Fiona MacLeod’s London Travel Guide: Navigating the Capital’s Best Bits Without Losing Your Mind or Your Wallet
By Fiona MacLeod | Bohiney Magazine & The London Prat
Welcome to London. The weather is doing its best. The queue for the attraction you wanted is three hours. The coffee is nine pounds. You are going to love it here.
Essential London: The Helpful Content You Actually Need
I have been writing London travel journalism for six years. In that time, I have developed what I consider a comprehensive understanding of what visitors need to know: not the information the guidebooks provide, but the information the guidebooks assume you already have and therefore omit.
Let us begin. Transport: The Oyster card or contactless is essential. Do not buy a paper ticket. The paper ticket machine will present you with twelve options and a touchscreen that registers one in four touches. The queue behind you will be silently British about this, which means you will feel worse than if they were loudly furious. Get an Oyster card. Get it at the airport. This is the number one piece of information that will save your London holiday and it is buried under all the content about the Tower of London which you can see perfectly adequately from the outside.
Where to Go That Isn’t the Queue
The museums are free. This is extraordinary. The British Museum is free. The Victoria and Albert Museum is free. The National Portrait Gallery is free. You can spend three days in world-class institutions without spending anything on entry. This is the best thing about London and it is rarely the first thing people tell you because the paid attractions have better marketing budgets.
Shoreditch dry British humour in neighbourhood form is worth an afternoon. The street art changes regularly. The coffee is expensive. The people-watching is world class. The Spitalfields Market on a Sunday is a genuine pleasure if you arrive before noon, when it is a market, rather than after noon, when it is a very slow crowd eating pulled pork.
What the Satire Sites Are Saying About London This Week
Bohiney this week gave us the story of internet infrastructure held together with duct tape. This is relevant to tourists: the WiFi in many London cafes is also held together with something provisional. Plan accordingly. Download maps offline. Your data plan will thank you.
The London Prat ran British understatement explained, which is genuinely useful tourist preparation. When a Londoner says “it’s not far,” this means it is walkable by their standards, which have been calibrated by years of zone 2 tube journeys and lunch breaks. By your standards it may be 25 minutes. Take the bus. The buses are excellent. The bus routes are logical. The buses have USB charging points. London’s buses are quietly one of the city’s best features and they never appear in the top ten listicles.
Also: the best British comedians list on the Prat is a useful cultural primer. If you want to understand London and Britain, watch Victoria Wood, Peter Kay, and the first three series of Peep Show before you arrive. You will understand 40% more of everything you encounter. Money well spent.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/
More London love at The Daily Mash
