Minibreak: London

London is for walking:

While the Tube is great for getting between far-off destination, London is best enjoyed on foot. Some of my favorite walks include: From the park at Kensington Palace down Embassy Row (at the end you can be rewarded with a coffee or a snack at Diana's Cafe); Kew Gardens is a long tube or boat ride from central London but this floral gem is worth the trip, especially for picnicking in nice weather; along the Thames by Parliment provides the best view of the governmental buildings; finally my special favorite Covent Garden with its street performers, numerous specialty shops, and general energy.

Time for a show in London:

The Royal Opera House is my pick for shows in London. Refurbished within the past few years, it offers plush red seats and a gold and ivory elegant decor. The Royal Ballet and the Opera company are both top notch. Rush tickets for popular musicals and shows can also be picked up in Covent Garden day-off if the ROH is sold-out. In the summer (July-Sept), the Royal Albert Hall hosts the BBC Proms Concerts. Hundreds of people queue outside the hall a few hours before the performance to get £4 standing room tickets.

Quick Tips:

Rainy day in London: Even if it's sunny outside when you leave your hotel, bring an umbrella or rain coat and you'll be happy. Trust me.

Eating out: When grabbing a quick lunch in a cafe, remember that it is often cheaper to take the food away than to eat-in. Pay the extra to stay if it's raining. Also many tourist spots like the British Museum have their own little cafes inside. Since you are going to pay through the nose in the nearby area anyway, you might as well eat in nice and convenient surroundings. For dinner, restaurants in the west End or Covent Garden will often have pre-theatre specials where, if you are willing to eat between 5-6:30pm, you can get a nice dinner for £5-6. In Covent Garden try Belgo or Waggamamas.

Best Way To Get Around:

Getting to London: From Gatwick Airport, 30+ minutes south of London, take the train to London's Victoria station for about £8. This puts you in walking distance of Buckingham Palace. From Heathrow Airport, you can take the subway for a few pounds or you can take the Heatrhow express, only 15 minutes to London's Paddington station, for a fat £20+.

Around London: Getting a travelcard for zone 1-2, or zone 1-4 if you plan to go to Kew Gardens, which allows you to ride the subway all day is a great way to save your feet and time. Pay the £1 or £2 to get the street map with the stops marked. Some stops (Holburn, Covent Garden & Leicester Square, for example) are all within easy walking distance of each other and you will see more of London if you walk. Other than walking, taking the red double-decker buses is a good way to see some of the city.

The K-West is a trendy, modern hotel in London. Although it claims to be in Notting Hill, it is actually a confusing 10-15 minutes walk east. The rooms are very comfortable with wide plush beds, a couch, coffee table, desk. The bathrooms are fabulous with elegant dark colored decor and are fitted with luxury items including mixer taps! The only really tacky part of an otherwise chic hotel are the weird colored lighting in the hall ways--not weirder than the LCDs embedded in the walls of the hallway that are reminescent of microsoft screen savers.

There is a spa in the basement (where many of the rooms are too!) as well as a hot tub. The breakfast is continental but offers a wide variety of cereals, fruits, and pastries. You can see all their facilities at their website (http://www.k-west.co.uk).

We enjoyed staying at the K-West using a discount deal we got off of the discount London hotels site (http://www.london-discount-hotel.com). While still more expensive than a hostel or cheap B&B, it is a great sleep.

After trying not to trip over the tourists crowding around the rosetta stone or biding our time looking at the Assyrians hunting down the last of the native lion population in the Middle East, it was finally time to enter the Agatha Christie archaeology special exhibit according to our timed tickets. While the rest of the museum is free to the public (donations requested), the special exhibits, which last only a few months, have ticket prices for 7 or 8 pounds for students and more for adults.

Although the exhibit is "temporary," this is not obvious from the entrance (nor the entire exhibit) given the high quality of the presentation. The exhibit combines artifacts with a variety of other media including, photographs, text from journal entries or news clipping, and film/video where available.

The Agatha Christie archaelogy exhibit was organized chronologically beginning with her first trip to the Middle East and ending with the death of her and her archeologist (2nd) husband. The exhibit begins with actual film advertisement for the Orient Express and some of Christie's luggage that she took with her. I hadn't realized before how long it took people to travel just 50+ years ago. I flew to Venice in 1.5 hours from London, but it took her several weeks(!) on the train to get there. Then it's another long trip to get from Venice to Cairo to other interesting places in Mesopotamia.

After that eye-opener, the story progressed with artifacts from mesopotamia, pictures, journal entries, photos, home video of her at the archaeological sites. Because of her fame already as a detective novelist, Christie was invited by the wife of the head archaeologist, a big fan, to visit the site. This is where Christie met her 2nd husband and how her archaeological journies continued. For fans of her books, they even trace the history and origins of several of her books that were written while she was there.

Where this special exhibit excelled, and I assume others do as well, was bringing to life a whole other side of a what we thought to be a well known subject. Using their excellent research abilities, and huge collections of artifacts, the curators of this exhibit took us to a different time and place making the familiar unfamiliar and the unfamiliar familiar. The exhibit took about 2 hours to go through (at least) and our only complaint was sore feet. A wheel chair would be great as the whole exhibit is quite accessible. Reservations (can be done over the web--be sure to bring the print out receipt!!!! or they won't give you the tickets--huge glitch in the system) are highly recommended. Many people avoid the exhibit for the cost, but in this case if you have the time to go, book ahead and enjoy--the special exhibits are definitely worth it.

Special note: This particular exhibit is over now, but check out the website to see what the current special exhibit is.

The Royal Opera House was recently renovated and is a beautiful setting for a wonderful evening. The seats are red plush and the decor inside is an elegant ivory, deep red, with gold trim. Tickets are available from the box office and even if the show is sold-out you can wait a few hours before the show for tickets that have been returned to be resold. There are also a certain number of seats held back and standing room available to students in the morning the day of the show.

The Royal Ballet company is very enjoyable to watch with the most famous ballerina by far being Darcy Bussell. During December and January, the Nutcracker is performed and during the fall and spring there is a good selection of traditional and contemporary ballets to choose from. Try not to sit in higher numbers than 10 in the upper slips or you will only be able to see half the stage. All the standing room has something to lean on so it would be better to choose this option for the ballet.

The Opera is also very good with mega stars such as Jane Eaglen being brought in. The sets are very elaborate for the traditional operas and worth paying extra for the view; however, if it says "modern staging" you won't lose anything with the cheaper seats.

There are lots of cafes and restaurants in the ROH. The intervals are only 20 minutes long though so there is only time to chug a bit of water or soda. The juice is over £2 a glass! The Amphitheatre restaurant serves very good food and you should book ahead for a table if you want to eat there before the show. They will also let you eat your dessert during the interval but 20 minutes is not long enough to fight the crowds to get to the restaurant and to enjoy your dessert. The food is also pricy with a 2-course meal at £15 and a three course at £20; however, this restaurant would be an easy way to impress your date.

Kew Gardens is a fantastically large botanical spectacular just southwest of London accessible both by the subway or riverboat from Westminster Abbey. The park makes a fantastic day or half-day trip and is perfect for picnicking in nice weather.

The park has several enormous green houses. The largest of the green houses is the two stories high Victorian Palm House. Built in the 1840s, it hosts a humid, tropical environment perfect for plants that would never be found native in England. Taking the old spiral metal staircase up to the top allows the visitor to walk the perimeter of the greenhouse to gain an aerial view which is quite enjoyable.

Outside the Palm House is a fantastic rose garden on one side, which reaches its height in the spring and summer but was still impressive to me in early September, and on the other side a massive lake. The Princess of Wales Conservatory a bit further down the lane houses a desert environment as well as another tropical environment with a beautiful collection of orchids and a mangrove swamp. The other large green house is the Temperate House. The world's largest ornamental glasshouse, it houses a collection of subtropical plants from temperate Asia, Australasia and the Pacific Islands, South Africa, and the Mediterranean.

The most enjoyable part of the park, however, is strolling through the 300 acres of gardens, woodlands, and perfectly manicured grass. You feel ages away from hussle and bussle of the city making this one of the best places to relax/unwind (as long as the weather is tolerable). Look up more information at http://www.rbgkew.org.uk/.

BBC Proms concerts are on every night of the week from July-mid Sept and feature a different concert every night. Concerts range from classical symphonies to world-premieres by new composers to late-night concerts featuring jazz or choral music. You can order tickets ahead of time for a seat or you can join those promenading for a cheap (£4 in 2002) ticket for standing room in the gallery or the arena.

The line for the arena is always longer and while most concerts start at 7pm or 7:30pm, you probably need to be in line by 3pm or 4pm to get a good seat in the gallery. There are signs marking the beginning of the queue for the arena and gallery outside the Royal Albert Hall. Those lucky enough to get in the arena stand (or sit on the floor if it's not too crowded) in front of the orchestra. There's a little lily pond in the middle with chairs around it but those not looking old or invalid will probably get stern looks if sitting there.

The gallery on the other hand is at the top of the enormous hall and wraps almost all the way around. This is my favorite area because there is plenty of room and people bring blankets and picnics up here even though there are signs asking you not to. If you get in line by 5pm before the 5:30pm after-work crowd arrives, you can usually be at the front end of the line and get a position in the gallery along the railing which gives you a good view of the entire hall during the concert. There are also toilets up in the gallery which are quite convenient.

Waiting in line for the concerts can be part of the fun if you bring an umbrella (to block too much sun or rain), a good book to read, a newspaper to sit on, and a good friend. The best concert I saw in 2002 was a perfomance of Mahler's 8th Symphony which is dubbed "symphony of a thousand" because with a huge orchestra and several hundred singers there were almost 800 people on the stage. The sound was enormous. This is the only time I wish I could have been in the arena instead of the gallery, although the concert was so incredibly popular that we got some of the last tickets for the gallery despite standing in line for over 2 hrs.

We visited the Titian Exhibit at the National Gallery. There is a special entrance to the left of the main entrance to the Gallery. There is also a charge (£6 for student for a timed-entry) per ticket to see this special exhibit in the basement of the National Gallery (no admission fee).

The Titian exhibit brings together an impressive collection of the artist's work from around the world into one place. Some of the paintings (including a set of very large murals made for a room in a rich Duke's palace) have not been seen together in 500 years. The exhibit consisted of six rooms (at least 60 paintings in total). I was most impressed by the vivid colors he was able to produce and also by the force of personality in the portaits he painted. Having read about him on the National Gallery's website before coming, I knew a bit of what to look for in the paintings and was able to impress my friends with little tidbits of knowledge (or art critic's speculation).

We spent about 1.5 hours in the exhibit. Even though there were timed tickets, the exhibit was quite crowded and it took quite a bit of time to work your way into the crowds in each room so you could see the paintings and read the explanatory cards on the wall. There were booklets of all the cards in large print available at the entrance but I left these for all the older people with poor vision. I ended up reading most of the cards to one of my friends who couldn't see them from behind the wall of people surrounding the paintings. Despite the crowds, the exhibit was quite entertaining. There is a small giftshop at the entrance/exit and a larger one upstairs where the ticket collection/sales/coat room is. There was also a 40- or 50-minute long film on Titian that was free to see but my friend saw part of it and said it was mostly just other artists giving their opinions on his work so we didn't stay to watch it.

The tickets can be purchased on-line for the exhibit at the National Gallery's website. It is helpful to bring a print-out of the email confirmation since they often ask for it even though you don't really need it. It is also possible to buy tickets at the museum but you will usually have to wait an hour or more to get in. Getting to the National Gallery is quite easy. Just take the tube to Charing Cross which is on the Bakerloo (brown) line.

Special note: This particular exhibit is over now, but check out the website to see what the current special exhibit is.