19 ms·
Field notes: London, England (2018)
- skilled 8y agoWhere's Dirty Dicks?
- pauljburke 8y agohttp://www.dirtydicks.co.uk/ http://www.dirtydicks.co.uk/ Bishopsgate, nearest tube is Liverpool Street. Mind your head there are some low beams in there.
- skilled 8y agoI think you misunderstood what I meant, I couldn't find Dirty Dicks in the article... :)
- chrisseaton 8y agoDid you expect her to visit absolutely everything in London in a couple of days of visit? That's not going to be possible, is it?
- skilled 8y agoLiverpool Station is really not that offbeat.
- chrisseaton 8y agoThere are hundreds and hundreds of 'not offbeat' places to visit in London. You're not going to include them all in a travelog of a few days are you? It's not realistic to demand to know why someone hasn't included whatever your favourite place is.
- skilled 8y agoOkay, dad.
- darrenf 8y ago* Liverpool Street station. Heading to Liverpool station would be an expensive and time-consuming mistake if you were aiming for Bishopsgate.
- Jonnax 8y agoI lived in London most of my life, I've never been to this place. Why is it important to visit this pub?
- FatDrunknStupid 8y agoDo you know about the cat in Dirty Dicks? Back around the 1980's they had a pub cat. Until one day it met it's end. The patrons decided it would be honoured by being nailed to the wall above the bar. After a couple of days it started to get a bit pen and inky (stinky mate) so it was stuffed and put in a glass case. Still there I believe (was last time I was there).
- stephenbennyhat 8y ago'The people I hung out with while there were bitter towards the required TV licenses and "religion" for NHS in public discourse. Curious how widespread this attitude is.' Not very widespread at all in my experience.
- ablation 8y agoNo, agreed. The NHS is very popular amongst the majority: - Seventy-seven per cent of the public believe the NHS should be maintained in its current form. This level of support has remained consistent over almost two decades despite widespread social, economic and political change. - Around 90 per cent of people support the founding principles of the NHS, indicating that these principles are just as relevant today as when the NHS was established. - A clear majority (66 per cent) of adults are willing to pay more of their own taxes to fund the NHS, underlining growing support among the public for tax rises to increase NHS funding.[1] [1]: https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/publications/what-does-public-think-about-nhs https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/publications/what-does-public-t...
- dagw 8y agoNHS is very popular amongst the majority: Absolutely, but at least when I lived in England everybody was also very opinionated about how CurrentGovernment ruining it, how it used to be so much better and how you need to to X right now to fix it.
- nailer 8y agoThe OP was talking about how forbidden it is to speak of changing the NHS in any way. You are saying the NHS is popular. Those are orthogonal: you can like the NHS and want to change it.
- ablation 8y agoThat's a good point. I didn't consider that. It was my mistake to simply take that as criticism/negativity of the NHS.
- 8y ago
- jon-wood 8y ago> One-trip tickets on the Tube were surprisingly expensive, £4.90. This is likely a form of price discrimination for tourists, as the cost for the Oyster and Contactless payment cards is much lower. My understanding of this is that its actually price discrimination against people buying paper tickets, as they're more likely to have problems at the gates and result in a queue backing up.
- n4r9 8y agoIt's a bit of both I reckon. Even a lot of non-London Brits don't realise how easy it is to get an oyster card in the station, and very few know that you can just use contactless payments.
- sefrost 8y agoMore than 50% of pay-as-you-go journeys are made with contactless as of April 2018, so I don't think "very few know" is fair (fare, heh). http://content.tfl.gov.uk/contactless-top-line-figure.pdf http://content.tfl.gov.uk/contactless-top-line-figure.pdf
- setquk 8y agoIt's mainly regular Londoners who use contactless I think. We're an extremely advanced city when it comes to public transport payments. But at the same time you need to be able to digest the numerous rules around it like daily and weekly caps etc. I've got so used to this that a few months ago I did a bus journey in a medium sized town and it felt totally backwards having a physical ticket.
- alias_neo 8y agoI went out east to lakeside one day to do some shopping with my wife; we got as far as Dartford, then there was a bus we had to get, I tapped my Oyster on the reader, it didn't work, the driver gave me an odd look, so I tapped my bank card, it didn't work, another odd look, so I said, "it's not working, do you take cards?" He looked at me as if it'd just offended his mother. "No" the driver replied. So I asked "What do you take?" And he replied "Cash". I was slightly taken aback. This bus station is in the middle of nowhere just past Dartford, there isn't a building in sight let alone a cash machine, so, I looked in my wallet to find only my single, brand new, plastic £5 note with a palindrome serial number I'd been keeping. With a sigh I handed it over and we got our bus. Lakeside was crap.
- oh_sigh 8y ago> Crutches and leg braces: I saw many more people with crutches and leg braces walking around than I typically see in San Francisco. It was a striking difference, so I don't think it was just a fluke. A few hypotheses: I too have noticed this. Does anyone have any explanation? Due to better health care? Worse health care? More of a walking culture? more interest in soccer which causes these types of injuries? Something else entirely?
- Nursie 8y agoFewer steep hills?
- mrozel 8y agoAfter having lived in London for a few years, I noticed this everywhere too. I am no expert but I have a theory that it's a combination of: Genetics - you'll notice this when you watch people walk and have odd knee/ankle flex. Discipline - not learning how to walk properly. This sounds silly, but when you drag your feet and wear improper shoes injury is more likely. Healthcare - I have noticed that people are more likely to go to the doctor compared to the States
- tragomaskhalos 8y agoAmong older folks it is perhaps also related to nutrition - unlike the US, we had rationing through the war and well into the 50s so many people will have grown up with a barely adequate diet.
- CiaranMcNulty 8y agoYou think English people have genetically weak legs?
- Graham24 8y agoI blame the Ministry of Silly Walks.
- talldan 8y agoThis is really quite an offensive statement, and I can't quite believe I've read this on here. I just want to mention that what you've written is not ok.
- raverbashing 8y ago"Staying in the North side" I guess most of the city is on the North, there isn't much to see in the south But yes, it is a lovely city (though because of its size it's hard to "go around" if you don't know what you're looking for exactly)
- lordnacho 8y agoThe South Bank is pretty walkable, from the Eye to Tower Bridge. Also there's the Imperial War Museum and Clapham Common.
- lozenge 8y agoAlso Greenwich Park, Greenwich generally, Brixton and Kew Gardens. Still, none of these extends much past the river.
- dkdbejwi383 8y agoAnd the IWM, the Old Vic and the Young Vic, and Elephant and Castle, and Lambeth Palace and Clapham Common, and Blackheath and the Peckhamplex. There's loads going on in South London.
- leonk 8y agoYeah looking at her Google timeline maps that she posted, when she went to the "south bank" she actually walked around Waterloo station. A walk along the actual south bank (of the river) I would say should be a must for any tourist in London. Great view of the Thames, no cars, interesting architecture, and plenty of galleries and other cultural highlights. In particular the Tate modern.
- darrenf 8y agoAs a born, bred, and resident South Londoner I feel compelled to beg to differ. For example I'm yet to discover something in North London as wonderful as the Crystal Palace dinosaurs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_Palace_Dinosaurs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_Palace_Dinosaurs
- sampo 8y ago> One-trip tickets on the Tube were surprisingly expensive, £4.90. This is likely a form of price discrimination for tourists, as the cost for the Oyster and Contactless payment cards is much lower. He should have just bought an Oyster card. Anyone can buy them, and you can buy them from the ticket machines on almost all tube stations. There is absolutely no discrimination against tourists.
- nailer 8y agoAlso his existing card probably has contactless payments, so he could have just tapped his card.
- sampo 8y agoSome, especially American, credit cards might add an extra currency conversion fee for each purchase abroad?
- nailer 8y agoSure but they'd do that whether you used contactless or not.
- pjc50 8y agoContactless doesn't seem to be reliable internationally, as I discovered with a UK card in Norway.
- barry-cotter 8y agoShe Price discrimation is a technical economics term used to describe how a monopolist can get as much money as possible out of people, so that everyone pays the maximum they are willing to pay. Consider a university with “financial aid”. They get everyone to grant them access to bank accounts, tax returns etc. and then set tuition at the maximum they think the family can afford, “giving away” thousands of dollars to try and encourage those who could not otherwise afford the list price to come to choose their college. Devon was on a business trip. Her employer will be paying for the tickets anyway.
- 8y ago
- zelos 8y ago> Curb cut grips: I can imagine that these grips are important when the ground is wet and slippery. Would not be fun to find yourself tripping into oncoming traffic... I thought those studs were to make it clearer for blind and partially sighted people where the crossing is?
- sefrost 8y agoThat's right, and the different shapes mean different things. There's a Tom Scott video about them: https://www.rnib.org.uk/rnibconnect/welfare-and-money/tom-scott-tactile-paving https://www.rnib.org.uk/rnibconnect/welfare-and-money/tom-sc...
- rcarmo 8y agoI quite like London, and am sad that Brexit will likely mean I won't be going there on business anytime soon. Like the article points out, I'm especially fond of the tree-lined streets and tue overall quiet in the mornings.
- novocaine 8y agoLondon is an endlessly fascinating place to live and explore and has a vibrant tech scene that seems to be quite unaffected (so far) from the cold winds of brexit. Extremely diverse and welcoming of newcomers. Highly recommended. Maybe we could have a list of some London startups? * memrise, busuu (language learning) * deliveroo (food delivery) * revolut, monzo (banking) * transferwise, gocardless (payments) * improbable ('cloud gaming platform') * roli (music tech) * lyst (fashion aggregator) * citymapper, trainline (maps and transport)
- Arathorn 8y agonew vector (Matrix-based decentralised/encrypted comms) :)
- xvilka 8y agoProbably not anymore (with BRexit).
- Cthulhu_ 8y agoNow you comment that under a list of startups, it could've been a great startup name.
- Chirono 8y agoJust a small correction: Improbable are making a cloud gaming platform, not a game engine. https://improbable.io/games/blog/how-spatialos-works-with-game-engines https://improbable.io/games/blog/how-spatialos-works-with-ga...
- novocaine 8y agofixed, thankyou
- setquk 8y agoI've worked for a number of really shitty London startups over the years. Just a note that YMMV when it comes to good thing. No I'm not willing to name and shame but most of them are totally dead now :)
- twic 8y agoThose "Curb cut grips" are tactile paving: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tactile_paving https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tactile_paving Does San Francisco not have that?
- twic 8y ago> Seems like they are in some sort of transition for the address system. Google maps has letters and numbers, but when you get to the street there is a typical name. What?
- dkdbejwi383 8y agoYeah, as a Londoner I have no idea what the OP is on about here.
- Smaug123 8y agoThe author has misunderstood the fact that e.g. the A3 is Kennington Park Road. It's not a transition at all: they're systems that coexist.
- samatman 8y agoTo be fair, it’s an oddity from an American perspective. Our highways are numbered, some streets are numbered but most are named, and it’s vanishingly rare that a street will have both a number and a name.
- stephen_g 8y agoI’m not sure if the UK is the same as here, but in Australia the reason you have both for major roads is that generally you have regular names, and then the letter/number is the route designator. A route will generally traverse multiple streets/roads/motorways. So in the state I live in if you follow the M1 you will go from the Pacific Motorway at the southern border, onto the Gateway Motorway and then on to the Bruce Highway. So they have different roles.
- tialaramex 8y agoSo, let's take Route 66. Are you telling me that none of that route had a name? Or did they go along while adding Route 66 signs and take _out_ existing names for the roads used? Did people wake up one day and find that their "Main Street" was now just "part of Route 66, it doesn't have a name" ? The letter-number designations like "A33" in the UK are like your route numbers. Some were purpose built and nobody cares what the underlying road is "named" (all the major Motorways are like this, there is no "name" for the M25, it's just the M25) but most are pre-existing roads, designated as part of some route and to locals the original name is what they'd call their bit. e.g. Nobody where I live would say "the A335" they'd say "Thomas Lewis Way" because that's what this part of the A335 is named even though it was constructed specifically in order to bypass local streets for the A335 route. A person from out of town might say they used the A335 but probably people would look puzzled, then go "Oh, Thomas Lewis Way, yeah".
- CannisterFlux 8y agoThis was a wholesome post. Overall positive with lots of pretty photos. Made me want to go out walk around the city I live in.
- lordnacho 8y agoTube stations: St John's Wood, Cockfosters Another story: foreign friend of a friend came to work for an estate agent. She wondered why having a toilet was something to put on the sign. Surely every place has a toilet? And why were all the signs misspelled?
- siquick 8y agoProbably means an indoor toilet. Edit: that went way over my head... sigh
- TickleSteve 8y ago"to let" != "toilet"
- pavlov 8y agoThe note about the Brunswick Centre is interesting. This odd space-age utopian building was in much worse shape until a £20M renovation in 2006, with The Guardian characterizing it as one of the “most miserable places in London”: https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2006/oct/23/architecture.communities https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/artanddes... In that article, the architect mentions he originally wanted it built out of brick in the style of Alvar Aalto, but they had to settle for painted concrete. In 1970 even the paint job was cut from the budget and wasn’t done until the renovation, so for 36 years the Brunswick was a brutalist bunker. Im glad they fixed it. It’s an interesting landmark of British modernism’s fling with low-key sci-fi architecture — and the grocery store is good, I go there all the time.
- setquk 8y agoI occasionally have to take my daughter to Great Ormond Street hospital. We park in the car park underneath the Brunswick Centre. It's nice to sit out on the shopping area and get something to eat afterwards these days. There's also Skoob books on the end which is a wonderful place to have a browse. Compared to how it was (I have been there) it's a really nice place now. I wouldn't be averse to living in it if it wasn't so expensive. At the same time I like brutalist architecture. I used to hang out in the Barbican when I worked at that end of the city years ago.
- jlarcombe 8y agoGreat book shop in the basement of that building (Skoob). Coram's Fields round the corner is brilliant if you have children.
- dkdbejwi383 8y agoShame you didn't make it any further east than the City, or any further south!
- mhandley 8y agoI love the comment on sun-bleached black paint on the upper floors, but it's completely wrong. These black bricks are not black because they've been painted - they're black with coal soot from before burning coal was banned in the 1950s. If they're less black on the upper floors, I guess it's because 60 years of rain eventually has some effect.
- mprev 8y agoTo be fair, some of these places have since been painted black just because that’s what people came to expect. 10 Downing Street is an example and there’s something about it in this piece on its reconstruction: https://history.blog.gov.uk/2017/07/19/rebuilding-no-10-downing-street/ https://history.blog.gov.uk/2017/07/19/rebuilding-no-10-down...
- jlarcombe 8y agoUntil relatively recently, most of the tourist postcards of London you could buy in the tat shops in town had old photos where the buildings were all blackened. I'm not sure when they were cleaned, some time in the late 70s or early 80s perhaps. A dramatic difference!
- Accacin 8y agoA little off-topic, but it's nice to read some positive news about the UK (and England in particular). I feel that we get a lot of bad press, which is a shame as really the UK isn't such a bad place overall.
- zabana 8y agoI have spent 2 years (on and off) in various parts of England and it was the most amazing time of my life. Life is a bit expensive over there but it's well worth it if you consider the positivity that people display, the very special sense of fashion and of course the accent (I find british people to be very well spoken in general, which helped me a lot in improving my understanding of the language). I'm a bit worried about brexit because I'm seriously considering moving back there for work.
- matt4077 8y agoI love the UK, and am actually going there tomorrow. ...and that’s exactly why I feel so strongly that they are being idiots. Nobody would care about an actually terrible country ruining its future and descending into madness.
- te_chris 8y agoI keep thinking about leaving - I'm a NZer in London, but I fucking love living here. There is a serious problem with the way the elite treat this country though. It becomes more apparent the longer you live here, with the way David Cameron handled the EU ref being the perfect example. They're so sure of themselves, they've never really experienced a situation where they haven't been in the advantage, and they have 0 empathy. Then they fuck things up royally.
- welcomebrand 8y agoThe author was lucky to have a half decent experience on the train given the appalling state and cost of our rail network.
- novocaine 8y agoCentral London transport is world class, and she was in Central London, so it was not luck
- leonk 8y agoShe got a train from Manchester to London. I'm surprised that the price of this ticket wasn't mentioned (when the £4.90 one in London was). Manchester to London can typically cost anywhere between £40 to £90.
- pjc50 8y agoYes, I was slightly surprised at the whole "flying into manchester then taking a train was cheaper", given how many times I've chosen air over train because of the prices. When it works and it's reasonably priced and you get a seat in a good environment it's the best form of travel. It's a shame those conditions so rarely all hold at the same time.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- dazc 8y agoI got a first class from Hull to Southampton the other week for £42 (booked a day in advance, obviously). Chap got on at Doncaster, apologised for not having a ticket and handed over his card - £250!!
- agent008t 8y agoCompared to what? Ventilation in the tube is pretty bad, train delays and line closures are fairly frequent. Rail is notoriously always having problems. Locals may correct me, but transport in e.g. Tokyo seemed a lot more efficient when I was there.
- shocks 8y agoThose “curb cut grips” are not for increased friction, rather to inform the visually impaired of a crossing. Similarly there are other paving slabs with ridges, and the direction on the ridge relative to the path tells you if it’s for cyclists or pedestrians. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tactile_paving https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tactile_paving
- C1sc0cat 8y agoThey are also slippery as F%$k when wet - so a bit of an own goal
- oblio 8y agoOutdoors they don't even increase friction. If you're wearing normal shoes and it's raining, the reduced contact surface because of the bumps makes them slippery.
- dtf 8y ago"The one dark spot on my stay in that neighborhood was one night I walked to a pharmacy a few blocks away from the hotel, and two men on a motorcycle drove up on the sidewalk and tried to snatch my phone out of my hand." Lovely to read this travelogue, but my heart sank when I read this, as it's an unfortunate reality of living in London at the moment. Thankfully the author was quick enough to evade them. Be careful about using your phone on the street, day or dark, as it's extremely obvious from far away (eg for somebody sat on a moped pillion) when a potential victim is engrossed in their phone-work and not 100% attending to their surroundings. Many friends and colleagues have suffered from this scurge, and the moped oiks really have no scruples (one friend was heavily pregnant when she was mugged). Take care, but don't let that put you off enjoying a great city.
- shocks 8y agoHopefully with the met cleared to knock these moped riders off we’ll start to see a decrease in moped related crime.
- sampo 8y agohttps://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/nov/23/met-police-say-tough-tactics-have-reduced-violent-moped https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2018/nov/23/met-police-s...
- setquk 8y agoYes this is getting bad. It happened to my father a few years ago as well when he was sitting on the side of the road answering a phone call with the window open in Chiswick. Fortunately he grabbed the guy and shut the window on his arm. He got free but not until he'd got a couple of broken fingers. Police did nothing because the bike was stolen. And thus the cycle continues.
- Pimpus 8y agoI don't understand this story at all.
- KaiserPro 8y ago> Brick Size Forensics There is a far easier way to _roughly_ date buildings. o English bond: pre georgian to early victorian (1650-1840) o Flemish bond: victorian to ~1930s o Stretcher bond: anything with a cavity wall, so 1950> If the brick is glazed its ~1870-1930 see https://www.designingbuildings.co.uk/wiki/Types_of_brick_bonding https://www.designingbuildings.co.uk/wiki/Types_of_brick_bon... for what the bonds look like
- angusb 8y agothanks for the link edit!
- cannam 8y agoWhat a lovely article. About the market off Edgware Road ("Most merchants had already left, though a handful were finishing packing up. Many had just thrown their cardboard boxes, packaging, and other trash on the ground for someone else to clean up") - this is Church Street, which is a pretty good local market for everyday food and supplies. It's a daily market and I think the same merchants occupy the same spaces every day, which may be why they're a bit relaxed about clearing up. It's a slightly grubby area but I like it. At the end of Church Street is Rossmore Road: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7helGibteIM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7helGibteIM
- willyt 8y agoThey are licensed market pitches, the fee includes cleanup and the local council will come in the night and clear away all the debris and hose it down. There are many markets like this in London, Ridley road market in Hackney is infamous for having a meat stall that was caught selling bush meat from endangered species[0] and there was supposedly a case where human meat was found in the 1990s although I cant find an reference. Apparently the bin men get paid danger money for cleaning this market! [0] https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2001/may/26/jeevanvasagar https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2001/may/26/jeevanvasagar
- richjdsmith 8y agoIt's nice to see such a positive outlook on the city and a reminder to myself that there is a reason there are so many people in the world who would love to live there. I moved to the UK from Canada last fall with my wife and we've both been really struggling to find positives about it, so to see such a positive outlook was warming.
- agent008t 8y agoI too am surprised at all the positive comments about London. Perhaps it is a nicer city than many American cities, but it is not really that pleasant a city to live in. Most people are only here because of work, not because it is a great place to live in.
- arethuza 8y agoLook on the bright side, if you live in London then you're not that far from somewhere that truly is a great place to live ;-) https://www.buzzfeed.com/hilarywardle/edinburgh-is-the-best https://www.buzzfeed.com/hilarywardle/edinburgh-is-the-best
- FatDrunknStupid 8y agoWhere are you Rich? What's going on that's bad? You guys share our love for booze after all!
- yholio 8y agoThe reason why regular people live in London is that there are money to be made and they tough it out expecting better days, getting on the property ladder, retirement, the next holiday and so on. As bang for your buck, the quality of life in London is abysmal and easily surpassed by almost any European capital. It only makes sense if you are upper-middle class or employed in a very competitive field - from that point then yes, London has things to offer that few cities can.
- jlarcombe 8y agoTough it out?? London's a great place to live, especially if you're interested in music, art, theatre, "nightlife" etc. Due to the way the transport networks developed it's also quite easy to get anywhere in England from London, so it's a good, if expensive, base. It's also got loads of lovely parks. We're spoiled for choice near our house, 8 miles out from the centre.
- rwmj 8y agoAbout chimneys: Up til the 1950s, coal was used in fireplaces and there was one chimney per room, plus maybe an extra chimney for a kitchen range[1]. This abruptly changed in the 1960s with central heating, so houses would be built without a central chimney stack at all and with just a single boiler flue often through a side wall or at the side of the roof. So you can fairly reliably date houses to "before 1960s" or "after 1960s" by looking for a chimney stack, and if there is a chimney stack you can count the number of original rooms by counting the chimneys. [1] Our house has 4 rooms and 5 chimneys and that's the best explanation I have. Our house also has a boiler flue fitted much later - made from asbestos!
- StrangeOrange 8y agoIt's interesting to see an outside perspective on a place you're so familiar with. One point that was pretty funny was the idea that London is pedestrian friendly with all those little streets to walk along. I think it's more down to London being haphazardly constructed over the last ~2000 years, and even when it all burned down they refused to change the layout. Which does make it fun. You don't get the line of sight you find in other European cities, and you can twist and turn around the place to your heart's delight.
- slavoingilizov 8y agoI have lived in London for the last 5 years, and although it's much more pedestrian friendly than any city in the US, I find it less accomodating than other (admittedly smaller) cities in Europe. European cities embrace plazas and squares and usually have long, wide and straight boulevards leading to them as the main features. London doesn't have a straight road longer than a few hundred meters. The biggest pedestrian-only space is probably Trafalgar square, and it's so packed with tourists that you lose the benefit. When I moved to London I was shocked how hostile to pedestrians it was. Oxford street should not have cars on it (there's an ongoing project but it's taking forever). Same for other neighbourhood thoroughfares, like Regent St, Piccadilly, Bishopsgate, Fleet St, etc. It would be a much better city if that was the case.
- sudovancity 8y ago"Lots of WiFi names begin with underscore to be first on list. " I am absolutely doing this in my apartment building now.
- dazc 8y agoGo double underscore then?
- flurdy 8y ago"The one exception was a brief stint walking around the South Bank, which was full of bland office spaces with little ground-floor retail or neighborhoods" As indicated in her update elsewhere in her notes, the best waterfront bank in London is the South Bank, and the best way to see the South Bank is to walk along the actual waterfront bank, i.e. along the river. The northern side of the river is a mess of blocked off stretches and vehicle roads. Whilst the South Bank is a lovely continuous pedestrian stretch with plenty of food places and small parks along it. I frequently walk from Waterloo station along the bank to either Millennium Bridge, or onwards all the way to the Borough Market by London Bridge. Lovely stretch of the river. There are some other nice parts of the South Bank, and I can see on her map she walked through the Cut, but I agree apart from the actual waterfront bank the rest is mostly dire.
- Brakenshire 8y agoThat’s an easy route to take for tourists, it’s what three miles from London Bridge to the Eye, and along the way there’s Southwark Cathedral, the Golden Hind, Borough Market, Tate Modern, the Globe, the National Theatre, Heyward Gallery, Festival Hall, and the British Film Institute. I think planners have put a lot of emphasis on getting public rights of way running along the rest of the Thames, but maybe at the cost of real public spaces for sitting and enjoying yourself.
- rwmj 8y agoThe Thames Path is another beautiful way to see the Thames, albeit to the west of London rather than in London itself. https://www.nationaltrail.co.uk/thames-path https://www.nationaltrail.co.uk/thames-path Edit: Apparently TfL thinks the Thames Path continues in London: https://tfl.gov.uk/modes/walking/thames-path https://tfl.gov.uk/modes/walking/thames-path
- scatters 8y agoThe Thames Path runs from the Thames Barrier (London's flood protection barrier, a few miles downstream from the centre but still within the city proper) to Thames Head, the (traditional) source of the river in the Cotswolds. Through much of London it's actually two paths, one on either bank.
- siquick 8y ago> I enjoyed nearly all of the neighborhoods that I explored. Bloomsbury, Hyde Park, Soho, Notting Hill, and Mayfair were especially pleasant. i.e. the 5 richest areas of the city. Definitely not representative of the real London. Head to Camberwell, Manor House, Ealing and Walthamstow next time to see where "regular" people are living.
- yholio 8y agoLondon is one of the most unequal cities on the planet. You get this surreal mix of wealthy billionaires and poor migrants living hand to mouth. The upper classes protect and segregate themselves from the riff-raff through pricing. My experience was that London is not actually a community, the cultural and socioeconomic rifts are so profound that random people seldom interact, there is little small talk to be had with strangers. Tourists thoroughly enjoy the central areas but seldom realize they could never afford a home there of any decent size.
- loblollyboy 8y agoI'm pretty sure that title would go to the capital of some banana republic whose elites are probably living in London the half the time anyway.
- ido 8y agoyes, having spent a couple of months in India I doubt London has worse inequality than tier-1 Indian cities.
- switch007 8y agoLondon is a rich person's theme park to which tourists are permitted some restricted access, for an exorbitant price. ("tourist" includes people renting for the short to mid term, who simply could not afford to buy, and will move out of London to do so)
- MagnumOpus 8y agoMost unequal on the planet? That is ridiculous. Even SF with its thousands of dotcom millionaires and thousands of homeless is worse, let alone places with proper inequality like Mumbai or Lagos...
- dbdjfjrjvebd 8y agoThose 'kerb grips' aren't for traction. They are to help blind people.
- btkramer9 8y ago> Crutches and leg braces: I saw many more people with crutches and leg braces walking around than I typically see in San Francisco. I lived in London for 6 months and I continually had the same thought. It's hard to quantify but it was noticeable.
- YeGoblynQueenne 8y ago>> Crutches and leg braces: I saw many more people with crutches and leg braces walking around than I typically see in San Francisco. It was a striking difference, so I don't think it was just a fluke Yeah, I was struck by this too, and I live in a small ish town down the East coast. There are so many more people with mild to significant disabilities, that are out and about than back Home (Greece, for me). Once I made the acquaintance of a remarkable lady of 92 years, who had just come back from meeting her school friends in London by train. On her own. She advised, me, if I plan to get to 90, to take care of my knees :) Also, there's an astonishing number of fathers pushing prams and carrying their babies in slings, alone. These are the good bits. Then again, there's the nasty surprises, like the homeless people sleeping it rough everywhere, as people go by, desensitised to the sight. Land of contradictions.
- PaulRobinson 8y agoFascinating to see my home through the eyes of a visitor. I moved here in 2012 and was nervous, coming from a more relaxed UK city (Manchester). I found London more welcoming, greener, safer and quieter than I had expected. Most people's first experiences are Euston or Kings X followed quickly by the Northern or Piccadilly lines, and that can taint you: most of London is nothing like any of that.