london

why no bloomsbury

Leicester Sq was half dug up for crossrail when I was there recently, made it even more of a dump. Getting harassed for comedy nights.. the pickpocketing.. Most amusing is the article suggests you finish at Moro and go there afterwards.. I think even a cabbie would deter you from that option.

Yeah it's nice around Moro! There are plenty good pubs there.

I know this has come up before but I don't think it's weird to use east as your base for seeing London.

Nothing wrong with using east as your base, but I think its good to see a variety of the rest of London e.g. Regents Park, Hampstead, Chelsea, Soho, Fitzrovia, The Thames embankment/Tate Modern/Southwark, rather than staying in the east.

I personally find that for all the cultural vibrancy, the east is aesthetically grim in a way that depresses me if I stay in it too long.

Yeah it's about variety. The other thing about East London is once you get past Shoreditch and Bethnal Green then it becomes kinda difficult to get to other places, or certainly more difficult than I would want it to be on a brief trip to the city. I'd probably still recommend people go out there in the evening certainly over Leicester Square or the fucking King's Road or wherever but it's still just one part of London.

The area around Exmouth Market/Moro is lovely and both the food and drinking all around there are fantastic but I barely even think of Clerkenwell as East London at all, although I suppose it is technically. But yeah going from there to Leicester Square would just be a bizarre choice, weird they even mentioned Leicester Square at all and not, y'know, Soho two minutes up the road.

I suppose the thing with Bloomsbury is that it's tourist central in some ways and it's lovely and peaceful to just wander round during the day but a bit of a desert, food and drink wise, by night.

Also Slocki are you coming to Todd Terje tonight? In London's brutalist Elephant & Castle you will find an edge that many believe has disappeared from much of New York altogether.

A lot of my friends stay east when they visit (not on my rec either!) and I think it's cos they get an idea of how their friends who live here live.

Like personally I don't care about actual tourist destinations, would rather good restaurants and bars.

I definitely agree there are prettier places than parts of east London, I guess I'm saying I can completely see how some people really should base themselves east, it's one type of holiday.

On the transport thing, walking surely is the way to get around east? Like for young people... maybe less attractive if you're not with someone who knows the area.

Yeah it depends on the kind of trip you want, I maybe wouldn't recommend walking everywhere round East London because a) it's kinda big and a lot of the better places are pretty spaced out and b) the potential to wander off the beaten track and end up somewhere either really boring or just intimidating if you don't know the city is pretty high? But I suppose that's the case with a lot of London. Personally I'd want to be at least a short walk from a Tube station really.

Re: the canal it's actually really pretty if you follow it further West, round Islington but also the stretch between Little Venice and Camden Lock is wonderful.

in any city get the damn bus and go explore

(Part of the reason why the "hey, check out Deptford!" article is so lolworthy is that a lot of Deptford is really quite dark and empty at night, I don't know why you'd recommend anyone going there for a night out, especially having flown several thousand miles).

i dont think its that lolworthy to write about any of these places tbh

a person can read a thousand guides and books about westminster, they're not going to just read this one piece - and if they base a trip around one short piece well thats their problem not the articles. a person is surely capably of assimilating multiple sources and then deciding what works for them

the fact that that deptford article was originally published three years ago as well, it was probably even more barren then

to go so far as to mention the bunker, honestly words fail

people get too caught up in seeing things as "100 places you must see before you die" instead of "here is a place, you might like it, you might not, take it or leave it"

they already have their copy of lonely planet anyhow

also people are kinda assuming some 'default reader' when there are multiple types of reader - what about someone who has been to london 7-8 times already? are they supposed to read about Regents Park again?

Also Slocki are you coming to Todd Terje tonight? In London's brutalist Elephant & Castle you will find an edge that many believe has disappeared from much of New York altogether.

― Homosexual Satan Wasp (Matt DC), Saturday, April 28, 2012 5:11 AM (45 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I wish, I couldn't get tix :(

you'll be fine to get in on the door if you don't go too late.

xxp, yep - London doesn't really have a default off-track destination for people wanting interesting bars and galleries like a lot of other cities have (the Navigli in Milan, etc) and Dalston / Shoreditch are as valid a choice as any. If it can draw people away from the horrors of Camden, which seems to be the place most go for this sort of stuff, that's definitely a good thing.

You could probably learn a lot as a visitor by walking from somewhere like Stamford Hill, through Stoke Newington and Dalston, to the City.

I barely even think of Clerkenwell as East London at all, although I suppose it is technically

Clerkenwell is in no sense East London - it's west of the City!

... but east of Charing X, London's technical centre

i realised the other day that i have come to think of holborn as "south london" and indeed "west london"

Holborn & Bloomsbury now "Midtown"

The property industry has been trying to make "Midtown" happen for years, it isn't working.

Just like they did with "Noho", right?

It's not even the recommendations so much as the gormlessness of the writing itself, so one pub "has been salvaged from the remains of one of the area’s most notorious dives, and now hosts indie types lounging on studded leather sofas on a stripped pine floor, sampling Belgian Trappist beers (£3.60) and baked breaded Camembert with cranberry sauce (£6.95)". But there's generally more dreadful travel writing out there than there is great stuff.

would read an all-ilx 48 hours in london guide

Tuesday
4am

ETHNIC BREAKFAST

In a railway arch in Canning Town, where Blade Runner meets My Beautiful Launderette, sample the local speciality of 'pickles and yams', a common early-morning call from this district's earthily honest street vendors. In this vibrant multicultural district of narrow cobbled streets and gaslit privet-hedged parks, the yammering of Senegalese garment workers and Ruthenian wholesale grocers mingle amid the Muezzins and the dawn chorus of jackdaws and civet cats.

So guess what?

http://travel.nytimes.com/

"London: A Special Issue"

Thrill! Maybe some of it is even correct.

If there's anyone you want doing a guide to London it's A.A Gill...

journalists from new york and london should be forbidden from writing about each others' cities

i remember one particularly awful pre-lehmann circle jerk in 'new york magazine' wherein the relatives merits of both where tediously elaborated

where

Just visited Broadway Market for a banh mi lunch, then strolled along the canal and visited the Geffrye Museum. Excellent afternoon outing, top job NYT.

I just went to Broadway too haha

~I'm everywhere~

Really like the Geffrye museum fwiw.

would read an all-ilx 48 hours in london guide

― J0rdan, Diddy (tpp), Saturday, April 28, 2012 5:50 AM (8 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the shard!!!

https://p.twimg.com/AuIEKRqCAAAlMnv.jpg

Really want to see that effect irl. Love the shard, it's so futuristic.

love the shard as well, people who whinge about how out-of-place or capitalist it is can do one

i find usually it looks better at night, though the above is an exception.

was surprised on staurday that you can see the shard (and the post office tower) from wormwood scrubs (8 miles away)

gotta ask, what were you doing at wormwood scrubs

Yeah the Shard looks a bit disappointing in grey weather (contrast to the Gherkin which looks good all the time) but those photos in bright sunlight make you realise what the architects were getting at. Looking forward to seeing it properly illuminated at night.

I don't think I like this building very much. Maybe I'll get used to its presence eventually.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Wormwood_Scrubs.JPG

was walking around the common land that HMP Wormwood Scrubs is named after. didn't really go anywhere near the prison (having missed the turn and there being only so many places you can get across the central line, the next one was too far west for the prison)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wormwood_Scrubs

(Trellick Tower's in that picture, which is looking north east ish, shard is behind the trees on the right)

I can't wait until christmas, surely they'll light it up like a huge tree.

xp

large part of the park is designated a model aircraft flying zone (someone was flying noisy jet there on saturday) and also labelled as MOD land on the maps.

i was surprised to learn that the shard is gonna be the tallest building in europe.

love the shard as well, people who whinge about how out-of-place or capitalist it is can do one

Nah, come on, it's a filthy spindle - razor ad city boy filth.

the glass is cheap or sthing which is why it looks kind of dull when it doesn't happen to precisely reflect the sun