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london help please

my family's first full day in London coincides with a transportation strike (june 6). We are staying at the Goring so what sites are within walking distance of our hotel? thanks

Valerie: What about doing some research yourself? How should anybody here now what you are interested in and if you are travelling with children. If yes, what age? London offers such a large range of different things to see. I suppose you already have a good travel guide book with a map. I think the Goring is in SW1. Best infos at the official London website: www.londontown.com You will find whatever you might be looking for. To prepare a holiday is half of the fun. Enjoy your trip!

valerie, The Royal Mews, The Queen's Gallery, Buckingham Palace/Changing of the Guard, St. Jame's Park, St. Jame's, Whitehall, and Parliament Whitehall and Parliament are a longer walk, but easily accessed from St. Jame's Park. linda

p.s. The Goring is wonderful.

I have guide books, map, etc but I am not good at judging distances looking at a map. My kids are 9 & 13- the older will have no problem walking long distances because of her fitness level but my younger one will tire more easily. So I am looking for things that are a reasonable walk from the hotel which is near Buckingham Palace

Fodors Across the road the Royal Mews, with the royal coaches. Next, Buckingham Palace, thoroughly boring, with the hanging of the guard, which you wait foir for ages abd then cannot see Along Birdcage Walk the Guards Museum and their chapel Ten minutes further along Birdcage Walk, up Cockpit Steps, the Two Chairmen pub, eighteenth century, with decent lunch (all ages) and supper (adults only) Just south of there, St James Park tube station, with an interesting shopful of tube and bus souvenirs Back in the park, the lake, to admire the Queen's ducks. If the hotel gave you some bread you can feed them, too: the Queen doesn't mind At the eastern end, the Cabinet War Rooms, redolent of Winston Churchill Now we'll diverge in front of the Palace, walk a little way along the tedious Mall, turn left, and pass St James Palace. If you turn left again here you can inspect the boots of the Guardsman on duty. They should shine ike glass. Now a shopping walk. Up St James past Lobb's hatters and Berry's wine merchants (both By Appointment). A view of The Economist's new building and some eighteenth century gentlemen's clubs. Round here are Spinks, for medals, and Sotheby's, for profits. A right turn along Jermyn Street takes you to the people who sell me club ties, in silk, and Paxman's delicious cheese shop. Across from them is St James Church, eighteenth century, good for lunchtime recitals. If you walk straight through that you're in Piccadilly, now overfull of airline offices. No matter, turn back, left from St James chrchyard, and you can look into the Princess Arcade, and on the other, north, side of Piccadilly at The Royal Academy (which until 10 June is showing 92 drawings by Botticelli for Dante's "Inferno") and then the Burlington Arcade, where you may not whistle. From the far or northern end of that you can zigzag to the Royal Arcade, with the shop of the Folio Society, for beautiful and affordable books, and the silver shop that sold me my cutlery -- right out of my class, of course, but I see it as an investment. You must ring the bell to go in. This time, we'll diverge south from the palace, along Buckingham Gate, cross the boring postwar Victoria Street (but pause to admire the Abert pub: good meals upstairs and down), and walk among the rich politicians' houses of Great Peter Street with a diversion into the street market on Strutton Ground to Tufton Street. Turn left, or north, here, pass a small gateway, and you're in Dean's Yard. Turn right, or westwards, into a medieval passageway and you're in the Abbey cloisters. If you walk quietly, disturb nobody, and observe any "private" signs you're among clergy houses and School buildings. Then, I imagine, you might go to the House of Commons to ask the policeman on the door whether you may see Westmiunster Hall. If not, cross the river as a consolation prize, and see the Florence Nightingale Museum at the eastern end of St Thomas Hospital (where my father taught anatomy before Hitler's war). Please write if I can help further. You won't be bored. Welcome to my city. Ben Haines

Valerie, sorry if I may have sounded unfriendly, but it is very difficult to give suggestions just like that. But I am happy you got some you will like and your children too. I usually go for museums and art galleries, but this is not everybody's cup of tea (as the English say). Enjoy your stay and wear good walking shoes. And maybe and hopefully, there won't be a strike. Enjoy your stay!

Hi Ben, Seen the changing of the Guard, but your suggestion to see the HANGING sounds like more fun! Cheers!!

Voltaire was the first to note the English custom of hanging one of the guard from time to time, "pour encourager les autres."

Since you're at the Goring, take advantage of their afternoon tea in the lounge area. You'll get a whole bunch of cakes, petit fours, etc to choose from & a big pot of tea. Price is much more reasonable than some of the stuffy hotels (The Goring is expensive, but rather homey, not stuffy.).

Ben, You've delighted me with one of the most fascinating and witty itinerary descriptions I've yet encountered!

Ursula, What a terribly unfriendly and unhelpful response you made. Is this not a board where one can come to ask a question? All Valerie did was ask a question. You really didn't need to respond if it annoyed you so much.

Just had to jump in here and second Wes's observation that Ben's itinerary was brilliant... We've been to London many times and even so, he's given me a whole lot of other ideas for our trip back next March... BTW Valerie, just an FYI, I am sure you will not encounter too much difficulty finding things to do and enjoy despite the transpo-strike, I have been to the UK several times during strikes and have yet to have been impeded in my enjoyment. London is a great city for walking and I am sure you will enjoy yourself to the fullest! Bon Voyage.

Ben: I've been fighting off depression about not getting to London this year since mid-March (I've been making a twice yearly pilgrimage for several years). Then you keep coming along with the most wonderfully descriptive phrases imaginable and I'm ready to reach for the Prozac (or the charge card) again! You must stop tantalizing me! Don't! Stop! Don't stop....

Mr.Haines: This is the kind of walking guide we need-fun and informative; throw a different light to the city everyone loves! Could you do another one starting from Trafalgar Square?

I'm afraid nothing comes to mind starting from Trafalgar Square, so let's take a three hour walk and start up at the station concourse of Blackfriars main line station, above the Circle Line. On the west wall of the concourse you see the destinations list from some 120 years ago, when the Company Directors saw this unlikely spot as departure point for Chatham and for St Petersburg. While there was a city of Leningrad the carved stone remained unchanged -- you could say a long-term approach to save money. Stay at that level, walk eastwards, and you reach a modern wooden sculpture, a totem pole, of the seven ages of man. Drop to the street, admire the poub over the roiad, cross Victoria Street, go left of the Church of St Andrew by the Wardrobe. It's beside the place where in the middle ages the royal court kept linen and crockery that they didn't need just then. Up St Andrews Hill, turn right, Ireland Yard, Playhouse Yard (from before the Shakespeare time when a Puritan City closed playhouses and sent the actors to the stews of Southwark), and find the door of Apothecary's Hall. The Apothecary's are one of the Livery Companies, and still licence people to practise medicine (though if course not surgery: that belongs to the Worshipful Company of Barber-Surgeons). Now up Black Friars Lane and turn right onto Carter Lane (so called because that's where carts full of goods for and from the City of London rolled to and from the riverside quays and inlets). There are a good grocer, little lanes, and pubs to your right, but it's a bit early yet for a pint, and a cup of coffee in the youth hotel on your left will be a better choice. The hostel is the former Cathedral choir school, converted. Carry straight on eastwards on Carter Lane, and go into the City of London tourist information kiosk to see what lunchtime music there is at St Anne and St Agnes next day. Out again, and ever eastwards. Turn left at New Change, look behind you to enjoy the 20 year old ornamental clock, and almost at once turn right into Watling Street. You're now on a Roman road. We haven't too many of these. We think that, as in Chester, when Roman buildings collapsed to rubble about the fifth century they made great heaps in the roadway, so it was easier for Saxons to walk parallel to the Roman streets. You'll see that the City of London is still rectangular in layout, as a Roman city should be: the diagonals like Queen Victoria Street are all Victorian aberrations. I'd quite like to close them, and plant gardens there. But few medieval lanes coincide with Roman streets. At Bow Lane divert two minutes left, to Bow Church, which serves good vegetarian lunches, looks well, and features in the rhyme "Oranges and Lemons." Now go back down Bow Lane, 200 yards, round St Mary Aldermanbury Church (and pop in, perhaps), and walk up Queen Victoria Street to the Temple of Mithras. We found this only forty years ago. Mithras was a Persian god, brought west by Roman soldiers, and for about a century he ran neck and neck in popularity with Christianity. (Continued)

A few yards further up Queen Victoria Street, turn right into Bucklersby, along St Stephen's Row, Mansion House Place, St Swithun's Lane, admire the church with a tube station in the crypt, and as Elliot says in TheWaste Land a dead sound at the stroke of nine. Circuit it, and you're on Lombard Street. Lombard, because in the fifteenth century Lombards, people from Milan, Verona, and Padua, came to trade and to found banks. You'll see the many hanging signs of the banks we have now on the street. You realise that the whole rich City around you depends on the need for bankers to meet and talk. If they ever took to video conferencing we'd be in trouble. Even as it is, retail banking is in decline, and you'll have noticed grand bars that are converted banks. Turn right into Pope's Head Alley, skirt the eastern end of the Royal Exchange (founded by Thomas Gresham in the seventeenth century to compete in commodities with Amsterdam, now good for specialist hops), and reach the Bartholomew Lane side of the Bank of England. The small museum there is worth a good look. Back along the same side of the Royal Exchange, over Cornhill, Birchin Lane, Castle Court, Bell Inn Yard, cross Gracechurch Steet, into Bulls Head Passage, turn left on Lime Street, and into Leadenhall Market, a fine Victorian covered market, painted up like billyo. In the market turn right, along Leadenhall Place, and at Lime Street (ah, but a different Lime Street) turn left around Lloyds Building, a post-modern thing, onto Billiter Street. Turn right on Leadenhall Street, and take the first right, St Mary Axe, around St Andrew Undershaft church. Look out for St Helen's Bishopsgate church on your left, one of the few gothic churches we still have: the Fire didn't reach it. Walk past it to Bishopsgate. Turn right up Bishopsgate, and drop into Liverpool Street station to admire the roof. After the disgrace of the destruction of classic Euston, this was the first triumph of preserving Victorian station Gothic on the grand scale. Continued

Leave the station, carry on up Bishopsgate, and at the Bishopsgate Institute turn right into Brushfield Street. Admire the fine front doors of the little Hugenot houses of Spitalfields, now under renewal and repair. The Hugenots were Protestants who fled to us in 1689, after the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and brought with them the knowlege of fine spinning and weaving. They were thus the first big wave of immigrants in modern times. (If you want a list of immigrants from Julius Caesar till now please ask me. If idiots say "The British race" I want to know "What British race ?"). Wander into and out of Spitalfields Market, cross Commercial Street, and you'll see Christ Church Spitalfields, one of the Waterloo churches built abut 1817 to celebrate the defeat of the French (who were, of course, foreigners and thus thought suitable to be defeated) and to help civilise the slum dwellers of the new Dickensian slums that were growing up all around the inner suburbs. Walk along Fournier Street to Brick Lane and turn left around the mosque. Smell something ? But first, look at the clothes, the gorgeous saris, and go into any supermarket to see mangoes of more kinds than you knew could grow. OK, now your reward. Find a restaurant you like, take advice from the waiter, and have yourself a lager and a curry. Marks and Spencer sell more chicken tikka massala than any other ready-made meal. When they announced closure in France, troubled British customers rushed along to stockpile ready-made curries. As you look around in the restaurant, you'll see London, my London, any colour, any language, any age. So thanks for coming with me. Ben Haines

Ben We are not worthy You are fantastic... And I am feeling guilty for travelling the world and ignoring my back yard...

Ben - hoorah! I have never much liked London, but your narrative makes me want to give the city another chance! I have an odd question: does anyone have any suggestions for children's clothing and toys in London, aside from the wonderful department stores? Thank you!