Loads here, but here goes: For sights, the good news is that all our major museums are free. So The British Museum, the Natural History Museum, the Science Museum, the V&A, Tate Modern, Tate Britain, and National Portrait Gallery. There are charges for some exhibitions, but you can always get in free for the main collections. All those museums are excellent by the way!
These are all obvious places, but they're worth it. There are lesser known delights all over London, and there's a nice book you can get called Secret London that lists lots of them. But it's hard for me to say without knowing a little more about what your daughter really likes Seeing shows is very easy. Most of the West End is worried about nobody going to see plays and shows because of the Olympics, so there are loads of deals to be had. You can always buy tickets and one of dozens of places around Leicester Square on the day of performance. But it's also worth subscribing online to free emails from people like ATG Tickets and LoveTheatre who have weekly offers on. And if you want to go to the National Theatre, there are always day tickets available for those who can get up early and queue (Saw Christopher Ecclestone in Antigone there the other week. It's excellent!). To get around London you need an Oyster Card. Pay a one-off fee of around £5 and then credit the card at machines in tube stations and many corner stores. Cash fare are ridiculously high on buses and tubes (the metro). So Oyster is the way to go - they've designed it to disincentivise the use of cash. It's a smart system that works out when you would be better off having bought a "travelcard" (think day-rider) instead and only charges you accordingly. Depending on how much travel you're planning, buying a travelcard (on your Oyster Card) might be better. London is built around a Zone system. Zone 1 is central and it goes out to Zone 6 and beyond. You can use all transport within the zones you've bought. 1-2 or 1-3 are fine for most sights. But sometimes you want to travel further afield. That's fine as you can just pay the difference via your Oyster Card. One other thing is to use a "Boris Bike" - the hire bicycles named after our mayor. £1 for a day's use as long as no trip is more than half an hour. Then dock the bike and carry on. Wait at least five minutes between journeys and it'll never cost you any more. If the centre of London is as snarled up as everyone thinks it'll be - with Olympic "Zil" lanes getting in the way of regular traffic - then this could well be the best bet to get around the capital. If you're travelling further afield, coaches are the cheapest way to get around. But I much prefer the train. Under 26's can buy a card to get a 33% discount on off-peak fairs. Depending on where you're travelling to, you could save the cost of one of these cards in a single trip. Air travel is perfectly doable and we have plenty of budget airlines. But getting to the airports is fiddly and annoying - particularly places like Stansted. So you're better off using other options. Getting to Paris is pretty easy, and can be quite cheap if you're flexible. Easily the best way is the train - Eurostar. But note that the Under 26 card doesn't work on that line. Book early for the cheapest deals. You can sometimes get singles for somewhere around £49-69 but it varies. Otherwise, there are loads of planes going there from nearly all the airports. And there are buses and ferries if it comes to it. There's no easy answer for London accommodation. It's pricey and that's all there is to it. One option - depending on how much time she plans to spend in the city, is to stay somewhere outside it. Cambridge is an hour from London by train, and of course is beautiful. Oxford similarly - although not quite as fast to reach. Incidentally, Stonehenge is somewhere half-way - but not directly - between London and Cardiff. So it could be worth making that football trip a round trip to catch Stonehenge. A possible route would be London - Cardiff - Bristol - Salisbury - London. Salisbury is the closest station to Stonehenge, although it's still a busride away. But the trip sounds like it has been organised already. Other options would be a trip to Edinburgh to catch some of the festival which will just about be starting around that time. Accommodation won't be especially cheap there though. Much closer to home - a day trip to Brighton is good fun. Although some of it is cheesy old-school seaside, there's a cooler side to it, with lots of clubs if you're staying over. I'm afraid I'm no good on really cool stuff. The "Williamsburg" of London is undoubtedly the East End and Shoreditch in particular. Lots of beards and skinny jeans. Brick Lane in particular is well worth a visit - especially at weekends when it becomes something of a mix between catwalk and market. There are loads of parks which are great to visit. Hyde Park is enormous, and will have a big thing going on in it during the Olympics - ticketed but mostly free tickets. Green Park and St James' Park are near Buckingham Palace. Out of town a little is the enormous Richmond Park, and there are places like Hackney Marshes or Hampstead Heath - the latter having lots of history. Hampstead itself is worth a trip to see. It takes a little organising in advance to get a tour, and I've never visited myself - typical local - but Highgate Cemetery could be worth a visit. And while the London Eye - the big ferris wheel - is a good way to see the London skyline, it's not cheap. Instead, head to Monument where for about £3 you can climb to top of the tower yourself and get a decent view for much less cash! If you want to attend a TV show taping then they tend to be organised through a handful of companies. There's the BBC of course: http://www.bbc.co.uk/showsandtours/tickets/ Also http://www.applausestore.com/, http://www.sroaudiences.com/ and http://www.tvrecordings.com/ Some of these guys ticket BBC shows - it's all down to the production company involved. Remember that few of our shows run all year round like the US talk shows, so getting into a recording of something like Graham Norton or Have I Got News For You will be dictated by whether they're airing at that time. For wifi, I'd say the best bet is getting it free in places like Starbucks or McDonalds. Indeed many of our local coffee shops give it away free. A nice place to hangout is the Southbank Centre, and you can get free wifi there too. Also in the British Library - although you'll need to have a good reason to get a reading card for that. A *very cool* place to work though. Check their website for details. You can sit in the cafe and foyer free though! Otherwise, either BT Openzone or The Cloud are the two biggest services to use. You should be able to buy access for the period of your visit (BT Openzone will be available in the Olympic Park I understand). They're even rolling out free wifi in tube stations (but not in the tunnels). It won't be free post the Olympics though. One note of caution - be sure to use a clearly named service. There are lots of "dodgy" services that are probably trying to capture passwords and so on. Adaptors shouldn't be a problem for laptops and mobiles. They're designed for all voltages. You just need a cheap adaptor for our plugs. Either buy before you come, or visit somewhere like Boots (a Walgreens equivalent) and get one or more there. Hairdryers or straighteners, I don't know, and you'll need to check voltages. The UK runs at 240v so be sure that your equipment won't get fried because it's expecting 110v or whatever. Transformers are costly, so it'd be easier to just buy a cheap product here. Hope that all helps. Feel free to ask me any specific other questions! Adam On Sun, Jun 24, 2012 at 10:28 PM, David Bruggeman <[email protected]> wrote: > I'm traveling to London in the fall (Star Trek convention, but I've wanted > to go to the U.K. for a while). For a lot of the sightseeing stuff, the > London Pass seems like a good idea. You can get it for 1, 3 or 6 days, > with or without transport passes. > > http://www.londonpass.com/ > > David > > ------------------------------ > *From:* PGage <[email protected]> > * > * *Subject:* [TV orNotTV] NotTV: Summer in London > > I have benefited several times in the past from travel advice from list > members; I hope you will pardon another open request. I know we have > several UKers (not sure what the most global proper adjective is here) on > the list, and several others who are familiar with London. My daughter, a > rising Junior Film & Television major (there, I guess a little TV) is > taking a course in London this summer (British Literature) and then hanging > around a little longer to soak up some Olympic experience. She is very much > on a typical college student budget. She claims I promised her some years > ago that I would send her to London for the Olympics - I have no memory of > that, but who knows what I told her when she was 12. Last September we > agreed that if she could earn enough money for her tuition and expenses and > kept her GPA up I would pay for her airfare. It was close, but she held up > her end of the bargain, and her mother and I have pitched in a little extra > spending money, but not too much. > > She has tickets to a few events already by hook and crook (including > tickets to some women's Soccer, er, Football matches in Cardiff, which is a > big thrill for her as a huge Torchwood fan; she is going with a friend > whose family will be there, and they are providing transportation and > accommodations for that part of the trip). I think she has also identified > some events that are basically free, watching people run or cycle or row > through the streets and waters of London. She will be staying in the Dorm > for the weeks of the actual class, and then in the apartment of her friend > for a week, who for some reason is leaving London at the end of the first > week of the Olympics. Against her father's advice my daughter has decided > to keep her options open for lodging for the last week of the Olympics, > betting that she will either make friends with locals during her class > (apparently at least half of her fellow students are locals), or find a > hook up with her friend who has an apartment there but is leaving early. I > have identified a few hostels in and near London (with predictably greatly > inflated prices, but still cheaper than a hotel, if they had available > rooms) but those hostel rooms will probably be gone soon. She will go to > Paris for the last few days of her trip, staying with some friends, and > flying home from there. One thing I have not yet done is check on prices > and arrangements - I am assuming there is some kind of reasonable ticket on > a bus or train. > > Anyway, I am wondering if any experienced Londoners have any advice for > sites to see on a budget. She does have a few good guidebooks, and her > school has arranged a few basic trips (one to Stonehenge, one to the more > obvious museums, a play in the East End and I think a walking tour of > London). I think she is now more interested in things that might be a > little lower profile but still memorable - like a favorite pub or local > eatery, a club to listen to music in or dance, a park or library to study > in, or maybe a day or overnight trip to somewhere charming or interesting. > I am a psychologist so I am going to nag her to go to the Freud Museum, and > she is a big TV fan, and will probably look for sites she has seen on Dr. > Who and Torchwood and Sherlock on her own, unless there is some kind of > themed tour for American suckers for this kind of thing. Also, if there are > any television shows being produced in London this summer she would > probably like to check that out - she is the type that if she were going to > NY she would get up early to stand outside the Today Show, or try to get > tickets to Jimmy Fallon. > > We are also still deciding on the merits of some kind of transportation > pass (so far it seems a little confusing). Also helpful would be any info > on how likely she is to find free or "affordable" wireless connections in > and around London. We think we have a handle on the converters, but if > there are any common errors Americans make about this we would appreciate > hearing about them. > > > > -- > TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google > Groups "TV or Not TV" group. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected] > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected] > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en > -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en
