London Travel Guide

Transport

It is better to build a route in Google Maps as it knows all the schedules, cancellations, strikes, platforms and even the availability of free bikes at rental stations.

Pay for all transport with one contactless card or phone (there is a daily and weekly limit Daily/weekly cap), it does not include river transport Thames Clippers/Uber Boat.

From the airport:

Gatwick - Thameslink trains to the City (east of the center), Gatwick Express to Victoria (west of the center), pay the same as for all transport with a contactless card/Escape

Heathrow - on the tube Elizabeth line is the most convenient in terms of price/quality, the Piccadilly line is old and stuffy.

How to move around the city:

Metro. Tap on the entrance and exit with a card/phone, even if there is no turnstile, otherwise they will charge the maximum fare.

Bus. At the bus stop, you need to wave your hand at the bus stop. Entrance through the front door, tap only at the entrance. To make the bus stop at the stop you need, press the button. If you change within an hour, then the fare is not deducted from you a second time. The bus is the cheapest form of transport. If you sit on the second floor in front on route 15, then you can have a great ride along a large number of attractions from Trafalgar Square to the Tower of London.

Thames Clippers. Very convenient transport along the river, which replaces a tourist walk if you travel from Battersea Power Station to Greenwich.

Trains and Overground. Intercity and suburban trains pass through the city (the same Thameslink), you can ride them like the metro, there is no difference.

Santander Bikes. Bicycles are very convenient to travel on, they are full-fledged participants in the movement, just like cars. You can proudly ride on the roads or bike paths, of which there are many. In Google Maps, build a route by bike, it will build a route between the nearest rental stations.

Taxi. The most inconvenient and expensive way is the city's strategy to get rid of cars in favor of public and pedestrian transport.

Food

Many establishments, as soon as they become popular, open in several locations, so it is worth searching by name - they may be nearby.

Coffee shops

I drink black strong coffee (filter / batch brew if it is fast, cheap and tasty, v60 / aeropress if it is long and there is no choice), so the list of my places may not be to everyone's taste.

Watch House Coffe

My favorite right now is Watch House Coffee, I always get Batch Brew and a divine Salt caramel tart the size of one bite. They have a very nice location in Somerset House, where it is nice to sit in the sun and drink coffee. They are also in Maltby Street Market and some others.

Urban baristas are very good and they have a cool Full Aussie breakfast, but its availability depends on the location and time of day.

Climpson & Sons has good coffee, they are located in the east in markets like Broadway Market and Spitalfields Market

Notes Coffee Roasters & Bar — a coffee place in the morning, a wine place in the evening.

Same story at Caravan Coffee.

Redemption coffee deserves special attention. It is roasted in prison and this project helps former prisoners return to normal life through work in coffee shops. The coffee is excellent, no catch.

Host Café coffee shop in an active church, the coffee is so-so, but the place is certainly interesting.

Restaurants

Dishoom — modern Indian cuisine, imitates Irani café in Bombay, it is better to go between lunches and dinners, so as not to stand in line, but the line usually brings out tea and it moves quickly. My favourite side dish here is Gunpowder Potatoes. They also have good cocktails, to see everything, ask for the Permit Room Menu, it's a reference to the prohibition, when you needed a permit to drink alcohol.

Okan - Japanese omelette and tapas with beer and sake near the London Eye, they have a ramen shop in Brixton.

Okan London Eye

Pubs

Borough Market

Any pub you like in the city will most likely have a ton of history, so stopping for a pint in a cute cinematic place is always a good idea. I don't know what level of beer drinker you are, so to avoid disappointment: cask beer does not have added carbonation, so it can seem like a rinse to the untrained eye, keg beer is the usual biting beer with added carbonation.

BUT, to eat deliciously in a pub, you need to go to a GASTROpub.

The Orange, Belgravia, is always very tasty, seasonal products, Comfort food (they have many sister pubs Cubitt House, according to the classics, they also rent out hotel rooms)

If you happen to be in Canary Wharf, you can have lunch in the gastropub The Gun, where Lord Nelson and Lady Hamilton did all sorts of indecent things in their rooms. There are good cocktails and a view of the river and the Millennium Dome, the architecture of which, of course, has some questions.

The Craft Beer Co. — the coolest pubs to try complex craft beers.

On the banks of the Thames there is a pub The Grapes, which is partly owned by Sir Ian McKellen, who everyone knows as Gandalf. His staff from the filming hangs behind the counter in the pub.

Chinatown

If you want fried meat with kimchi, Olle Korean Barbecue.

Ole Korean Barbeque

Haidilao is the best Chinese Hot Pot near Chinatown.

Bun House — steamed buns with different fillings, my favorite is the sweet one with duck yolk. They are incredibly hot and dangerous, if you bite sharply, they flow out and burn you.

Buns at Bun House

It is very funny to watch how they make sweet fish in a special machine in the bakery.

China Town Bakery

Buy a sweet souvenir and a nice place to visit Dark Sugars — chocolates with fillings for every taste, chilli pepper, apricot, brandy, gin, etc. Especially handy on Shoreditch, they make super sweet cocoa with a ton of chocolate chips.

Cocoa at Dark Sugar

Dark Sugar Greenwich

If suddenly there is no time for food, then all over the city there is Pret a Manger, it is safe and edible.

Food Markets

Borough Market

Borough Market is the most famous tourist and busy market that has existed in this place since the 12th century. It has both delicious and beautiful food. But the crowds are annoying, so it is better to come before 11 am.

Spitalfields Market has existed since the 17th century and used to sell vegetables, and then textiles. Also packed to capacity, but on weekdays it is bearable, there is food and all sorts of things.

Broadway Market is probably the largest and most delicious food market, where there are more locals than tourists, it is convenient to stop by during a walk along the canals.

Not far from it, on Sundays, the Columbia Road Flower Market is held. This is a local color: a sea of flowers, farmers from different counties shouting over each other and trying to sell everything in one day, on the edges of this madness there are cafes and shops.

Columbia Road Flower Market

Japan Centre is a Japanese deli and food court with simple sushi and sashimi, but always fresh and tasty.

Mercato Mayfair is a food court in a church building, it’s interesting to go in and see the phenomenon itself.

Maltby Street Market is located along the arches of the railway viaduct, open on Saturdays and around the corner from it, the so-called Beer Mile, where breweries and bars in the same arches of the viaduct are located one after another.

Camden passage is my favorite alley with vintage junk, Kipferl Restaurant & Patisserie, where I take a piece of Sachertorte to take away, and also drink tea with cheesemelt (a grilled sandwich with cheese and chilli jam) at the cheese shop Pistachio & Pickle Dairy.

Greenwich Market — I go there for shavoukha, and you can also grab some mulled wine or grog if you're too cold at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich.

Me and a Turkish gozleme with meat and spinach from Yummy Bites

Victoria Park Market is a Sunday market with a huge selection of goodies if you happen to be in Victoria Park.

Battersea Power Station, which is featured on the cover of Pink Floyd's Animals album, is basically just a huge pier in a former power station with its own food court and restaurants. You can stop by if you happen to be there or need to buy something to keep warm, but I wouldn't make a special trip.

Camden Market is a parade of informals mixed with a crowd of tourists, there are always a lot of people, but when you're in London for the first time, you should stop by, and then you can squeeze through the crowd to the canals and walk around freely.

Street art

The biggest concentration of street art is in the Shoreditch area, there is something in Hakney and Camden. For atmosphere, you can drop into Leake Street Arches

"Basquiat Welcomed by the Metropolitan Police" by Banksy, Barbican

Leake Street Arches

Interesting places

Barbican is a housing estate in the style of British brutalism. This is how the future was seen in the past. A multi-level city within a city with restaurants, libraries, cinemas and a greenhouse.

Barbican Estate

The cinematic ruins of St. Dunstan in the East.

A walk along the canals (for example, Regent's Canal) is always a good idea. Before the invention of the railway (the first was the Great Western Railway, which still connects London with the west of England), they were used throughout the country to transport goods. Then they fell into disrepair, but in the 1990s volunteers created the Canal & River Trust and restored them.

Canal walk

Portobello Road Market is an antique flea market with colorful houses from the film Notting Hill or Paddington, whichever you prefer.

Notting Hill

Coal Drops Yard is a nice place to turn off the canals, lots of shops and restaurants and seasonal markets, and on the canal next to the bookstore on a boat Word on the water, where musicians perform in the evenings.

Coal Drops Yard from the canals

Look at London from above

My favorite is to climb with a cup of coffee to The Garden at 120. Free viewing platform from which you can see the whole City and not too high that everything turns into microbes on the ground.

Higher in the City, also free, but with advance booking Sky Garden.

Royal Observatory in Greenwich is our morning jogging hill, and it is also a viewing platform for tourists.

Royal Observatory in Greenwich

A good view of St. Paul's Cathedral from One New Change's roof terrace. Upd: closed for reconstruction.

There is a free viewing platform at the Tate Modern.

Paid and with advance booking: glass lift at Battersea Power Station and The Shard.

Theaters

I will add to this section later if there is interest ;-)

Tours in Russian

Konstantin Pinaev leads walking tours with interesting city stories in different districts and street art. He regularly publishes a digest on what to do in the city, where I recommend visiting, maybe you'll like something.

Dmitry Bezzubtsev leads super interesting architectural walks, his channel in Telegram https://t.me/avokrug.

Museums

Natural History Museum

The main exhibition of museums is almost always free, temporary ones are paid.

It all depends on your tastes and preferences, I'm into decorative and applied arts, so it's hard for me to recommend.

My favorites are the Victoria & Albert Museum and Tate Modern (worth visiting at least because of the impressive building of the former power station, which was converted into a museum).

Infinity Mirror Room by Yayoi Kusama in Tate Modern

Day Trips

Trains run all over the country like commuter trains every 10-30-60 minutes. It is better to buy tickets through the Trainline app (though sometimes you need to print the ticket at the terminal at the station).

It is better to plan a route in Google Maps, as it knows all the schedules, cancellations and strikes.

Bath (1:20 on that very first Great Western Railway from Paddington) is an ancient city of Roman spas above thermal springs. I really love it, a pleasant city to walk, drink coffee / tea, eat local cheese, wander around and stare at a typical city built on wool money. If you want, you can look at the ruins of the Roman baths or climb a hill to see the city. On the way, you can also take a peek at the famous spire of the bizarrely shaped stones of Stonehenge in Salisbury.

Bath

Oxford (55 min from Paddington) and Cambridge (1:10 from St Pancras) are architecture and pubs, university towns, just walking and taking a punt, better not to take a punt without a special person, you will lose the stick in the river silt, you will be a despicable disgrace.

Punting in Cambridge

Warner Bros. Studio Tour Harry Potter experience for fans.

Brighton and Seven Sisters are a typical drunken coastal town, and the Seven Sisters Park is an impressive hike to watch grazing sheep, the tidal ocean, white cliffs and a lighthouse.

Seven Sisters

Canterbury and Whitstable. In the first, the cathedral and the streets of the old town, in the second everyone goes to eat oysters on the coast.

Whitstable

Canterbury Cathedral

If for two days, then of course it is Edinburgh, because Scotland is love. Love and bitter cold.