Look out at the Tower for some of the poorest pointing to brickwork found on the planet (presumably the craftsman felt the executioner’s axe). After having the Crown Jewels stolen in 1671 by the appropriately named Colonel Blood who flattened with the crown and stuffed into a bag, and shoved the orb down his breeches, while attempting to saw the sceptre in half. No such opportunities now exist, a moving walkway (remember to stand on the right please) glides you effortlessly past these regal artefacts.

Fish and chips

Londoners seem to live on a diet from the sea’s bounty. Oysters were the poor’s fast food of choice in Georgian times, now – apparently – it’s cockles, whelks, winkles and jellied eels. The most popular seafood dish is fish and chips. Now there are many excellent purveyors of the national dish, Masters Super Fish in Waterloo Road or the Seashell in Seymour Place especially after nearly burning it down. So why do all our tourist go to an expensive and indifferent restaurant in Covent Garden? Described by an unknown critic as ‘the best in London’ cod and chips for two will set you back just shy of £40, but you do get tartar sauce thrown in.

M&M World

Time was when England had a thriving confectionery industry. The philanthropic owner’s benevolence would give their workers housing, health care and recreational facilities. Then along came the large conglomerates that after purchasing the factories moved manufacturing to Eastern Europe and closed down the ‘candy’ plants. So why is it that in Leicester Square there resides 35,000 sq ft given over to overpriced Smarties? Given that London’s M&M World is the only one of its kind in Europe it has made it the must-see destination for tourists, completely ignoring the sublime Fortnum’s a short walk up the road.

Photos:
Fish and chips ssrtleu/Flickr Creative Commons)
Rickshaws Taxi Leaks

Thinking allowed

Is London going to be hosting F1 street races?

23 December, 2014 Gibson Square Leave a comment

The notion of Formula One racing taking place on the streets of central London has been around for a while now, and new laws currently being rushed through Parliament may mean that a London Grand Prix to rival those in Monaco or Singapore could very well become a reality within the next few years.

F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone first unveiled his plans for a London Grand Prix back in 2012, and a demonstration event on Regent Street in 2004 attracted a crowd of several thousand. World champion Lewis Hamilton is another vocal supporter of the idea.

[E]cclestone’s proposed route would cover 3.2 miles, starting on the Mall then running up St James’s Street to Piccadilly, where cars would reach a top speed of 180mph as they raced towards the Wellington Memorial. They’d then pass Buckingham Palace, speeding down Birdcage Walk to Parliament Square and taking in the Palace of Westminster and the Houses of Parliament before turning onto Victoria Embankment. With the London Eye looking down from the far bank they’d head up to Trafalgar Square, passing Admiralty Arch as they embarked on another of the proposed 59 laps.

The event would cost £35m to stage but could earn well over £100m according to its supporters, with 120,000-280,000 fans paying between £60 and £1000 for tickets. The global TV audience could reach a billion viewers, and advertisers would be charged £10m apiece. With that kind of money at stake, it’s no wonder that Mayor of London Boris Johnson and Prime Minister David Cameron have also got on board.

Currently, local authorities can temporarily close roads but they can’t suspend speed limits or other road safety laws, making motor racing untenable. All of that is set to change if the Deregulation Bill currently passing through Parliament becomes law, and it seems the Prime Minister is keen for it to get the royal assent before the next election.

Not everyone is happy about the proposals, however. Green London Assembly member Darren Johnson said a London Grand Prix was a terrible idea, citing environmental concerns. While broadly supportive, Boris Johnson has said that air quality and noise pollution need to be considered before the idea is given the go-ahead.

General safety is another major concern, of course. It’s one thing high speed motor racing taking place in a course that’s built for the purpose, another in a historical urban environment where people have to live and work. F1 safety has been a major concern of late, as discussed in this Max Mosley Q&A session.

The economic benefits aren’t so clear-cut either. Shops and businesses along the route could be closed for over a week, and whether they’ll be compensated for their losses hasn’t been mentioned yet.

As for London’s cabbies, they’ll be glad of the extra business the influx of tourists, professionals and spectators will doubtless bring. However, closing central London for eight days or more is the kind of chaos and disruption they really don’t need.