Fiona MacLeod’s practical, honest itinerary for a 48-hour London visit that includes world-class culture, excellent food, genuine local experience, and a manageable bill
Bohiney Magazine | The London Prat
The best London weekend is not the one that attempts the most. London is large enough and dense enough in things worth doing that the visitor who tries to do everything will do nothing well, and will spend the majority of their time in transit between experiences that they were too rushed to properly experience. The best London weekend is the one that does a small number of things properly, spends time in a neighbourhood rather than at a succession of attractions, and builds in enough unscheduled time to encounter the city rather than process it.
What follows is a 48-hour itinerary built on that principle. It is not the only way to spend 48 hours in London. It is a tested, practical approach that works.
Saturday Morning: Markets and South Bank
Start at Borough Market, which is open on Saturdays and which is the best food market in London, possibly the best in the UK, and one of the best in Europe. Go early — 10 a.m. — before the crowds make movement difficult. Buy breakfast from a market stall (the Sri Lankan street food counter, the Ethiopian coffee stall, the salt beef roll from the butchery stall with the visible carcasses and the queue that always moves faster than it looks). Walk along the riverside path from London Bridge toward Tate Modern, which is free and contains excellent art and has a café with a terrace overlooking the Thames that is good for mid-morning coffee if the weather cooperates. Walk across the Millennium Bridge to St Paul’s Cathedral — the outside is free, the inside requires a ticket but is worth it for the dome and the Whispering Gallery — and then consider either a walk north into the City or back across the bridge for the afternoon.
Saturday Afternoon: A Neighbourhood
Choose one neighbourhood and spend the afternoon in it rather than moving between several. The candidates from the south bank morning position are: Bermondsey, accessible by a short bus or tube ride, for the Maltby Street Market end of the market area and Bermondsey Street; Brixton, via the Victoria line from London Bridge, for the covered market and the food stalls and the particular energy of a neighbourhood that has maintained character through significant change; or Peckham, via a short bus ride, for the Rye Lane market and the Frank’s Cafe rooftop bar (check it is open) and the Bussey Building arts space.
Saturday Evening: Dinner Without the Theatre Tax
The “theatre tax” is my term for the premium that restaurants near the West End charge knowing that a significant portion of their clientele are tourists and pre-theatre diners who will pay it. The solution is to eat before 7 p.m. (when the pre-theatre rush begins) or to go to a restaurant in a neighbourhood rather than a tourist area. The Bermondsey and Borough area has excellent options. Brixton and Peckham have better-value options than almost anywhere in zone 1. A meal for two with wine in a good restaurant in these areas costs between £60 and £90, versus £90 to £130 for comparable quality closer to the tourist circuit.
Sunday: A Museum and a Walk
Sunday morning in London is quieter than Saturday, which makes it the better day for the major free museums. The British Museum or the V&A are the obvious choices for first-time visitors; arrive at opening, spend two hours, and stop before you are tired. Then walk: from the British Museum, Russell Square and Bloomsbury are pleasant; from the V&A, South Kensington and the Natural History Museum and the Science Museum are within easy walking distance and could occupy another hour or two.
Sunday lunch at a London pub, if you time it well, can be one of the city’s great pleasures: a traditional Sunday roast at a pub that does it properly, with a pint of something appropriate, in a room of Londoners doing the same thing, is an experience that is simultaneously ordinary in London and unavailable almost anywhere else. The gastropubs of Islington, Clerkenwell, and the City’s residential neighbourhoods do this well. Booking for Sunday lunch is advisable at the better establishments. The meal will cost between £20 and £35 per person with a drink. It will be the best thing you eat all weekend.
A note on London pricing that is worth stating plainly: London is expensive relative to most other British and European cities, and the tourist areas are expensive relative to London’s own average. The strategies that most effectively reduce cost without reducing experience are: staying in accommodation that is slightly off the tourist circuit but well-connected by tube (zones 2 and 3 outside the tourist centre offer good value relative to zone 1 central); eating in markets and street food settings rather than in restaurants for casual meals; taking the tube rather than taxis; using free museums for the majority of cultural activity; and drinking in pubs rather than cocktail bars. None of these strategies require significant sacrifice. London’s street food markets (Borough, Maltby Street, Spitalfields, Brixton Market) offer excellent food at prices well below comparable sit-down restaurant equivalents. The free museums are genuinely world-class. The tube is genuinely efficient. The pubs — if you find the right ones, which requires some research and is the subject of a separate guide — are genuinely enjoyable in a way that is specifically and irreducibly London. A well-planned London weekend, using these strategies, costs less than a equivalent quality experience in Paris or Amsterdam, despite London’s general reputation for expense. The reputation is earned in the hotels and the tourist-facing restaurants. It is not earned in the museums, the parks, or the pubs, which remain among the best-value propositions in any major European city.
Fiona MacLeod writes about London travel for The London Prat and Bohiney Magazine. Her homepage is at prat.uk/author/fiona-macleod.
Also planning at NewsThump | The Daily Mash | The Poke
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/london-weekend-best-two-days-city-without-spending-fortune-fiona/
