London Sightseeing?

Question

I'm going to London next weekend. What are good places to visit?

Answer 1

London for Free

The exchange rate may sting, but there's one conversion that'll never change: £0 = $0. Here are our picks for the top free things to do in London.
Free Art

Many of London's biggest and best cultural attractions are free to enter, and the number of museums offering free entry is staggering. Donations are often more than welcome, and special exhibits usually cost extra.

Major Museums

British Museum

Burgh House and the Hampstead Museum

Clown's Gallery and Museum

Guildhall

Houses of Parliament

Imperial War Museum

Museum of Childhood

Museum of London

National Gallery

National Maritime Museum, Queen's House, and Royal Observatory

National Portrait Gallery

Natural History Museum

Royal Exchange

Science Museum

Sir John Soane's Museum

Tate Britain

Tate Modern

Theatre Museum

Victoria & Albert Museum

Wallace Collection

Smaller Galleries

Hogarth House

ICA Gallery

Serpentine Gallery

Whitechapel Art Gallery

Courtauld Permanent Exhibition (Monday only)

Free Concerts

St. Paul's Cathedral, St. Martin's in the Fields, and St. James's Church, have regular lunchtime concerts, as does St. George Bloomsbury on Monday, Hyde Park Chapel on Thursday, and St. Giles in the Fields on Friday. There are regular organ recitals at Westminster Abbey.

Of the music colleges, the Royal Academy of Music, the Royal College of Music, the Guildhall, and the Royal Opera House have regular recitals, the Trinity College of Music, holds recitals at lunchtime on Tuesday.

For contemporary ears, the area outside the National Theatre on the South Bank (known as the Djanogly Concert Pitch) reverberates to live world music weekdays at 6 PM, and on Saturday at 1 PM and 6 PM.

Another regularly excellent venue is the Spitz bistro and gallery, in Spitalfields market, which has free live jazz and classical gigs four times a week; get there early to bag a table.

You can catch decent open-mike nights for unsigned acts and singer songwriters at the River Bar (just south of Tower Bridge) every Wednesday, and Roadhouse (in Covent Garden) every Monday. Blues lovers should not miss the legendary Billy Chong Blues Revue band jam every Monday at the Globe pub in Hackney. The Palm Tree, in Mile End, is another great East End pub that has accomplished local jazz players on weekends.

(Almost) Free Theater & Opera

Sloane Square's Royal Court Theatre, one of the United Kingdom's best venues for new playwriting, has restricted-view, standing-room-only tickets at the downstairs Jerwood Theatre for 10 pence (yes, £0.10), available one hour before the performance.

The Battersea Arts Club (BAC) has pay-what-you-can night on Tuesday for many of its shows.

If all seats have been sold, the English National Opera sells standing tickets for the back of the Dress and Upper Circles at £5 each. Check at the box office.

Standing tickets with obstructed views for the ballet or the opera at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden start at £4.

Free (and Almost Free) Movies

Free outdoor screenings of cult films (such as Donnie Darko and Pulp Fiction), sponsored by Stella Artois and held at different parks every year, have become a London summer institution: pack a picnic and stake out your spot early.

The Prince Charles Cinema in the West End shows weekday matinees for £3.

Free Offbeat Experiences

Go to the Public Record Office in Kew or Islington if you have a few hours to kill and want to track down some ancient branch of the family tree. Even if you don't have any leads, browsing through sheaves of ancient ledgers is great fun.

If you came to London for spectacle, take a trip to a trial at the Old Bailey, the highest court in the land. Stories more twisted and compelling than anything on screen, strange costumes and wigs, command performances -- it's true drama, without the West End ticket prices.

London has some of the finest parks in the world, and enjoying them won't cost you a pretty pence. Keen ornithologists can join free bird-watching walks in Hyde Park, while dedicated strollers touched by royal nostalgia can take the 7-mi Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Walk through Hyde, Green, and St. James's Parks.

Although London's street markets are not in the habit of giving away merchandise for nothing, it's free to browse their stalls, taking in second-hand booksellers under Waterloo Bridge, fishmongers in Borough Market, and funky jewelry designers in Portobello.

For human interest, you can't beat Covent Garden for its marvelous array of street performers and buskers, whose unlikely skills -- imitating statues, balancing footballs on their noses, juggling fire, playing the banjo with their teeth -- can hold any crowd's attention.

There are free spectacles throughout the year, but one of the most warmly enjoyed is Guy Fawkes' Night (November 5), when parks throughout the country hold spectacular fireworks displays: Alexandra Palace and Ravenscourt Park are two of the best.

On New Year's Eve thousands of revelers descend on Trafalgar Square and the South Bank to watch more free fireworks. The Underground usually runs all night, and is free into the new year.

Finally, set aside some time for random wandering. London is a great walking city because so many of its real treasures are untouted: tiny alleyways barely visible on the map, garden squares, churchyards, shop windows, sudden vistas of skyline or park. With comfortable, weatherproof shoes and an umbrella, walking might well become your favorite free activity here.
London's Top Attractions

Westminster Abbey

The most exciting church in the land is the final resting place for the men and women who built Britain. Its great Gothic hall continues to play a part in the formation of the kingdom, having hosted nearly every coronation since 1308.
Buckingham Palace

Not the prettiest royal palace, but a must-see for the glimpse it affords of modern royal life. The opulence of the state rooms open to the public provides plenty to gasp at, and don't forget the collection of china and carriages at the Queen's Gallery and Royal Mews next door.

St. Paul's Cathedral

No matter how many times you have been before, the scale and elegance of Sir Christopher Wren's masterpiece never fail to take the breath away. Climb the enormous dome, third largest in the world, to experience the freaky acoustics of the Whispering Gallery, and higher still for fantastic views across London.

Tower of London

The Tower is London at its majestic, idiosyncratic best. This is the heart of the kingdom -- with foundations dating back nine centuries, every brick tells a story, and the axe-blows and fortunes that have risen and fallen within this turreted mini-city provide an inexhaustible supply of intrigue.

British Museum

If you want to journey through time and space without leaving the confines of Bloomsbury, a visit to the British Museum has hours of eye-catching artifacts from the world's greatest civilizations, including the Elgin Marbles, the Rosetta Stone, and the Sutton Hoo treasure.

Shakespeare's Globe Theatre

You can catch a Shakespeare play almost every night of the year in London. But standing on a floor of leaves and sawdust, and watching an offering from the Great Bard in a painstakingly re-created version of the galleried Tudor theater for which he wrote is a special thrill.

Greenwich Meridian Line

Home of maritime London, Greenwich has a special charm. Most fun is climbing up to the Royal Observatory, surrounded by acres of green and magnificent river views, and straddling western and eastern hemispheres at 0° longitude.

Hampton Court Palace

This collection of buildings and gardens won over Henry VIII to become his favorite royal residence. Its Tudor charm, augmented by touches from Wren, and a picturesque upstream Thames location make it a great day out -- not even dour Oliver Cromwell, who moved here in 1653, could resist its charms.

Tate Modern

More of an event than the average museum visit, Tate Modern, housed inside a striking 1930s power station, is a hip, immensely successful addition to the London gallery landscape. Passing judgment on the latest controversial temporary exhibit inside the giant turbine hall has become almost a civic pastime among art-loving Londoners.

National Gallery

Whatever the collective noun is for a set of Old Masters -- A palette? A canvas? -- there are enough here to have the most casual art enthusiast purring with admiration. When you've finished, enjoy the newly pedestrian Trafalgar Square on the doorstep.

London's central parks

With London's green spaces so broken up, it seems churlish to pick out only one. The four central parks are all within walking distance: pick St. James's Park for fairytale views; Green Park for hillocks and wide boulevards; Regent's Park for its open-air theater and the London Zoo; and Hyde Park for rowing on the Serpentine Lido.


London grew from a wooden bridge built over the Thames in the year AD 43 to its current 600 square mi and 7 million souls in haphazard fashion, meandering from its two official centers: Westminster, seat of government and royalty, to the west, and the City, site of finance and commerce, to the east. In these two areas are most of the grand buildings that have played a central role in British history: the Tower of London and St. Paul's Cathedral, Westminster Abbey and the Houses of Parliament, Buckingham Palace, and the older royal palace of St. James's. However, London's unofficial centers multiply and mutate year after year, and it would be a shame to stop only at the postcard views. Life is not lived in monuments, as the patrician patrons of the great Georgian architects understood when they commissioned the city's elegant squares and town houses. Within a few minutes' walk of Buckingham Palace, for instance, lie St. James's and Mayfair, neighboring quarters of elegant town houses built for the nobility during the 17th and early 18th centuries and now notable for shopping opportunities. Westminster Abbey's original vegetable patch (or convent garden), which became the site of London's first square, Covent Garden, is now an unmissable stop.

Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens, preserved by past kings and queens for their own hunting and relaxation, create a swath of green parkland across the city center. A walk across Hyde Park brings you to the museum district of South Kensington, with the Natural History Museum, the Science Museum, and the Victoria & Albert Museum. If the great parks such as Hyde Park are, in Lord Chatham's phrase, "the lungs of London," then the River Thames is its backbone. The fast-developing South Bank has many cultural highlights: the theaters of the South Bank Centre, the Hayward and Saatchi galleries, Tate Modern, and the reconstruction of Shakespeare's Globe theater. The London Eye observation wheel here gives stunning city views, or you can walk across the Millennium or Hungerford bridges. Farther downstream is the gorgeous 17th- and 18th-century symmetry of Greenwich, where the world's time is measured.

Answer 2

From the modern London Eye to the historic Tower of London, below are London's most visited tourist attractions.
1. British Museum
2. National Gallery
3. Natural History Museum
4. Tate Modern
5. Coca-Cola London Eye
6. Science Museum
7. Victoria and Albert Museum
8. Tower of London
9. Royal Museums Greenwich
10. Madame Tussauds London

Check out here more fun things to do in London :- http://www.londonthisweekend.co.uk/

Answer 3

Tower Of London
The London Eye
Piccadilly Circus
Oxford Street
Westminster
Trafalgar Square
Tower Bridge
St Paul's Cathedral
London Dungeon
(Madame Tussuard's a rip-off)
You're gonna love the Underground

Answer 4

London eye
Madam Tussauds
National Gallery
Tate Modern
National history museum
national science museum
shopping in oxford street
camden market (sunday)
london dungeon
buckingham palace
St james park
st pauls cathedral

Hope you have a good trip!

Answer 5

Oxford street
Carnaby street
Camden
Covent Garden
Leiceister square
Madame tussauds
London eye
Westminister
Trafalgar square
Picadilly circus
Buckingham palace
Tate Gallery

Answer 6

I think the one i went on was Big Bus but im not sure... Worth checking though cos one of them offers or atleast did then offer a boat tout too. That was pretty interesting. The one i went on offered a route and you could "hop on, hop off" at any point throughout the day on their many busses. The first bus i was on we were on the top of the bus, open aired, where everything he said was clear but the secon bujs we got on after the river boat tour we were on the bottom level and the acoustics where absolute rubbish, i couldnt understand a word the guide was saying.. BUT all that said it was a few years ago. Best of luck hope you have a great time.

Answer 7

Peckham

Answer 8

Head to the West End!

Answer 9

The M1 or the A1 then head north up to yorkshire

Answer 10

Mc' Donalds, M&S, W H Smith, Euston Station and head North..........

Answer 11

Soho

Loads of shops selling porn !