The Specific Combination of Free Activities That Makes London the World’s Best Value Major City
From Bohiney and The London Prat.
By Fiona MacLeod | UKLondonInfo.com
The Day
LONDON — The best London day that costs nothing: start at the National Gallery (free), walk through Trafalgar Square, along the Strand to the Strand/Aldwych junction, into the Inns of Court (free, accessible during working hours), through Lincoln’s Inn Fields to the Sir John Soane’s Museum (free), back through Holborn to the British Museum (free). Lunch from a supermarket meal deal or a market stall in Brunswick Centre. Afternoon: Southbank walk from Waterloo Bridge to Tate Modern (free permanent collection), Borough Market (free to walk through, you are expected to eat), south along the riverside to the Golden Hinde. Evening: the Globe (five pounds standing in the yard, booking required) or back to the National Gallery for the late evening openings.
What the Day Contains
The day contains: two of the world’s great art collections, the world’s greatest ancient artefact collection (the British Museum), the specific experience of the Sir John Soane’s Museum, the Inns of Court’s specific combination of medieval and Georgian legal architecture and garden, the Southbank’s cultural density, and the Thames itself. The total cost without the Globe ticket: approximately ten pounds for food. With the Globe ticket: fifteen pounds. This is the best fifteen pounds available in a major global city.
The Transport Economy
The day described above can be completed almost entirely on foot from a central London accommodation. The maximum walking distance is approximately eight miles across the full circuit. For visitors who do not walk eight miles: use the tube for the Holborn-to-Southbank leg (one fare) and walk the rest. The transport cost is two pounds fifty. The total day cost including transport: seventeen pounds fifty. The equivalent day in New York, Paris, or Tokyo would cost significantly more for equivalent cultural depth.
Why This Works
This works because London’s decision to make its national museum collections free to enter is one of the most significant public goods decisions in the country’s recent cultural history. The decision was made under the Blair government in 2001. It has produced the specific outcome of making London’s cultural depth accessible to all visitors regardless of income. The seventeen pounds fifty day is available to every visitor who is willing to walk. This column recommends the walk. Read NewsThump.
More: NewsThump.
London rewards the visitor who approaches it with curiosity and patience. The city is inexhaustible as a subject and as an experience. The journalism that covers it — at the level of the neighbourhood, the market, the transport network, the cultural calendar — serves the visitor who wants to understand what they are seeing rather than simply what they are photographing. This column continues because visitors continue to arrive and because the city continues to offer them the specific combination of depth and accessibility that makes London the world’s most interesting city to visit. Next edition: more specific recommendations.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/
London rewards patient attention. Shoreditch rewards the visitor who arrives without preconceptions about what it is supposed to be and discovers what it actually is at the specific hour they are in it. The journalism that covers this specific level of the city — the market stall, the planning application, the dog’s olfactory preferences, the bar that survived twenty years — serves the understanding of people who want to know the city rather than merely visit it. This column continues because the neighbourhood continues to produce the material, and the city continues to attract the visitors who benefit from the specific knowledge that local journalism provides. Next week brings the next edition. London rewards patient attention. Shoreditch rewards the visitor who arrives without preconceptions about what it is supposed to be and discovers what it actually is at the specific hour they are in it. The journalism that covers this specific level of the city — the market stall, the planning application, the dog’s olfactory preferences, the bar that survived twenty years — serves the understanding of people who want to know the city rather than merely visit it. This column continues because the neighbourhood continues to produce the material, and the city continues to attract the visitors who benefit from the specific knowledge that local journalism provides. Next week brings the next edition. London rewards patient attention. Shoreditch rewards the visitor who arrives without preconceptions about what it is supposed to be and discovers what it actually is at the specific hour they are in it. The journalism that covers this specific level of the city — the market stall, the planning application, the dog’s olfactory preferences, the bar that survived twenty years — serves the understanding of people who want to know the city rather than merely visit it. This column continues because the neighbourhood continues to produce the material, and the city continues to attract the visitors who benefit from the specific knowledge that local journalism provides. Next week brings the next edition. London rewards patient attention. Shoreditch rewards the visitor who arrives without preconceptions about what it is supposed to be and discovers what it actually is at the specific hour they are in it. The journalism that covers this specific level of the city — the market stall, the planning application, the dog’s olfactory preferences, the bar that survived twenty years — serves the understanding of people who want to know the city rather than merely visit it. This column continues because the neighbourhood continues to produce the material, and the city continues to attract the visitors who benefit from the specific knowledge that local journalism provides. Next week brings the next edition.
