The recommendations from Scotland may be good tips, but whenever I'm in London I barely manage to tear myself away to get Anywhere else. And at least in London you can mostly understand what people are saying, even if the US and England are "divided by a common language."
Of course you will go to Trafalgar and may be pleased to find there are still street artists drawing short-lived chalk entertainments on the sidewalk, just like in Mary Poppins the Movie. Literature students might make a point of seeing Dr. Johnson's house and visiting the nearby pub where he hung out while writing his famous dictionary. Also the Poet's Corner at Westminster Abbey.
Too stuffy? The Tate Modern is full of masterpieces of modern art that you may have seen in books, and on the South Bank, attractions include The Clink, the old prison where that term came from. And there's a torture museum, showing that in olden times they had twisted minds too.
Although lots of people think the British Museum is a "must," once you have seen one mummy, you've seen 'em all (to paraphrase a dead US president talking dismissively about redwood trees a couple of thousand years old). The Elgin marbles, a big sensation a century ago, are a bore. I got chills looking at original copies of Magna Carta, but if you cannot imagine why, give it a miss
in favor of the Rosetta Stone, which also got a powerful emotional response,
the key to unlocking the ancient world.
But if you want to see English people at leisure, visit the London Zoo. Go boating on the Serpentine. And get lost in the Victoria and Albert museum,
the "nation's attick," the plunder of empire. Rooms of souvenir spoons, Victorian bird cages, jewel-encrusted loot from India, and on, and on, each
bit more amazing (one way or another) than the last.
Get a copy of Time Out and spend awhile with it on the plane or as soon as
possible after you arrive. Everything that is going on. Concerts. Movie
openings. Live theater ("theatre") with lots of major stars on their home
turf rather than the silver screen. And everything from toddler entertainment to gay clubs are sorted by category for easy reference.
Hugh Grant does NOT run a bookstore in Notting Hill, but the second-hand shops all over are full of things waiting to be discovered (used vinyl! CDs! Clothes!). As you wander through tiny one-lane walkways that used to be city streets, the past is all around you. There are Roman ruins underground, and yet, this is where raves came from (more or less) and where you can still see Abbey Road and (sunny?) Goodge Street and where you can take a walking tour to see just where (still unidentified) Jack the Ripper spread terror through the fog.
As the song says, "I love New York," but Dr. Johnson is still right, "why, when a man is tired of London, he's tired of life."
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