annettetx

Good afternoon, all;
These Texans just returned to 90 degree Texas from a trip that included 4 rainy, chilly, but wonderful days in London!
As London is my favorite city and I've been lucky enough to travel there multiple times, our sightseeing was pretty eclectic. Here are some of the highlights:

• Diamond Jubilee Galleries at Westminster Abbey -- What a treasure this new gallery is, not only for the actual treasures on display, but for the views from the triforium down the length of the nave of Westminster Abbey! We spent about 1 1/2 hours reading and looking at everything (staff in the gallery told us they estimate that an average visit to the gallery would be about 40 minutes). I was especially fascinated with the funeral effigies (especially Admiral Nelson's) and with the Liber Regalis (the 14th Century "manual" for staging coronations and royal funerals). An added pleasure of the galleries was the small number of people up there -- we were able to walk, browse, read, and contemplate without fighting crowds of people.
  • Logistics -- Separate tickets (in addition to regular Abbey tickets ) are required for access to the galleries. They can be purchased online or at the door. We bought ours ahead of time -- visiting the Abbey was only going to be possible on one day of our trip and I wasn't willing to risk all the tickets being sold out ahead of time.
• Dennis Severs' House -- This has been on my London wish list for a long time, and this was the first trip where the timing worked out. I had read that people either love the house or think it is weird, and had warned my husband that I wasn't sure what to expect. We went for one of the silent candlelit evenings, and found it pretty fascinating. The premise of the house is that the family living there has just left the room that you enter -- furnishings, etc are arranged/laid about as if they were just recently used (one bedroom even had a cat napping on the bed. Was it a real cat or a high tech stuffed animal? My husband and I still disagree...). Sound effects are also supposed to add to the atmosphere. I didn't find those effects to add much to the experience, although they didn't detract from it either. The attention to re-creating every detail is quite impressive! To me the best room was the attic room that is staged as if Scrooge lived there -- it was creepily moving.
• Restaurants:
  • Oklava -- best meal of the trip! We walked here from Dennis Severs' house. Tiny Turkish-Cypriot restaurant -- reservations are highly recommended. The Grilled Hellim with Lemon, London Honey & Oregano was the best thing we ate on our whole trip!
  • Kiln -- Thai grill in Soho. Everything is cooked over charcoal. We sat at the bar and had a great time watching the chefs at work over several grills of hot charcoals. Food was good, but for me, was maybe eclipsed by the show in the kitchen.
  • Dum -- Biryani House. Another really tiny restaurant, but delicious! I'm not a huge aficionado of Indian food, but I would go back here if given the chance. Staff were friendly, knowledgeable, and gave us a great suggestion for an appetizer to complement our chicken biryani.
• Other great experiences:
  • The weather when we were there last Sunday was in the 50s and rainy, so we found a comfortable pub and made reservations for a Sunday roast. At this particular pub, the meal wasn't the greatest of my life, but relaxing in a warm, cozy room, sharing a bottle of wine, and reading the Sunday Times was the absolute perfect way to spend the afternoon!
  • National Gallery -- Another great choice for a rainy Sunday. Before embarking on all the art on display, I visited the shop to find postcards of paintings that I would seek out in the Gallery and then had a pot of tea and scone in the dining room. I was pleasantly surprised that I was able to immediately get a table on a rainy day at noon, and enjoyed warming up with tea and writing a few postcards before wandering through the Gallery.
  • Hatchards Bookstore on Picadilly -- I think London bookstores are the absolute best, and we spent about an hour here browsing and making our (numerous) selections. For me, no visit to England is complete without browsing in a bookstore!

I've received so many great suggestions from this board, that I hope some of these observations are helpful to others!
Cheers,
annettetx

tuscanlifeedit

Hi annettetx, thanks for the report.

I'm one who thought that Dennis Severs' House, and the silent tour, were the height of weirdness. The group I was with generally liked it all and I had to whisper to my husband that it was the trippiest thing I'd experienced in decades. There was a note in one of the rooms (French Revolution room, if I recall) that said, "Terrifying, isn't it?" in reference to some shared fact about the history displayed.

This has become one of our silly catchphrases.

janisj

Thanks -- I'm really looking forward to visiting the Diamond Jubilee Gallery in Dec. I've been following news about its development/opening and its nice to get a first hand report.

Carolmom

Thanks for the report. I love London and hope to go back. We only got to walk past Westminster Abbey last time, so it will be at the top of our list, and the Diamond Jubilee Gallery sounds great!

denisea

See! There is always something that is new and you wouldn't know about without the forum. We head to London in April and am glad you shared the Diamond Jubilee Gallery...had not heard of it.

travfreak13

Awesome report, you did so much. I have just bookmarked this thread for my sister who is planning the trip with her sister-in-law.

annettetx

Thank you all for the comments! I've learned so much and had so many rich travel experiences thanks to all the expert posters on the board that it's a pleasure for me to contribute to someone else's trip...

sarge56

thank you for the report! I'll be in London in the spring and you've inspired me to find that bookstore!

greg

What is the delta time needed between entry and the entry timing of the Diamond Jubilee Gallery?
The Westminster entry is times for about 2 hours.
The Dimond Jubilee Gallery timed ticket has a 15-min window.
How to you sync these two time slots? All the review I have found raved about the Gallery, but not one mentioned how to coordinate arrival time at the Westminster, the timed entry to the Westminster itself, and the Dimond Jubilee Gallery 15 min timed slot.

janisj

>>The Westminster entry is times for about 2 hours.<<

Maybe I don't understand your question exactly. They are not 'timed 2 hour visits'. They are timed with a 2 hour period for when you can enter the Abbey. You can stay as long as you like (up to closing time). Any tickets bought on line are automatically 'fast track' so you simply pick a two hour window and arrive at the Abbey sometime within that two hour window. Pre-bought tix have a shorter line but still pass through security. So you can book the Gallery for any time after your arrival.

greg

I had a 9:30-11:30 Westminster timed ticket. I also had a 10-10:15 Diamond Jubilee Gallery ticket --a time chosen by guessing since I have not read anyone mentioning about how to sync between the two times.
I arrived at the North gate at 9:00 for the 9:30 opening time. There were 4 others waiting in the timed slot queue. The queue for people without a time slot was already 50 yards long. By 9:30, the queue for the timed slot people were over 50 yards long and the queue for those without went perhaps 200 yards. I entered right at 9:30.
In my opinion, the 30 min between the entry and the Diamond gallery is too short. Even though I entered the abbey at 9:30, by the time I had my ticket scanned and got the audio guide, it was 9:40. I had 20 minutes to listen to the audio guide through the nave, chapels, choir before a mass of tour groups arrived -- not enough. You can backtrack some of them against the mass of tour groups, but it was very crowded after I was done with the Diamond Jubilee Gallery.