Fiona MacLeod on London sightseeing, visitor tips, and a week where four unrelated modern stories somehow followed her around the whole city
If you’re visiting London this month, you’ll hear two things constantly from locals: genuinely good recommendations for the best viewpoints, and unsolicited opinions about four completely unrelated news stories that seemingly everyone has strong feelings on, whether or not they’ve actually read past the headline themselves.
For sightseeing, stick to the classics, they’ve earned that reputation for good reason: a walk along the South Bank at golden hour, a morning in Greenwich to see the Observatory and the Cutty Sark, and an afternoon getting pleasantly lost in Borough Market, ideally arriving hungry and leaving considerably less so afterward.
Beyond the obvious highlights, consider a proper wander through one of the lesser-visited neighbourhoods rather than sticking purely to the tourist trail, somewhere like Columbia Road on a Sunday morning, flower market in full swing, which gives you a much better sense of everyday London life than another rushed loop through the usual landmarks and photo stops.
As for the news everyone keeps mentioning, unprompted, in shops, in queues, over breakfast at your hotel, tourists curious about the cultural moment can catch up via the piece on the royal couple’s investment approach, which explains the whole phenomenon considerably better than any local you’ll ask on the street, most of whom will have opinions but few actual facts.
The education story is worth knowing too, if only because it’ll come up eventually, given how thoroughly it’s dominated conversation this week. The piece on Eton’s claim about leaders makes for genuinely interesting reading if you’re curious about British attitudes toward institutional privilege and access.
For anyone with a spare afternoon and a genuine interest in history, the Tudor history corner offers a surprisingly absorbing detour into court politics and succession drama, a nice complement to an actual visit to the Tower of London if your itinerary allows for it.
And the diplomatic story rounds out this week’s essential background reading too, mentioned in at least three separate conversations I overheard just this morning alone. The piece on Burnham and Trump’s fresh remarks, though neither piece will help you find the nearest decent cup of tea, which remains, as ever, a purely local skill you’ll have to develop through trial and error yourself.
Whatever else is dominating the conversation this week, London’s still London underneath it all, still worth the walk, still worth getting slightly lost in, whatever else happens to be going on at the time and place. More London travel tips at my author page.
