London

London is the capital of the United Kingdom and the largest city in Europe. Since it almost certainly already figures in your travel plans, it is hardly worth trying to convince you to go there, but what the hell: here's some enthusiastic praise. London is fantastic. For the passing tourist there is somewhere new to visit every day, somewhere else to drink every night. And even if you have been there before, or even if you live there, London still has something new every day, whether it is a walk through a different park, a building you never noticed before or an amazing epic west end show, something will leave you shaking your head as you finish off the night in yet another new pub. Hell, you could even go back to your favourite pub and shake your head there - if you keep handing over the money they'll keep handing over the beer.

If you have ever read a travel guide you will know that Samuel Pepys once observed that "If a man is tired of London then he is tired of life". It is unclear why all travel guides have to include this quote - Mr Pepys was a noted diarist of his times, but he has been dead for a number of hundreds of years now, and it must be clear to even the most casual observer that London has changed almost beyond all recognition in that time. Anyway, people certainly do get fed up of London - the English countryside is full of people who got fed up with London and moved away to knit cattle and rear woollen jumpers on their very own smallholdings. Travellers don't get fed up of London however, and even if they only intend to stay for a week or so many end up measuring their stay in months. So don't take old Sam's word for it - head there and ask a barman.

Climate and weather

Winter.

London is in the south east corner of the Britain, and as with all of that area it has a comfortable climate. The winters are sheltered from the worst of the cold - so much so that even lily-livered southerners can cope with living there. If it does snow you can guarantee that it won't last long in London, and if you should be there during one of the week-long rainstorms that seem to replace it you can always catch one of the thousands of buses instead of walking.

Summer.

Things can get a bit sticky in summer, with fairly high humidity and the inevitable pollution of a large city conspiring to make the streets sweaty and the tube all but unbearable. Luckily this will only be the case for three weeks at most before the calm grey skies return. Either way the heat is not as unbearable as Mediterranean countries, and the sunshine is more dependable than in the north of England or Scotland.

© Ben Stafford, 2006

Landscape and scenery

Central London has a huge number of pleasant parks, giving a quiet escape from the hustle and bustle of city life. There are also pleasant riverside walks, and it is less than an hours train journey from some of the most beautiful areas of England.

© Ben Stafford, 2006

Arriving by Plane.

Five airports are described as London: City Airport is in Docklands, close to the business district, Heathrow Airport is around 20km to the west, Gatwick Airport is 40km to the south, Luton Airport is 40 northwest, and Stansted Airport 50km to the northeast.

If you are arriving from another continent you will almost certainly arrive at Heathrow or the north terminal at Gatwick. Budget flights from across Britain and Europe fly into Stansted, Luton and Gatwick's south terminal. City airport seems to support a strange mix of domestic budget flights and premium flights for businessmen who don't want a long ride from the airport.

Whichever airport you land at you will find easy if not cheap rail links to central London - click on the link for your airport above to for details.

Arriving By Train.

Trains from Paris, Lille and Brussels arrive at London Waterloo International (details are on the UK page). Waterloo is on the Bakerloo, Jubilee, Waterloo and City, and Circle and District tube lines, which provide easy access to all of central London.

Britain's Intercity network is centred on London, with 80% of long distance trains starting or ending here. Again more details are on the UK page. The major stations are Kings Cross, St Pancras, Euston, Paddington, Victoria, Waterloo, and Liverpool Street. See individual pages for details.

Arriving By Coach.

Victoria Coach Station is located five minutes walk from Victoria train station and the tube. National Express and Eurolines coaches arrive here from all over the UK and Europe respectively. Many coaches also stop at a tube ststion on the way into London if you have no luggage.

Megabus run services from the larger cities around the UK. These all arrive at Green Line Coach Station, also at Victoria.

Arriving By Ferry.

Dover is the port of choice for London. Just get the bus from the port to Dover Priory station and hop on a train. You will be in London an hour or so later. The journey costs about 15 pounds one-way.

© Ben Stafford, 2006

Getting around by public transport

Buses and underground (tube) trains in London are run by private companies, but are organized into a single network with simple fare structure by the public body Transport For London. Full details of all services, including fares and an excellent journey planner are on their website.

Oystercard.

If you are staying in London for more than a day or two get an Oystercard. This is a smartcard which can be loaded with cash and used to pay bus and tube fares. The only cost is a three pound deposit, which you can get back by returning the Oystercard when you leave. Using an Oystercard can be as much as 50% cheaper than paying by cash. Get them at any tube station or London Travel Information Centre (see TfL website for locations). Each time you get on a bus, touch the card on the reader next to the driver. On the DLR and Croydon Tramlink the readers are located next to the ticket machines. When you use the tube touch the card on the reader whenever you enter or leave a station, whether the gate is open or not. The Oystercard will charge you the cheapest fare for your journey, and will never charge you more than the cost of the bus pass or travelcard you would need to make your journeys.

Travelling by tube.

A network of 12 underground lines covers the whole of central London, with stations as far out as Heathrow Airport and Watford. Where the alternative journey is along a congested road such as Oxford Street the tube is far and away the best way to get around, but it is more expensive than the bus and if you have to change trains or walk some distance from the nearest tube station it may well be slower. Peak journeys within Zone 1 (central London) are 1.50 with Oystercard and 3 pounds cash, with journeys out of town costing around 50% more. If you are going to make more than one tube journey in a day and you do not have an Oystercard you should buy a travelcard. On most lines trains run between around 5am and just past midnight. Outside these hours you will need to catch a nightbus. Frequencies vary from every 2 minutes on many lines at peak to every 15 minutes off-peak or outside central London.

Travelling by DLR.

Docklands Light Railway is an elevated train which runs to the Docklands business district east of central London, and also serves London City Airport. Fares work like the tube. You must buy a ticket or validate your Oystercard before you get on the train, and swipe your Oystercard on the way out. There are no gates however, and Oystercard points are next to the ticket machines.

Travelling by bus.

Buses are operated by various companies but they are all bright red and all run as part of the Transport for London network. The system is comprehensive and frequent. If you use Oystercard the fare for any bus journey a pound between 7 and 9.30am and 80p at all other times. If you pay by cash the fare is 1.50 at all times. Many bus routes run 24 hours, and in other areas an impressive network of night buses replaces the regular routes and the tube running at least hourly, and often every 20 minutes. Fares on night buses are the same as on regular routes, and travelcards are valid until 4am the following morning.

Travelling by train.

Various National Rail companies run local services in the London area, particularly south of the river where there are very few tube lines. Transport for London has some input into these services, though they are run completely separately and Oystercards cannot be used on them. Travelcards are valid on trains for travel in the relevant zones however, and the service is almost as impressive as the tube, with services every 10-15 minutes on most lines. Only one or two routes have trains between around midnight and 6am, so again you will have to catch a nightbus.

© Ben Stafford, 2006

Getting around by car

Central London is a nightmare for drivers. There is very little overnight parking to be found and daytime parking is extremely expensive. In addition the heart of London is covered by a congestion charge, so you will have to pay five pounds a day just to drive your car on a road. There are very few petrol stations near the centre, since almost all drivers come in from some distance away. Basically, unless you are staying a few miles out of town driving in London is a non-starter, and even if you are staying out of town it is probably an expensive waste of time. Get the bus - they are excellent. If you are going to hire a car to travel around the remainder of the UK, wait until you are leaving London and hire it then.

Newspapers

Metro publish a London edition of their free paper, available on buses and the tube and pretty much everywhere else during the morning rush hour. The London Evening Standard is published mid-morning and goes through several issues during the day. Both of these are published by the Daily Mail group and are rather right wing, so take their comments about the mayor with a pinch of salt. Each individual area of London has their own local weekly paper with local information and news. For entertainment listings try Time Out in all newsagents, or The Guide which comes free with The Guardian on Saturdays.

Cinema

Every cinema chain has at least one outlet in central London, most of them clustered around Leicester Square. This is where all the big British premieres take place, and you may well find as you pass that one or other of them has been roped off for legion of minor Hollywood stars and B-list hangers on to be the first (in Britain) (not counting all the people who illegally downloaded it months ago) see some blockbuster. These central London venues charge more than any other cinemas in the country, and are not internally any better. In fact several of them are well below the standards you may come to expect from modern multiplex cinemas. Go once for the faint aura of glamour that might be hanging around from the last premiere, but otherwise head a little out of town. The Cineworld at Canary Wharf is reasonably quick to get to by tube or Docklands Light Railway, and charges the same as Cineworld cinemas throughout the UK. There are also a number of art-house cinemas in or around central London.

Listings for all cinemas, independent or chain, central or in the outskirts, are in Time Out, or on the internet at the Ents 24 website.

Pubs and bars

London pubs and bars come in all shapes and sizes, from the trendiest west end bars, through slightly bizarre hangouts such as the Swedish bar Garlic and Shots, to traditional Camden pubs with sunday lunch and gigs in the evening. In between there is the usual range of chain pubs like All Bar One and Wetherspoons. All price brackets and tastes are catered for. The best place to find your perfect pub is online at Fancy a Pint, a comprehensive list of pubs in central London with descriptions and reviews.

London has been in the tourist game for years, and over time it has acquired a massive number of attractions and distractions designed to amaze and bamboozle visitors, usually while vastly enriching their owners. Not everything is designed to leave you destitute though. Just wonder through the main streets of Westminster and you can look at the Downing Street, the Houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace and all the other buildings that are iconically London. And the biggest museums and art galleries are free to enter. This includes the following:

• Science Museum.

  tracing the development of industrial Britain, the Science museum is full of cool mechanical stuff and has dozens of buttons that you, the visitor, are allowed to press. You can't say fairer than that!

• The V&A.

  The Victoria and Albert Museum has a bunch of stuff in it.

• British Museum.

  Don't bother visiting those out-of-the-way ancient civilisations, all their good stuff is in here! Aside from amazing range of ethnographic history from around the world, including Elgin's Marbles, and the fascinating Rosetta Stone, the British Museum also houses the classic British Library reading room, where Karl Marx wrote Das Kapital.

Other free museums include the Natural History Museum and Imperial War Museum, which regularly changes its excellent and informative exhibitions on the human as well as the technical aspects of war through the ages.

Attractions that are worth shelling out some cash include:

• The London Eye.

  Okay, so it's basically a big wheel where you are stuck inside a little pod for 20 minutes, but while you are you get one of the best views of London money can buy, with a handy guide telling you what to look out for. Anyway, just look at it - how can anything that looks that cool not be worth the money??

• HMS Belfast.

  HMS Belfast is a warship which was decomissioned around 20 years ago after a full life in the navy. Since then it has sat on the Thames close to tower bridge. As a visitor you get access to all areas of the ship (and that's a lot of areas), getting an idea both of what life was like for the sailors who manned the boat, and also of some of the stuff that goes on behind the scenes to keep the guns shooting and the boat moving forwards.

• London Zoo.

  London Zoo is one of the world's foremost conservation zoos, working to preserve in capitivity species which are all-but-extinct in the wild, whilst promoting an understanding of the animals and their natural habitat. The entrance price is pretty steep, but you get to see some big animals for your money.

Other attractions include the London Dungeons (it must be good - the queues are enormous) and Madame Toussauds.

© Ben Stafford, 2006

Art galleries

The National Gallery on Trafalgar Square is one of the world's leading galleries, and has a collection spanning all the major scools and periods in art history. Many of the famous and priceless paintings are scattered around the walls, though if there is something in particular you want to see you should probably check that it is on display when you go - the collection is so large that even major works are occasionally bumped off the walls so that something different can be shown. It would take a complete philistine to walk into the National and leave in less than an hour. And a philistine with a good sense of direction at that - the galleries wind round in seemingly endless spirals so you can quite literally lose yourself in the art.

The National Portrait Gallery next door to the National Gallery and has very clean toilets should you get caught short in Trafalgar square. They probably have some nice paintings as well.

The Tate trust has Britain's largest private art collection housed in a number of galleries throughout the UK. The Tate Britain on Millbank is the jewel in their crown. It has a fantastic selection of paintings including a huge collection by Turner

For those with more modern tastes, the London also has the Tate Modern. This is housed in a former Power Station on the South Bank of the Thames, and each year there is a different piece of specially-comissioned installation art on display in the enormous turbine hall, as well as an ever-changing selection of art from the last 50-100 years in number of other galleries. The restaurant/bar on the top floor has the best view in London.

Entry to all of the galleries above are free. There are also many private galleries scattered around London, ranging from the Queen's collection at Buckingham Palace (which probably most-famously houses the recent Rolf Harris portrait) and the Saatchi Gallery (specializing in extremely contemporary art, reopening in 2007) down to the tiniest art shop.

© Ben Stafford, 2006

Parks

London is famous for its royal parks - they even have their own police force. They provide a huge reserve of green open space close to the centre of town. The five best central parks are:

• Hyde park and Kensington Gardens.

  These two form the largest of the central London parks. Situated between Park Lane and Knightsbridge, they are great for walks and picnics. The Serpentine, a large lake which winds through Hyde Park is the site of the annual Christmas Day swim. Large concerts and events such as the Live 8 show and London's Gay Pride march also take place here.

• Green Park and St. James' Park.

  Effectively these two are the Queen's front garden. They are located either side of The Mall, separating Buckingham palace from the bustle of Westminster and Whitehall. You can walk there from Trafalgar Square or Piccadilly tube station, and in fact they are only 10 minutes from Oxford Street. There are always a hundreds of people sunbathing in the parks during the summer and they are both great for picnics.

• Regents park.

  This is in the north of central London. It is a large pleasant park which has London Zoo as its centrepiece.

© Ben Stafford, 2006