London info

jorodo

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My characters want to go to London. I've never been. Would anyone mind sharing some experience of London with me?

Things that can bring a little life to the writing. Smells, & interesting things I wouldn't find out watching on tv.

I had a friend who went to school there, but he's not very good with those small details I need. I also got "The streets are more narrow than I expected" from someone.

Also if there is anything my characters could do while there ... maybe slightly dangerous or exciting. I'd love to know about it.
 
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Bolero

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Dangerous - um - cross the road without using a pedestrian crossing. :)
Really dangerous - do that on the four lane super roundabout at Marble Arch or the one at Hyde Park Corner.

While since I've been there but:

1. Its always awake - or someone is. While the traffic eases at night, there is still traffic. There are 24/7 places open to eat. There are people out and about. (Tubes stop near midnight, buses change to night buses but otherwise...)
2. It is dirty. Might be better now but there is fumes from traffic, grubbiness on the pavement, depending on the wind direction some of the long central roads can be wind tunnels and funnel the wind and on a dry day blow dust in your face. At the end of the day your clothes will have picked up dirt.
3. Hare Krishna - that can surprise people. A sudden mob of Hare Krishna twirling by in their orange robes. Particularly startling if you step out of a shop or a tube station into them.
4. Buskers on the tube. Some are at tube entrances, some are actually in the tube carriages. The ones in the tube carriages are rarer - but tend to be guitarist/singers and very fast to shove their collecting hat in your face and can be quite aggressive. Some of the ones in tube stations or underpasses can be music students - so you have a violinist playing a Vivaldi solo. (This might not happen any more with all the CCTV - over to someone else on that.)
5. Do not talk to anyone. If someone is prepared to chat with you at a bus stop they are either from out of town or a nutter.
6. Walking speed. Any street with crowds, people who live in town have usually got their "crowd head" on and can wriggle through a crowd really quickly. Tourist bumble around, often in groups, sometimes bedecked with cameras.
7. If you are struggling with your bag, if someone helps you up a flight of stairs, it is far more likely to be someone scruffy. Most people in a suit with a briefcase tend to be moving fast and will jump over your bag if you've dropped it.
8. You can feel a breeze on a tube station just before the train comes out of the tunnel. The breeze goes up the stairs/connecting tunnel leading to the platform. Lets you know the train is coming so you can run for it.
9. London is enormous. What I've said is mostly for the centre - Earls Court across to the City. The outer areas vary - they are engulfed towns and villages - they have their own high streets and shopping centres. What they are like varies a lot.
10. Good areas and no-go areas can be quite close to each other and you need to be careful. What is what changes.
 
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Becca_H

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That's a huge question because London's a huge city. Why are they going there? If they're going to Central London as tourists for two days, the answer would be different to them going to visit friends in Pratt's Bottom for a couple of weeks.
 

mirandashell

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Oh yeah, walking speed. Keep up or die.


Well... not literally. But like in most big cities, walking has a rhythm to it and not keeping to that rhythm will get you bumped and tutted at.

Also remember that the centre of London is old. Very old. The buildings may be new but the layout in some areas goes back centuries. It's one of the reasons the roads are narrow. London was never planned. It just grew.
 

waylander

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Buskers - have to have a licence and book a pitch depending on which borough they are in.
Diversity of food - we have the cuisine of just about every culture available in London depend on on which district you go to.
Everyone uses the Tube to get around, and everyone has an Oyster card to pay for their journeys.
Tourists - everywhere around the centre of the city all the time.
Something exciting to do while they are there - go to a football match. Would be difficult to get tickets to the top Premier League games but there are enough smaller clubs where you can just turn up on the day and buy a ticket and the games can be just as entertaining. Or go and see a band - thousands of live music venues in London.
 
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AVS

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1. Many streets in the City are lined with actual gold. But if you attempt to mine it you will be shot by the SAS.
2. Cats are known to steal wallets in the areas of Islington, Camden, Lambeth, Kensington and Fulham. Ironically in Catford they are known philanthropists, hence the name.
3. Always talk to people on tube trains. Everyone is very friendly. One out of every seven marriages started on a tube train.
4. On the third Tuesday of every month minor royals distribute cheese in Mayfair and Trafalgar Square. The tradition started with Henry IX.
5. Tourists need to buy a "get anywhere" visa, if not and they are challenged by a Beefeater they will be imprisoned on the Falkland Islands.
6. The Bank of England transports barrow loads of money to Parliament every day to service the national debt.
7. There is no number 7 used in London, it was banned by Charles VII.
8. The Bishop dance for rain on July 31 on Westminster Bridge is always fun.
9. Everybody in London knows everybody else.
10. The Queen is sometimes seen plate spinning in Greek restaurants near Green Park.

A1. Genuinely useful link... 3 posts down.
 
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AVS

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Miranda,

As you know Tad Grumpy was executed at Tyburn in 1777 for stealing the wodgets off a blingo bargeman's lark hopper.

11. Cockney rhyming slang is compulsory. (See Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins for the best example of a Cockney accent).
 

mirandashell

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Miranda,

As you know Tad Grumpy was executed at Tyburn in 1777 for stealing the wodgets off a blingo bargeman's lark hopper.

11. Cockney rhyming slang is compulsory. (See Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins for the best example of a Cockney accent).

:ROFL:
 

jorodo

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Thanks so much guys! This is a lot of help already.

As to where they are going, they are visiting the hero's relatives, I'm thinking on the outskirts of London. Heroine has never been to London so they are going to do the usual tourist stuff as well.
 

Siri Kirpal

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Take post #6 with several grains of salt.

As tourists, we did have several neat conversations with complete strangers. But then, I'm a woman wearing a turban, and do draw comments.

Which brings me too: Lots of people of lots of nationalities. There are bearded Sikhs working at Heathrow. You want to find x cuisine? It's there.

London is very dirty, but the Victorian "fog" is gone.

St. Bartholomew's is the crypt of a Medieval church. If you need a spooky, ancient locale in the center of the city, this is the one I'd pick.

Vegetarian food is easy to get.

Hope that helps. Note: I was there in 1997, but most of the above should still apply.

Blessings,

Siri Kirpal
 

Los Pollos Hermanos

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An ol' friend from university works for the Met Police in central London - he swears that when you blow your nose after a day out and about in the city the contents of your hanky are streaked with black! You did ask for authenticity... ;)

One thing which p!sses me off about walking round London is that in the UK we tend to walk on the left, in the same way we drive on the left. In London the foreign tourists get underfoot by trying to walk on the right. If I go to Europe or the US I walk on the right, which I have to concentrate on a lot more than when driving on the right - weird eh? It's really not difficult, and I resent foreigners telling me I'm on the wrong side (I semi-regret to say I've been quite sarky in my response on a couple of occasions). I generally avoid the place these days, it makes me grumpier than usual.

Dangerous? Driving in Croydon! My dad used to work there, so he made me learn to drive there with his logic being that if I could survive driving in Croydon I could survive driving anywhere. Saying that, Houston (as in TX) nearly broke me last summer!!!

@ Becca_H: Pratt's Bottom - haha! We used to live near Sevenoaks, and every time we drove to Orpington/Bromley we'd get a chuckle from that place (and there was a teacher at my primary school called Mrs Pratt, so you can imagine the comments). A schoolfriend used to live in Badgers Mount, which also led to some mind-boggling images. :D
 
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ScienceFictionMommy

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Public toilets cost 20 pence to use (might have gone up, I haven't been there since 2003.) 20p to pee. (Parents of young children must stock up on that coin regularly.) And considering that you pay for them, they're disgustingly gross and dirty.

The city sprawls. Americans are mostly used to grid-pattern cities, but London doesn't come anywhere close. A street may bend only a tiny 5 or 10 degrees, but that's an excuse to change the street's name (a vestige of the patchwork way in which it grew.)

The wackiest thing I remember involved street lights and walk signals. Here in the states, the light is green and the walk signal says "walk" (or has the white walking man.) Then the orange "don't walk" starts flashing, and once it goes to solid "don't walk," the light turns yellow, then red, and then the opposing lanes start the same process. In London, the light is green and the sign says "walk." But then the light turns yellow and red while it still says "walk." When the walk signal finally turns to a flashing "don't walk," the opposing traffic gets a flashing yellow light themselves (yellow before their green.) When the flashing turns to solid "don't walk," the flashing yellow disappears and the opposing light turns green. (I hope that sort of made sense.)

When I finally asked someone about it, they told me that when you're stopped at a red, the light will then start flashing yellow, and it means "if there are no pedestrians in the street, you can go, but if there are pedestrians still, you yield." (The rule of "finish crossing if you're in the street but don't start crossing" still applies to the pedestrians.)

I found this interesting because I'd been working in downtown Denver at the time I traveled to London, and I was in the habit of "if the walk signal starts flashing right before I reach the intersection, I start jogging so I can still cross the street before the light changes." If I'd done that in London, I could've gotten plowed into by a driver who saw the intersection was empty and started driving just as I ran into the road. That's dangerous, right?

Oh, and I think "walk" flashed, rather than "don't walk," like it does here.
 

waylander

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A lot of the cars are much smaller than US cars.
 

Bolero

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In terms of tourist stuff, that is a bit what sort of things do your characters like?

You could take the tube to Westminster, come out at Westminster Bridge and see up the river from the bridge. You'd be right at the Houses of Parliament and near to Westminster Abbey. London Eye is nearby too. (Not been on it, been told to start with it is interesting seeing the view, then it gets boring because it moves so slowly.)
From Westminster Abbey you could go into St James Park and along to Buckingham Palace.
Or walk up Whitehall to Trafalgar Square where there is the National Gallery and the National Portrait Gallery. That also links through to St James Park.
A little further north is Leicester Square, Soho, Regent's Street and Oxford Street.

If you went to South Kensington then you are a couple of minutes walk from The Victoria and Albert Museum, the Natural History Museum, the Geology Museum and the Science Museum and just over a bit is the Royal Albert Hall.
From there you can see the Albert Memorial and walk into Kensington Gardens and see Kensington Palace.

Or in short, quite a bit of tourist stuff comes in clusters. After a day trawling round some of that lot and the pavements in between your feet will hurt, and your legs may hurt all the way up to your knees.

Most of them will come with restaurants - usually in the basement in galleries and museums - or you can eat a picnic in the park or Trafalgar Square.
St James Park has hungry ducks after your lunch, Trafalgar Square does pigeons and Kensington Gardens has squirrels. Do also get pigeons everywhere really and small birds, but that is what stood out for me on distinctive wild life.

I second the black snot thing btw.
 

Los Pollos Hermanos

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@ Albedo - Yeah, I've never understood why you have to stand to the right on the tube escalators but, like anything, follow the rules and it works.

What really hacks me off on the tube is when you and many others are trying to get out of a busy carriage, and loads of people are frantically trying to get into the carriage BEFORE you've got out. Durrrrr... it's not really nuclear physics, is it?

@ ScienceFictionMommy - Downtown Denver is infinitely more civilised to walk around than London is, and one hell of a lot nicer all round. I couldn't believe how clean it was on my first visit, and how much friendlier the people are. I was also gobsmacked that for $4 (~£2.50) you could make a thirty mile return bus journey (Golden-Denver return) and now the new light rail extension isn't that much pricier. Public transport in the UK is extortionate, unreliable and dirty.

A good chunk of the US-based part of my story is set in and around Denver, so I've had to make two research visits. I don't think I've got enough info and my memory is patchy, so I might have to go back next year - haha! That'll be a chore... ;)

As for the road crossing lights palaver, if it's heaving with pedestrians near a crossing (wherever it may be) and the light starts flashing amber, I usually give it a couple of seconds before setting off as you invariably get someone legging it across.

Also, there's none of this "yield to pedestrians" on non-traffic light crossings (what we call a pelican crossing) like you get in many parts of the US (and in Switzerland, I noticed). Try walking out onto a pelican crossing in the UK with the expectation cars will stop and you'll be trying NHS cuisine in no time! I have to say that as both a driver and a pedestrian I HATE the "yield to pedestrians" thing and I've seen a couple of near misses where drivers weren't paying full attention.

Other London-ish stuff:

Lots of decent museums. I haven't been for ages, as last time I visited most of them was on school trips back in the day.

Lots of theatres, if you're into that kind of thing. I've only been for school trips, and snoozed through all the Shakespeare!

A good location to get out and about in SE England. Lots of castles further south - Bodiam is my favourite. Good train links to lots of places, assuming they aren't delayed/cancelled (don't get me started about the trauma of my last train journey!) and you don't need to sell a kidney to cover the cost of your ticket.

I'll keep thinking...
 

Bolero

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What really hacks me off on the tube is when you and many others are trying to get out of a busy carriage, and loads of people are frantically trying to get into the carriage BEFORE you've got out. Durrrrr... it's not really nuclear physics, is it?

..

Yes. Best to keep a close eye on stops and get up and move to near the doors before your stop. Once people are shoving to get on they are really annoyed if you are still trying to get off. Having a large, menacing bag and holding it in front of you helps.
Looking weird helps too. People flinch back.
When the tube train stops and the doors rumble open (sliding doors) there is an automated voice saying "mind the gap....mind the gap" very distinctive and mechanical sounding.
When waiting for a train I do not like to stand at the front of the crowd - scared of getting knocked onto the live rail. I tend to stand with my back to the wall and move forward once the train has past me and is still moving. Regulars know roughly where the door will be when the train stops and there is a cluster.

The underground section of the tube is always quite hot.
Do note that not all the tube is underground. If your characters take a journey somewhere, then you might even have a view from the carriage.

So for example Northern Line from Wimbledon up to the centre is underground. District Line from Wimbledon (different station about half a mile or so from the Northern Line one) is above ground all the way up to Earls Court. Most of it is on an embankment and gives you a view.
Some of the "above ground" stuff is really in a cutting - aka a tunnel without a roof - but at least you have some daylight.

It is sadly quite common for people to commit suicide or fall in front of a tube train. Don't know how many per year. Oxford Circus seemed to be one of the more popular places to do that. Halts a lot of trains when it happens.

In terms of tourist things you also have the Covent Garden area - street performers, cafes and shops.
Then there is Tower of London and Tower Bridge. St Paul's Cathedral.
You can take a boat down the Thames either up river to Hampton Court, or down river to Greenwich. Certainly used to leave from the jetty at Westminster. The upriver journey is alright - not a lot of historic things to see. Down river takes you past some of the historic water fronts and the startling modern developments on the Isle of Dogs.
Greenwich is lovely. Royal Naval College at Greenwich, the maritime museum, the Queen's House, the Royal Observatory and the Greenwich meridian. Nice park there too.

Public toilets - vary. Some are rows of stalls in a building. Some have a concierge there (particularly main line stations) and will be quite nice. There will be a saucer for leaving tips for her as well as the entrance gates which you have to pay to get through. The ones in parks tend to be part buried into the ground. There are gaps at the bottoms of the doors. The rooms are not heated. You get a cold draught up your nethers in winter. If you have a choice, check for loo roll before you settle in.
There are/were(?) individual cubicle toilets as little oval buildings on the pavement. Pay your money, door slides open, step in from the pavement, door slides shut, get on with it. Don't stay too long, the door opens again eventually. They are automatically washed down between uses.

Public drinking fountains are rare.

Not sure if litter bins have made a come back or not. They were all removed due to the IRA leaving bombs in them. In some cities bins made a come back, but now we have new terror threats so don't know if they've gone again.
 
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PeteMC

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Trying to think of a few more random things that haven't been mentioned already:


You're supposed to stand still on the right of tube escalators and let people in a hurry run up the left, which is the other way round to the side of the road we use. I have no idea why, but everyone takes this VERY seriously.

The British Museum is still free to get into (probably the only thing in London that is).

I'd be stunned to actually hear any cockney rhyming slang, anywhere.

The "blow your nose and it comes out black" thing is actually true, especially if you've been on the tube a lot that day.

There are very few tube stations south of the river.

People from North London regard "Saarf of the River" as virtually a foreign country. They're partly right.

There really are black cabs and red busses everywhere in central London, not so much as you go further out.

You will sometimes see cops with guns, which is unusual in England.

In the centre, everything is always packed and everyone is always in a tearing hurry, except tourists.

Nothing is regarded as weird, except talking to strangers. A steampunk riding a unicycle down Camden High Street would barely draw a glance, but if you point him out to a stranger they’ll think you’re some sort of nut.

Traffic will respect zebra crossings and actually stop for you. God help if you if you try and cross the road at random though.

By English standards, there are a lot of non-white people. This often surprises visitors from other parts of England.

The Thames is a "working" river has a lot more boats and barges on it than people expect.

There is a (I think WW2) warship moored on the South Bank, called HMS Belfast. It's a floating museum.

Big London skyscrapers get given stupid names - the Gherkin, the Shard, the Walkie-Talkie, etc. Most of them are not big by US standards.

House prices are utterly insane.

There are a lot of VERY rich people in London. You can stand on Hyde Park Corner and spot Rolls Royces, Ferraris, etc in the traffic.

You have to pay a "congestion charge" tax/fine of (I think, it may have gone up) £5 a day to drive into central London. Only crazy people would WANT to drive in central London, IMO.

If you spot a stretch limo, it will contain a hen party not a rich person (limos are considered naff in England).

There are no litter bins in railway stations, at best there might be a see-through plastic bag in a hoop in open-air tube stations.

Most of the tube network is actually above ground, although the deep tunnels are VERY deep in places. This freaks some people out.

There is an old foot tunnel at Woolwich where you can actually walk under the Thames from one side to the other (pretty sure it's still open to the public).

Camden Town is the "alternative" district.

The bad parts of London are VERY bad - crumbling concrete high-rise towerblocks, street gangs, drugs, shootings, massive unemployment.

"Postcode wars" in parts of South London are a real thing (sadly).

The historically "bad parts" like the East End and Islington are now hip, trendy, and expensive.
 
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Myrealana

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I found London to be clean, but damp. My hair never felt properly dry. The sky always looked a little hazy, but it wasn't as rainy as I expected. When it did rain, boy did it rain! There wasn't a significant amount of smog, certainly no brown cloud like we get in Denver. Everything smelled of wet. Not mildew, and not friesh rain, but a general wet.

It's loud. Especially downtown. People everywhere. Last time I was there was a Saturday, and there was a crush of people on every street downtown, all taking pictures of the Eye, Parlaiment and Big Ben and everything else. If I lived there, I would avoid Westminster Bridge like the plague.

The streets were WAY narrow. Scary, even, for someone who's used to the western US, where we've got space to spare. I wouldn't have wanted to try driving in the city.

Like any big city, the people were absorbed in their own world for the most part, but when I did have to ask someone for help or directions, most people were quite friendly. My first day, after traveling for 36 hours and sleeping for about 6, I got lost on the tube. I was standing there looking bewildered and a complete stranger came up helped me find my way. Once I got my head on straight, though, the tube was amazingly easy to use.

I was surprised how late it stayed light in the summer. Given the mild climate, I didn't ever consider how far north London is until I was there. It's at 51 degrees, which is farther north than Winnipeg or Calgary. I've only been in the spring and summer, so I don't have any first hand experience with London winters.

The pay toilets really threw me. And even those were not always available. I simply couldn't find a public toilet in a lot of places.

The train stations were pretty overwhelming at first. Not the tube stations, which are fairly easy to follow, but my first day there, I had to take a train to Watford, and Euston station nearly blew my circuits.

I loved all the little shops. I'm used to heading to the store once a week or less often, stocking up on big bags of groceries. The shops in London (at least the ones I saw) are not setup for that. They have small carts, and small aisles. They're designed for people who are shopping one day at a time.

One thing people in London love to gab to Americans about is the portion sizes. They are all convinced that they eat sensible amounts of food and Amercians eat enormous amounts of pasta and chips. In the fish and chips place across the road from our flat, I watched the man bread and fry a chunk of fish the size of my head, drop a portion of chips that had to be at least two full potatoes worth, and then listened to him go on about the portion sizes in America. That one order of fish and chips was at least three times the quantity I would have gotten ordering the same thing in the US, but whatever.

@ ScienceFictionMommy - Downtown Denver is infinitely more civilised to walk around than London is, and one hell of a lot nicer all round. I couldn't believe how clean it was on my first visit, and how much friendlier the people are. I was also gobsmacked that for $4 (~£2.50) you could make a thirty mile return bus journey (Golden-Denver return) and now the new light rail extension isn't that much pricier. Public transport in the UK is extortionate, unreliable and dirty.
Wow, as a Denverite, I'm the one who's gobsmacked that you could even compare our public transportation to London's.

I was floored by the amazing system in London. Hop on the tube and I could get anywhere I needed to be. Night busses that actually run all night. Cabs that know where they're going. It was amazing.

I've been experiencing the "joys" of Denver's so-called "public transportation system" through my son who hasn't yet gotten his drivers licence. To get from our house to his job downtown is two busses and a light rail, and it takes him 90 minutes to go 16 miles. Sure, it only costs him $5/day, but it takes 2 hours longer than driving the same distance, and heaven forbid he wants to stay out late. The bus stops running before 10pm.

(2 hours longer PER DAY. Do the math people. If you spend 90 minutes getting to work, you do, at some point, actually have to come home, too. Think it through.)
 
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mirandashell

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The pay toilets really threw me. And that was only in the train stations. I simply couldn't find a public toilet in a lot of places.

One tip: MacDonalds. There are so many people in those that you can just use the toilets and leave and no-one will notice.