Late night drinks in London!
 

Hello!

I'm leaving for London on Friday night, and I can't wait! It seems, though, that every place I research to go out to "late-night" has a guest list. I don't mind a cover, but I don't want to be turned away!

Any suggestions for late-night drinking establishments which are ***LAID BACK*** and fun?

Thanks so much,
Sara

Sara - my suggestion would be to find a fun pub for earlier in the evening and then talk to the bar staff. When I was in London last month, that's what we did. We were even invited to join them, which we declined - in fact, it was such a rough week, we didn't end up out past 11 anyway.

Sara -- we're leaving in a couple of hours and will be in London Saturday night. We'll be doing a pub crawl around Victoria Station. If you run into a couple of tall Americans ask if we're Julie & Brian and that'll just freak DH out. LOL I can't find the URL right now, but do a search on Yahoo for London Pub Crawls and you'll find some good places/ratings to make up your mind. Happy travels! Julie in Denver

I thought the public bars closed fairly early by law. I thought the hotel bars serving their own guests, were the only late night option?

Keith

No Keith. Standard closing for normal pubs is 11.20pm (last orders at 11), but there's an enormous range of pubs and bars that have a late licence (til 2 or 3am). If you arrive after 10.30pm, they'll generally make you pay an entrance fee, but if you get there earlier you can often avoid the entrance fee.

While some of the smartest clubs will have a guest list, by no means all of them do. Even at the ones that do, you can generally queue to get in if you're not on the list.

As I am getting old I haven?t been out on the town after last orders for some time but try the bars around Soho, the Met Bar, O bar and others all open until 3. At the bottom of St Martin lane there is the International Bar and in Covent Garden there is a number of late openers as well.
http://www.latenightlondon.co.uk/
http://www.viewlondon.co.uk/
As always pick up a copy of time out.
Enjoy
Jim