Mostly staying in central London. Can I get some suggestions on things to do aside from the typical touristy crap? (last time I visited a few years back and went to the British Museum, Hyde Park, Churchill's bunker...those were all cool in their own way).
I've always wanted to visit Ireland (Galway, Cork, Cliffs of Moher) so I'll probably do that for a couple days while I'm there. Any recommendations here would be appreciated, too.
Open to a lot of different things including landmarks, events, etc. Also open to bars and clubs, but again I'm traveling solo so that may not be the best. Any anons here live in London, how has it been for the past few years?
>Mostly staying in central London
>things to do aside from the typical touristy crap
well save yourself a whole lot of money and stay literally anywhere else then
was thinking central LDN just for convenience sake of getting to most places quicker. I saw some decent hotels in Westminster and Chelsea, but where would you recommend? Canary Wharf, East LDN?
Central London? Are you moronic?
ANON! I GREW UP IN THE UK, LET ME HELP YOU.
First advice: pack light. Maybe one backpacking bag and two / three outfits, one pair of shoes.
Now travel advice:
okay first of all, spend one or two days max in London. See the tourist traps, scenery, whatever in the CITY OF LONDON meaning the central area with all the rich people. London itself is a shithole outside the tourist areas, not as bad as all the online rightoids say it is, but its not great either.
Now, you've seen what's worthwhile. Get out of London. There are two ways to see all that the UK has to offer, and its budget dependent:
1 - If you have money, travel by rail. The LNER exists and will show you all the awesome old cities up the east of the UK. From Kings cross visit these:
Leeds: mostly a student city so you can go to pubs and whatnot if you're young, some of the students might get a kick out of seeing an American. There is some Kino Georgian architecture in the city Centre. This is a large city, spend a day or two and get a feel for your surroundings. River walk is pretty cool here, old england type vibe.
York: optional, not better than any of the other cities on this list but has a train museum if you care about British rail history
Durham: Old, huge, large cathedral. Has some areas which are pretty much exactly what an amerifat might expect england to look like from movies. also pretty nice, try stay a night here too, as its also a student town. The old stone bridge is kino.
Newcastle: Staying a night is optional, has some kino architecture and the train station used to be absolute architecture heaven before they renovated it, but it still has some nice parts to it. Huge statue to queen Victoria in front of the cathedral, smells like piss in some places (what can you expect its newcastle). Grey street and the one next to it (forgot the name) have cool architecture too.
Edinburgh: must stay two or three nights here
(1/2)
(2/2)
Edinburgh: must stay two or three nights here, rent a bike. Densest stone architecture in the UK, poke around and visit the castle, cathedrals, etc. the Japanese embassy was cool, but obviously don't expect to be let in without having official business.
Glascow: end your northern tour here. Honestly its pretty disappointing of a city, but worth visiting regardless. Like Edinburgh but less. You could also just stop at Edinburgh and go back.
Lake district: on your way back south, stop at Newcastle, rent a car, drive to the lake district, Alnwick, etc. plan a few days of driving and exploring. Its worth visiting and is often missed by tourists.
2 - use busses. This option will be less verbose, because I recommend the same as the train trip, but it will be cheaper to use busses, for the trade off of travel taking hours more and you having less flexibility, for each and every city on the list. this is definitely not for the time-sensitive traveler.
Why not west England? There is some cool stuff here, but less, organize a second trip later to wales, and then explore west England, its bottom of the list in my opinion.
Honorable mentions: Bath, Trent, Skipton, Middlesbrough, Darlington. Darlington has a very cool rail station, don't remember anything else about it.
again, picrel is glascow. I reccomend you see it, but you might be burnt out on british stuff by the end of your trip.
I really enjoyed County Donegal in Ireland, rugged scenery, stunning beaches (I'm from Australia and the beaches I saw in the north of Ireland blew anything I've seen back home out of the water), quaint towns with nice pubs and friendly locals.Mind you, the craic is allegedly better in places like Cork and Galway and probably have similar scenery.
>Middlesbrough
Why? Unless you really like slumming in grim post-industrial towns
>claims to be a knowledgeable source on Britain and misspells "Glasgow" twice
piss off
(not op) I tried looking for a hotel in Durham recently and the cheapest available was £110/n, I think someone's spare bedroom on Airbnb was slightly cheaper but yeah I'll hard pass on that. How can it be that a train ticket + a couple of nights in the norf east (where they don't even have jobs) is more expensive than a flight and fricking off to somewhere in the med for a week.
Also if you want to go straight from the south to Edinburgh (not a bad idea) check the flights, it's half the fricking price for me to fly from Luton airport (I'm on the rail line) than to get a train up
I used to live in the North so durham was a day trip, didnt know it was that expensive wow. Maybe its worthwhile to stay in a hostel in newcastle and travel by bus to durham (about an hour and stagecoach does daily service like once every 1hr 30 minutes).
Durham is completely dead and empty this time of year as the students are gonr.
(op). thank you for the detail response. I've visited oxford before by train, and that was pretty cool. Is there anything you'd recommend within London itself? tbh last time i was here a few years back it got pretty old. felt like any other major metropolitan city
London is basically just a metropolitan city. I recommend getting out of London. I'm serious. I don't know what it is with Americans and their obsession with London, but its fairly limited in its attractions and things to do without spending hundreds to thousands of pounds. I flew an immersive airbus a380 simulator near the O2 arena once and that was the most memorable thing I have ever done in London to date, and that's literally something you can do in any city with a rentable simulator.
For me, the city presents more opportunities to find interesting events and meet people. With that said, if any anons in London want to meet for coffee or drinks, let me know.
Guarantee you will meet more unique varied and interesting people exploring leeds, edinburgh, newcastle, and glascow than you ever will perusing London. People don't really travel within the UK outside of going to uni, its up to you to travel around and meet them. Stop kneecapping yourself from the get go by refusing to leave London.
that makes sense, and I'm not refusing to leave london. I'm planning to visit Ireland as well, so maybe I'll spend a night in Edinburgh as well.
once I'm there, is there anything you'd recommend aside from meeting people in bars or pubs?
in Edinburgh? The castle, and walking the castle hill, both up the cobblestone market streets, and up the grass paths on the other side.
Got it, thank you. And is it better to fly or take the train? From my research, it's 5 hrs each way from London. this might sound moronic but I might fly to ireland for a night, come back the next day, then go to edinburgh, even though they're in the same relative direction
If you aren't planning on seeing eastern England, and just want Edinburgh, its cheaper to fly IIRC. The only advantage to the train is high volume travel, such as multiple cities in a short period of time or work commuting.
>its fairly limited in its attractions and things to do without spending hundreds to thousands of pounds.
london has some of the best museums and galleries in the world and entry to all the permanent collections is free
if you can't find something to do in the v&a, natural history museum, science museum, two tates, national gallery etc etc etc for a few days then i kind of feel sorry for you
also there is plenty of other stuff that is cheap or free going on all the time. spend a bit of time on the time out website or similar and find them.
This guy gave a lot of good advice, OP if you make it out to the west of England make sure you go to Liverpool. It has an unfair reputation in England but it's one of the better major cities in the UK. History, nightlife and great nature reserves close by with good public transport
Thanks for this anon. Not OP, but I'll be in England for 3 weeks starting next week. 3 days in London, but most of the trip (~2 weeks) will be renting a car in Southampton and making my way up to Inverness, and then ending in Edinburgh. Planning to spend some hopefully quality time in the countryside with emphases on the Costswolds and the Lake District before hitting Scotland.
Any hugely recommended things? Mainly just looking forward to some idyllic scenery, decent pubs, and lots of Scotch, but curious if you or anyone has particular suggestions.
also the railways are constantly striking these days so there's a good chance your plans will get completely fricked if you don't look ahead. you said last minute so idk how last minute but currently there's lots of cancellations up until 12th august and they'll probably announce more in the next few days
welcome to hell
If you’re a female come to Glasgow
is it true english food is universally terrible?
All the chains are pretty terrible (except maybe toby carveries), find a good independent and you'll get good food.
No not really. A lot of food that are staples in western diets come from English inventions. Past that, I really miss roast dinners when I’m travelling abroad. Moreso, winter/comfort food. Beef stew with suet dumplings made by my Grandma would be my choice for a ‘last meal’. However, the UK has restaurants which serve decently authentic food from all round the world, so if you don’t like what is essentially ‘British pub food’, you can easy find decent restaurants that serve Italian, East Asian, South Asian, etc… just avoid any chain restaurants.
English cuisine (as in dishes originating in england) is great but it's hard to find good, reasonably priced food in england.
>Any anons here live in London, how has it been for the past few years?
Overcrowded, everyone's an butthole, too expensive. That said the city centre is fine for tourists, you will just find curated tourist crap there, that's what you want, no? I hate the city because the suburbs have gone to shit, rich buttholes have moved in and pushed prices up and killed all sense of community.
Imperial War Museum
Just did this today as a tourist, best part of my trip so far.
>Some suggestions on things to do?
Bring an umbrella and enjoy the rain.
Nothing else to do in this depressing indian-somalian shithole.
in london, dont bother with central
nightlife i like peckham
restaurants highbury and islington has some of the best currently that wont burn a hole in your wallet
parks go to richmond
hackney wick for bars is decent
greenwich is great as well for maritime history and some decent pubs
Portsmouth historical docks, sadly the exterior of HMS victory is being restored at the moment so it's inside a big tent but you can still tour it (free audio tour that's surprisingly kino) and there's a Victorian ironclad, the Mary Rose museum, submarine museum and a bunch of other stuff.
See a west end show
Have afternoon tea at a luxury hotel.
Agreed to tea in a luxury hotel. Just a cool experience and you might spot someone famous. Last year I had tea at the Wolsley and I saw this bald guy get up a few booths away and did a double-take - it was fricking Bezos. I don't celeb worship or anything but it was pretty crazy to be in the same room with a guy with that much fricking wealth. Meanwhile, you could tell the locals either didn't give a frick, or maybe it was just Brit politeness.
Kinda some some SighSee would have a color coded map of boroughs to go to and to avoid. I'm traveling to London myself in the next few months myself and from this thread I'm going to allocate my time in London to Edinburgh. London was for Museums and buying British brands off Piccadilly Circus Anymore recommendations for Edinburgh though, was thinking of the Macallan Distillery but I feel like I couldn't be bothered to be on a train for 6hours roundtrip.
My thread about my concerns with pickpockets in London. Is London really Paris tier overrun with coloureds or are they concentrated to certain Boroughs?
>Is London really Paris tier overrun with coloureds or are they concentrated to certain Boroughs?
Yes, London is extremely brown/foreign in all parts of it. Not just because of the people who live there but also because it's full of tourists from all over the place.
That said, if you wanted to go there for museums and shopping there's no better place for those in the UK. It's such a giant place that there's practically endless things you can find to entertain yourself; great restaurants, history, nightlife is unmatched elsewhere in England. Personally I think that pickpocketing is overstated in London. It's not always a safe place but the same as any other big metro you should be alright if you aren't stupid. Paris and American cities I visited seemed way worse for petty crime and that's without mentioning touristy places I've been in Greece, Italy, Spain Etc.
Aside from the cobblestones and castles, what else is there to do in Edinburgh, or should I just wing it because there's alot of stuff to do there? What's something I should buy there to bring back home, besides a bottle of Macallan?
>pickpockets
the majority of pickpocketing in london is done on the tube
the majority of that is done by romanians
just stay away from anyone that looks eastern european on the tube
the rest of the time just don't be an idiot (e.g. obvious wallet in back pocket etc)
and you will most probably be ok
I also booked a last minute trip and since I didn't have any specific places in mind I just booked London and Oxford. I want to have a look at the British Museum and Westminster but that's about it.
What are some cool things you can do in these cities aside from tourist attractions? Any fun activities?