Mini trip report - a week in London
Sep 16th, 2016, 07:29 PM
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Mini trip report - a week in London
There being already a wealth of information on London here, I thought I'd just add a few random points from my recent trip. A couple are obviously opinion and entirely debatable, but my intention is mostly to add odd bits of info possibly useful to non-residents of UK.
1. See notes about flying on British Air's daytime flight from BOS to Heathrow on the air travel forum. Very unpleasant, both directions.
2. On past trips, I have stayed: near South Kensington underground stop near Imperial College, on Belgravia Rd. near Victoria, and in Bayswater. This time, because my partner was attending a conference at the Excel center, east near City Airport, we chose a BnB/'boutique' hotel near Baker St. tube station, which allowed a fairly easy trip to get to the Excel. Staying near the Excel is entirely possible but inconvenient to anything else and soulless. At first I was put off by the Marylebone-Tussaud atmosphere, but once I walked away from that immediate area, I truly enjoyed the Fitzrovia/Regents Park/Bloomsbury area -- new construction notwithstanding. There aren't that many inexpensive hotels around there, but we stayed at the Blandford Hotel on Chiltern Street and found that its location more than made up for some of its low-end limitations (iffy wifi, unvarying and limited breakfast, very cramped and sparsely appointed rooms, even for London). It is relatively quiet yet tremendously convenient to tube connections, Paddington Station, etc. And once you discover Marylebone High St., you've found some great shops and restaurants.
3. Those restaurants start with our standby alternative for breakfast, Le Pain Quotidien. This is a chain that has made it to NYC and Chicado, but it offers a pleasant setting with reliably good fruit and hot dishes and, bless them, Belgian hot chocolate. Specific places may fall short on one or another thing, but in general I'm happy to find a LPQ, and there's one on Marylebone High near Nottingham.
Limited chains, as it happens, turn out to be a Thing in London, such that an American may discover a place that seems distinctive and good - as we did - only to figure out that there are handful of the same name scattered around the city. Cote (with accent) Brasserie is one -- decently good if semi-comfort-level French food; not cheap but not stratospherically pricey with fair wine list and very good specials with fresh local ingredients (notably fish).
A non-chain wine bar I particularly enjoyed that had just opened a few weeks earlier was Blandford Comptoir, on Blandford St.a few doors west of Marylebone High St. As a non-drinker I'm sure I was a slight disappointment to the staff but they were more than gracious, and the food was good enough that I actually went back a second time (don't usually do that when traveling) with my partner, who pronounced the wine choices good. They are small -- about 12 seats at a bar and about 10 tables, so they get booked-up quickly. Worth getting a reservation unless you're there between meal rush times.
A place both old and new is the Chiltern Firehouse, at the foot of Chiltern at Blandford. The hotel is set in a historic firehouse (and worth seeing just for that), and the restaurant occupies a lovely setting indoors on the main floor and flowing into a courtyard garden. However, there's been a recent change of management, and there were no signs anywhere to announce what was there. The main indication was the line of limousines dropping off Beautiful People from other parts of the city. I did not eat there, and the best I could do by way of reservation was a seat at the bar for 5:30 pm (which I canceled) -- there seemed a bit of an Attitude there, so I assume my ignorance of just what a Terribly In and Important Place it is must have put them off.
4. I spent an intriguing couple of hours at the Camden Town street fair on a Sunday -- it's pretty honky-tonk touristy but in a 60s-70s throwback sort of way. And the Camden Lock -- with its crowded together food stalls and bars and small shops -- is The Scene for the weekend. I wish I had taken the time to try the river and canal ferries/water buses to explore what one can re: these ribbons of water that run all kinds of unexpected routes. I visited a relative in Oxford who told me that it was theoretically possible to take a river boat from there into London (an hour away by high-speed train).
5. I had discovered the book and print shops on Bear St. near Leicester Square already, but I went back again for a more leisurely look. As the US is watching not only its indie bookstores but the chains disappear, it was lovely to stand amid all those shelves of venerated volumes and look for old friends or admired celebrities. I found a Rackham print I liked, obviously a page taken from a book -- a practice I really shouldn't approve of -- but if the book is already falling apart, I love the idea of salvaging an illustration and having it to appreciate on my wall.
6. Down by the Excel -- not worth the trip if you don't have to go there -- there is a cable line up over the river carrying Emirates Air lines cable cars. Rick Steeves (sorry, Fodors) put it beautifully: It's an "exciting but completely pointless" ride. It starts nowhere you'd want to be and ends nowhere you'd want to be, but it goes over the river and has an interesting view toward the city, toward the Excel, and toward the airport.
I'm sure I've forgotten or omitted some things; but this is a long enough -- so worth stopping.
Thanks to those who gave me advice on this and a previous trip.
1. See notes about flying on British Air's daytime flight from BOS to Heathrow on the air travel forum. Very unpleasant, both directions.
2. On past trips, I have stayed: near South Kensington underground stop near Imperial College, on Belgravia Rd. near Victoria, and in Bayswater. This time, because my partner was attending a conference at the Excel center, east near City Airport, we chose a BnB/'boutique' hotel near Baker St. tube station, which allowed a fairly easy trip to get to the Excel. Staying near the Excel is entirely possible but inconvenient to anything else and soulless. At first I was put off by the Marylebone-Tussaud atmosphere, but once I walked away from that immediate area, I truly enjoyed the Fitzrovia/Regents Park/Bloomsbury area -- new construction notwithstanding. There aren't that many inexpensive hotels around there, but we stayed at the Blandford Hotel on Chiltern Street and found that its location more than made up for some of its low-end limitations (iffy wifi, unvarying and limited breakfast, very cramped and sparsely appointed rooms, even for London). It is relatively quiet yet tremendously convenient to tube connections, Paddington Station, etc. And once you discover Marylebone High St., you've found some great shops and restaurants.
3. Those restaurants start with our standby alternative for breakfast, Le Pain Quotidien. This is a chain that has made it to NYC and Chicado, but it offers a pleasant setting with reliably good fruit and hot dishes and, bless them, Belgian hot chocolate. Specific places may fall short on one or another thing, but in general I'm happy to find a LPQ, and there's one on Marylebone High near Nottingham.
Limited chains, as it happens, turn out to be a Thing in London, such that an American may discover a place that seems distinctive and good - as we did - only to figure out that there are handful of the same name scattered around the city. Cote (with accent) Brasserie is one -- decently good if semi-comfort-level French food; not cheap but not stratospherically pricey with fair wine list and very good specials with fresh local ingredients (notably fish).
A non-chain wine bar I particularly enjoyed that had just opened a few weeks earlier was Blandford Comptoir, on Blandford St.a few doors west of Marylebone High St. As a non-drinker I'm sure I was a slight disappointment to the staff but they were more than gracious, and the food was good enough that I actually went back a second time (don't usually do that when traveling) with my partner, who pronounced the wine choices good. They are small -- about 12 seats at a bar and about 10 tables, so they get booked-up quickly. Worth getting a reservation unless you're there between meal rush times.
A place both old and new is the Chiltern Firehouse, at the foot of Chiltern at Blandford. The hotel is set in a historic firehouse (and worth seeing just for that), and the restaurant occupies a lovely setting indoors on the main floor and flowing into a courtyard garden. However, there's been a recent change of management, and there were no signs anywhere to announce what was there. The main indication was the line of limousines dropping off Beautiful People from other parts of the city. I did not eat there, and the best I could do by way of reservation was a seat at the bar for 5:30 pm (which I canceled) -- there seemed a bit of an Attitude there, so I assume my ignorance of just what a Terribly In and Important Place it is must have put them off.
4. I spent an intriguing couple of hours at the Camden Town street fair on a Sunday -- it's pretty honky-tonk touristy but in a 60s-70s throwback sort of way. And the Camden Lock -- with its crowded together food stalls and bars and small shops -- is The Scene for the weekend. I wish I had taken the time to try the river and canal ferries/water buses to explore what one can re: these ribbons of water that run all kinds of unexpected routes. I visited a relative in Oxford who told me that it was theoretically possible to take a river boat from there into London (an hour away by high-speed train).
5. I had discovered the book and print shops on Bear St. near Leicester Square already, but I went back again for a more leisurely look. As the US is watching not only its indie bookstores but the chains disappear, it was lovely to stand amid all those shelves of venerated volumes and look for old friends or admired celebrities. I found a Rackham print I liked, obviously a page taken from a book -- a practice I really shouldn't approve of -- but if the book is already falling apart, I love the idea of salvaging an illustration and having it to appreciate on my wall.
6. Down by the Excel -- not worth the trip if you don't have to go there -- there is a cable line up over the river carrying Emirates Air lines cable cars. Rick Steeves (sorry, Fodors) put it beautifully: It's an "exciting but completely pointless" ride. It starts nowhere you'd want to be and ends nowhere you'd want to be, but it goes over the river and has an interesting view toward the city, toward the Excel, and toward the airport.
I'm sure I've forgotten or omitted some things; but this is a long enough -- so worth stopping.
Thanks to those who gave me advice on this and a previous trip.
Sep 16th, 2016, 09:55 PM
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"it was theoretically possible to take a river boat from there into London "
It's theoretically possible to go by boat from Camden Lock to almost anywhere in England: there's a faux street sign at the lock itself indicating distance by canal to a number of remote locations (like Liverpool, around 350 miles by canal, which is at least two weeks' sailing time each way).
But there aren't any scheduled passenger services, and no-one anywhere near Camden Lock hires narrowboats out for self-driven long-distance travel. But there IS a thriving mini-economy offering self-drive and guided pottering around London's substantial canal system (http://camden.gov.uk/ccm/content/con...r-canal-trips/)
All canals have towpaths, so in combination with the Thamespath, there's a huge network of entirely traffic-free green waterside paths all over north London. Or, if you've got time to spare - walking towpaths is usually slightly faster over distance than taking a narrowboat since walkers don't have to deal with locks- a substantial amount of SE England is easily accessible on foot within a day or two's walk of Camden.
The walk to Oxford isn't at all theoretical: the 100km walk (c 26 hrs at one go) has been a fairly regular challenge for years. Splitting it into two days makes it merely stretching for anyone reasonably fit (Compeed may be the most life-enhancing invention of the past 50 years): between late March and late Sept it's doable entirely in daylight.
Incidentally, there are no high-speed trains between London and Oxford, and no likelihood of any, ever. On seriously busy routes in densely populated modern economies, high speed trains are pointless, ecologically destructive and financially irresponsible Continental vanity projects, wastefully indulged in by governments allowed by their citizens to be unaccountable.
Improved signalling technology, and proper free market competition, will doubtless increase frequency to Oxford up to every 5-10 mins and average speeds up to 80 or 90 mph over the next decade or two. But those silly 200 mph toys are best left to the tax-wasting French and their empty steppes.
It's theoretically possible to go by boat from Camden Lock to almost anywhere in England: there's a faux street sign at the lock itself indicating distance by canal to a number of remote locations (like Liverpool, around 350 miles by canal, which is at least two weeks' sailing time each way).
But there aren't any scheduled passenger services, and no-one anywhere near Camden Lock hires narrowboats out for self-driven long-distance travel. But there IS a thriving mini-economy offering self-drive and guided pottering around London's substantial canal system (http://camden.gov.uk/ccm/content/con...r-canal-trips/)
All canals have towpaths, so in combination with the Thamespath, there's a huge network of entirely traffic-free green waterside paths all over north London. Or, if you've got time to spare - walking towpaths is usually slightly faster over distance than taking a narrowboat since walkers don't have to deal with locks- a substantial amount of SE England is easily accessible on foot within a day or two's walk of Camden.
The walk to Oxford isn't at all theoretical: the 100km walk (c 26 hrs at one go) has been a fairly regular challenge for years. Splitting it into two days makes it merely stretching for anyone reasonably fit (Compeed may be the most life-enhancing invention of the past 50 years): between late March and late Sept it's doable entirely in daylight.
Incidentally, there are no high-speed trains between London and Oxford, and no likelihood of any, ever. On seriously busy routes in densely populated modern economies, high speed trains are pointless, ecologically destructive and financially irresponsible Continental vanity projects, wastefully indulged in by governments allowed by their citizens to be unaccountable.
Improved signalling technology, and proper free market competition, will doubtless increase frequency to Oxford up to every 5-10 mins and average speeds up to 80 or 90 mph over the next decade or two. But those silly 200 mph toys are best left to the tax-wasting French and their empty steppes.
Sep 17th, 2016, 06:24 AM
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Chiltern Firehouse is very popular and hard to secure a table. We've been there twice and had a great time. Didn't think the staff had 'attitude', on the contrary, they couldn't have been more pleasant. There's an open kitchen, food is nice but a bit expensive for what it is. That is not unusual for London, though, and they sell out their tables a month or more in advance.
Chiltern Street/Marylebone High Street is a great area to stay in.
Chiltern Street/Marylebone High Street is a great area to stay in.
Sep 18th, 2016, 06:11 AM
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flanneruk:
First, thank you for your info on water travel on canals and rivers -- I'd love to have time to explore all, although I doubt that I'd have the physical wherewithal to walk to or from Oxford.
Otherwise, re: travel to Oxford: You are obviously and literally correct re: "high-speed trains" to Oxford, of course. What I should have said was "express" to refer to trains that only stop at Reading on the way to Oxford. Moreover, it's worth noting that my frame of reference was regional/commuter rail in the US (specifically the northeast corridor), and Amtrak can be so sad compared even to GWR. I have indeed been on the TGV and other 'true' high-speed trains and know the difference.
Tulips: I'm glad the staff of Chiltern Firehouse showed no attitude toward you - but my guess is they perceived that you knew "where you were" including its popularity. I probably seemed bumpkin-like when I stepped in from the street and asked about the pub, restaurant, and hotel, and therefore merited some condescension, as far as they were concerned. "You're obviously unaware...." was the tone. Any similar place in NY might have displayed the same attitude. It's part of what you pay for and why you book early at such places.
I loved the neighborhood but am still mildly confused about the proper pronunciation of "Marylebone" - having heard a number of slight variations and remembered differently from 50 years ago. "Marie-l'bone" "Mary-le-bun" "Marrilbone" Merry'la-bone, etc. I would love to find a short term rental in a flat thereabouts some day for a much longer stay, although my future is unlikely to provide that.
LCBoniti- thanks - writing a trip report allows a nice re-living.
First, thank you for your info on water travel on canals and rivers -- I'd love to have time to explore all, although I doubt that I'd have the physical wherewithal to walk to or from Oxford.
Otherwise, re: travel to Oxford: You are obviously and literally correct re: "high-speed trains" to Oxford, of course. What I should have said was "express" to refer to trains that only stop at Reading on the way to Oxford. Moreover, it's worth noting that my frame of reference was regional/commuter rail in the US (specifically the northeast corridor), and Amtrak can be so sad compared even to GWR. I have indeed been on the TGV and other 'true' high-speed trains and know the difference.
Tulips: I'm glad the staff of Chiltern Firehouse showed no attitude toward you - but my guess is they perceived that you knew "where you were" including its popularity. I probably seemed bumpkin-like when I stepped in from the street and asked about the pub, restaurant, and hotel, and therefore merited some condescension, as far as they were concerned. "You're obviously unaware...." was the tone. Any similar place in NY might have displayed the same attitude. It's part of what you pay for and why you book early at such places.
I loved the neighborhood but am still mildly confused about the proper pronunciation of "Marylebone" - having heard a number of slight variations and remembered differently from 50 years ago. "Marie-l'bone" "Mary-le-bun" "Marrilbone" Merry'la-bone, etc. I would love to find a short term rental in a flat thereabouts some day for a much longer stay, although my future is unlikely to provide that.
LCBoniti- thanks - writing a trip report allows a nice re-living.
Sep 18th, 2016, 07:01 AM
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The nice thing about Marylebone, is that there are also good local food shops. The Estate that owns it, doesn't just lease to the highest bidder and tries to keep a mix of shops. There is a great butcher, cheese shop, fishmonger, and a farmer's market on Sundays. Though the latter is now under threat of development.
Sep 21st, 2016, 06:48 AM
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Forgot to mention what a relief it was to be somewhere without bombardement with Trump, Trump, Hillary, Trump news. There were more than a couple of instances, though, when someone picked up my accent and said something along the lines of: "You're from the States? What will you think if I say the word 'Trump'?" Guaranteed gales of laughter when I'd just slap my forehead and groan.
Sep 21st, 2016, 08:01 AM
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<i> On seriously busy routes in densely populated modern economies, high speed trains are pointless, ecologically destructive and financially irresponsible Continental vanity projects, wastefully indulged in by governments allowed by their citizens to be unaccountable.
</i>
The usual nuanced statement from Flanner.
In Italy, the high speed trains have put a serious dent in domestic air travel, which has to be a net gain from the ecological point of view. No one in his right mind would fly from Rome to Milan any more.
</i>
The usual nuanced statement from Flanner.
In Italy, the high speed trains have put a serious dent in domestic air travel, which has to be a net gain from the ecological point of view. No one in his right mind would fly from Rome to Milan any more.
Feb 21st, 2017, 07:32 AM
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were given to mention what a relief it changed into to be somewhere with out bombardment with Trump, Trump, Hillary, Trump information. There had been more than a couple of times, even though, when someone picked up my accessory and stated some thing along the traces of: "you're from the States? what will you believe you studied if I say the phrase 'Trump'?" guaranteed gales of laughter when i'd just slap my brow and groan.
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