dumas1870

What's so great about this area. I've been before and just couldn't get excited about it. Traffic is heavy and the whole place looked tacky.

I've got an open mind - tell me what to look for so I can have a better experience next time.

Intrepid

Then I guess you didn't miss anything so don't waste your time and energy and stay elsewhere.

dumas1870

Intrepid, your mean-spirited replies are getting real old and more than a bit tiring. What do you do for fun, lurk the forum so you can pounce with a nasty little zinger? How sad.

So just shut the devil up if you can't add something productive to an honest discussion.

Degas

Dumas, I took no offense at your question. I wasn't all that impressed either on my first visit. Like you, perhaps I just didn't know what to look for.

However, some kind folks on this forum recently told me about St. James Church, Fortnum and Mason, the Royal Academy of Arts, and the Burlington Arcade. There are also some Chinese and Indian restaurants close by.

Having an open mind is the key, along with a little more research and asking questions of people who have been before.

Christina

I'm not sure I'm adding anything productive, either, but I wasn't aware it was supposed to be something great or a place to spend any special time. It's just a fairly central location where a couple of tube lines cross or maybe the bus, and I may be around there just getting to someplace else.

ben_haines_london

Your trouble is history: you have read too many novels and seen too many plays. A hundred years ago, in the days of elegance and Oscar Wilde, only the rich had carriages, and even they walked, splendidly dressed and with gloves and buttonhole, from their clubs on Pall Mall and St James Street to their shops on Bond Street. These were expensive and luxurious places. If the hall porter will let you pop your head into the hall of the Athenaeum or the Royal Automobile Club, both on Pall Mall, you will see the baroque and gilt. Some shops remain, Berry Brothers for wine, Locks for hats, and I Lobb for shoes and riding boots on St James, Paxton for cheese on Jermyn Street (though I think it was the servants who shopped there), Fortnum and Mason for daily groceries on Piccadilly, and the picture dealers on Bond Street. Some tiny shops remain inside the arcades that run off Piccadilly and parallel to it: the Burlington is the best known. In those days the London houses of the great families were still in full session. You can see the front hall of the Royal Society in one of these, the rooms of two great houses at the Royal Overseas League off St James (but you would need permission at the desk), and the frontage of another at the Saudi Embassy opposite the Curzon Mayfair cinema. So I could set you up a reasonably interesting walk around Piccadilly, but we would walk fast and without looking to left or right past the dull airline offices and crowded traffic, and the centre of our attention would be luxury shopping which is not my cup of tea.

Degas has picked the two places you might reasonably want to go to see, the Royal Academy if it has a decent exhibition, and St James Church for a recital of classical music.

Poor Intrepid. I fear for him.

Welcome to London, but perhaps not, for you, to Piccadilly.

ben.haines@:btinternet.com

RufusTFirefly

Agree with Christina--Who said Picidilly was great? There are some interesting things to see and do in the vicinity, but I don't think Picidilly is frequently cited as one of the top 10 tourist sights in London.

sheila

Guys,

I woldn't have answered Dumas's question because I'm not qulaified, but I want you to kow I FELT, with understanding everything Ben has said.

He gets lots of accolades here, quite rightly, but that is the best answer of his I've read in the last 4 years.

dumas1870

Perhaps it was a mistake to phase the question that way. I did not intend to sound pompous or spoiled.

I think Ben hit it dead on, I formed a bright mental impression from fiction and plays that were set back around the turn of the century. Little did I realize that the scene had changed so much. Perhaps that has happened to you before?

I'll go back again, with lowered expectations, and looking closer for some of the places you have mentioned.

jor

dumas, A bit touchy today? maybe you could take a little of your own advise. I thought Intrepid's advise was on target.

Degas

I don't want to start trouble, but I think Piccadilly Circus is considered a famous London Landmark by many Americans.

Perhaps its all the colorful electric displays (count down for Y2K?) and the bronze fountain topped by a figure of a winged archer. Many articles I've read say, for right or wrong, that this figure is one of London's top symbols.

And many American servicemen came home from WWII talking fondly about the place. Ben, what was that all about? Soho being close by?

dumas1870

jor, no, I don't think so. I've just seen too many examples of that guy's negative comments on this forum. I'm not the first, nor likely the last, to tell him what he can do with them.

flanneruk

This discussion seems seriously at cross-purposes.

"Picadilly" has sometimes been used to describe the area around the street. That area, if we're honest, is a bit of an Englandland theme park. Many of us are embarrassed to admit we use the clubs along Pall Mall, which do rather belong to a different era - though they have their uses. But Jermyn St and St James Square are tasteful and it's a nice area to be in. Ben describes it excellently.

The word really is supposed to refer to the street called Picadilly. Which has more airline offices and tourist-oriented hotels in it than is good for any street in any major city. But by no stretch of the imagination can it be called "tacky"

Quite separate from Picadilly is a traffic intersection called Picadilly Circus. Which really is tacky. If this is what dumas is talking about, he's being far too tactful. But London's not a monument to good taste (we leave that to Europe's minor cities, like Paris): tackiness is a major part of what London's all about, P. Circus has some history, and is used a lot an an orientation point. Tourists have it on their list. They should take it off right away.

Londoners have it on our list of places we'd avoid if we could. But how can you get from the Royal Society to lunch in Chinatown without crossing the damn place? The alternative - making the Westons still richer by patronising the overpriced, mediocre Fortnum's - is too horrible to contemplate.

But if Dumas is indeed talking about P Circus, he's quite right to carp.

dumas1870

I was talking about Picadilly Circus, where about five major streets seem to all come together. I didn't realize even the locals dislike it.

vcl

Picadilly Circus is analogous to New York City's Times Square. It's kind of the crossroads of the world, London style. And like Times Square, it's not so much the Circus itself, but the fascinating things that surround it, that make it worth the trip.

flanneruk

No. Times Square is the crossroads of the US.

Picadilly Circus, for all its faults, is the crossroads of the world. Not London-style. Nowhere in the world - except, just possibly, the Bradley terminal at LAX - contains such a cross-section of humanity

If you doubt that, try this experiment. Stand at them both. Listen and look. To a Londoner these days, the shocking thing about Times Square is how monocultural it is.

levon

How and why, exactly, would a Londoner be "shocked" regarding their perception of a lack of multiple cultures in one touristy area of NYC, USA? What am I missing?

btw - everyone knows Indiana is the Crossroads of America -- at least that's what they have on their license plates.

Patrick

flanneruk, maybe you visited a different Times Square than I. At any given time there I hear many languages and accents. There are more foreign visitors (and formerly foreign NYC residents)than about anywhere else I can imagine. Are you suggesting the millions of French, Italian, Japanese, UK, and other tourists who go to New York don't go to Times Square? I'm here to tell you you're dead wrong!!!

And while we're at it, I seem to recall that while standing at Picadilly for about an hour before seeing a show at the Criterion, that nearly everyone I saw or heard was either a Londoner or from the US, not much else.

But back to the original question from dumas, I too ask what made you think that Picaddily was supposed to be so special? Maybe it was like my first trip to Paris when I somehow assumed that the Champs Elysees WAS Paris, and the main place to see and stay. WRONG!

jsmith

Flanneruk, I generally don't comment on misspellings and attribute them to simple typing errors but 5 times wrong with PICCADILLY.

The statue on the fountain is the Angel of Christian Charity but commonly called Eros. Maybe because Christian Charity is love.

dln

And it's the statue of Eros that makes me like Picadilly Circus. The rest--the relentless traffic, the tacky shops--who cares about that when you have an adorable Eros smack dab center court!