Sitting in the train back home (finally! after 4 months) and what to do? Maybe just writing down all the thoughts spinning through my head after a busy week in London.

London by _dChris, on Flickr

A dear friend of mine had to catch a flight from LGW to ORD and wanted to spent some days in London before. Lucky I met a Londoner last year on Kecil Perhentian / Malaysia who we could crash with. We did no planning beforehand, as the end of the term in University was bloody busy, but hey – planning?!

Our spontaneous itinerary roughly ended up looking like this:

Monday:

• Late Arrival: trying to find our host at Victoria station. Huge one. Not an easy task but finally successful.

Tuesday (sunny!):

• Renting Barclays Bikes: took us a few minutes to grasp the system but were experts afterwards – helped at least 4 Tourists & Londoners to rent bikes.
• Walking westwards on the South Side of the Thames: Gabriels Wharf has nice places for short breaks along the way
• Being lazy in Green & Hyde Park: get some supplies before heading there. Finding a supermarket might not be the easiest task around London. Marks & Spencer isn’t as expensive as you might think.

Wednesday (sunny!):

• Renting Barclays Bikes
• Borough Market and some traditional fish & chips
• Fresh Avocados (4 for 1 £?! What a bargain.) in Green Park
• Sushi followed by people-watching around Leicster Square

London Bridge (Tower Bridge) : Reflection on the River Thames by Anirudh Koul, on Flickr

Thursday (rainy!):

• Tate Modern: free entry, the Miró exhibition was well worth the extra entrance-fee. Huge collection in general, impressive architecture but sometimes a bit too much in one room but nevertheless inspiring in between. Looked like a great place for families with small children.
• Tower of London: get tickets online to save a few pennies and avoid the queues (you can pick up the tickets at the group-ticket counter with you credit card)
• Tower Bridge: feels so small up on the walkway, good views anyway.
• Splashing out around Covent Garden at night: bring ID or it may get difficult. And a Credit Card surely helps as well (see further below).

Friday (sunny, mostly):

• Being just in time for a flight from London-Gatwick
• Borough Market, again: come here, especially busy with extra stands on Fridays – great but slightly overpriced food. There is an Ale-shop which sells German beer, amongst some strange other brews.
• Walking around Old Street: Probably been to the most hipster place around – Look Mum, No Hands. The sign on the sidewalk read “Cold Drinks, Hot Drinks, Coffee & Bike repairs”. Vintage bikes and fresh tomatoes in the front window, oh yes.
• Drinks at a Pub

Saturday (sunny but rather cool):

• Walking around Brick Lane: Been to Berlin Prenzlberg and found the look of people around there interesting? Forget about them, come here. Those hipsters in Berlin would hide in shame of what is cool around here. Seriously, the commonly known measure of hipsterness for an area, hipster-per-squaremeter or h/s in short, is just so damn high here.
• Marocanian lunch: guess this is only on Saturdays but you can’t miss the huge factory building with the chimney on Brick Lane. Inside are ~10 stands with surprisingly good Asian and European snacks. The burmese shop didn’t sell original fare though.
• Shopping: this is the area for vintage & 2nd Hand stuff, if you’re into this. Found a nice shop for simple shoes which was rather my thing.
• Indian dinner: best Indian food I had in ages, if you happen to live nearby or want some take-away, consider them: New Dewaniam

Sunday:

• Rushing to London-Luton: catching the flight back home. If you have the option, choose Gatwick over Luton – far easier and faster to get there.

I felt in need of some real holidays after these busy days in the end of our term in July. Some days in a big city aren’t really holidays but I enjoyed it really much.

We were lucky to be hosted by a friend which quite frankly is the best option to visit any place. You instantly feel connected and at home, get views normal tourists would never have and finally have someone to ask about the one or the other strange british thing.

London is expensive, but not as crazy expensive as it was several years ago. People use their credit cards for just about everything which felt a bit weird at first but got really convenient in the end. Now curious about my next bill… DIRTYMARTINI - 32.00 GBP – what the…? Ah, that night.

Public transportation is great.

We borrowed Oyster Cards and topped them up every now and then. Our host told us the system automatically charges the cheapest available option – if e.g. you travel quite a lot on one particular day you may be charged the price for a day-ticket if this is cheaper than single fares. The tube is one of the probably best known features of London and it worked well. The air-condition isn’t as good as in the Skytrain / Bangkok (the best!) and most of the lines don’t run at night but other than that, really good service.

Empty Barclays Cycles by BuhSnarf, on Flickr

Another thing our host made us aware of are the Barclays Bikes / iPhone-App (didn’t use it and seems to require data connection but looks handy, as finding the nearest stations was a bit tricky at times…). Rather new, hundreds of bike-stations were introduced by the Mayor of London with support by Barclay all around town. The charge is 1 £ / 24 hours use plus usage-fees. The first 30 minutes are free, so if you can get to your destination in 30 minutes and return the bike in time (we made it!) you can get around London for 1 £ for 24 hours – good deal, I’d say. Subscriptions with special keys are also available. The system works with credit cards. The user-interface of the stations is a bit counter-intuitive and could be vastly improved but the good prices and surprisingly many dedicated bicycle-lanes make this a healthy alternative to using public transportation.

Oh, we didn’t notice any of the riots by the way.

I can imagine living in London for some time in the future. Fascinating city with huge diversity in culture (food, languages, religion, habits, that is), lovely parks and busy night-life all week.

A shame I managed to break my camera the first day and the flash card of the other camera might have gotten lost somewhere along the way from London to Germany. Well, there is a backup somewhere… So thanks to the three photographers of used Creative-Commons imagery from Flickr!

Good times, maybe you can get some inspiration or tips for your Trip to London. If I missed anything you enjoyed in London, let me know!