Reid's List: London ★★★
My favorite things to see and do in London
Reid's List is a designation I reserve for sights, experiences, lodgings, and places to eat that I find truly interesting and worth your time, but that may not be very famous.
It's a way for me to take some second– or third-string spots—amazing little museums, fabulous tours—and give them top billing after the "can't miss" A-list.
In other words, it's not that the British Museum isn't my favorite sight in all of London—it is—but it doesn't rate a spot on Reid's List because everybody already knows about it. Quirky little Sir John Soane's Museum, on the other hand, is far less famous but also absolutely brilliant (and also free!).
Here you will find sandwich shops along Michelin-starred eateries, funky hostels rubbing shoulders with five-star hotels. Enjoy!
- Viator.com - Best one-stop shopping site for all sorts of activities, walking tours, bus tours, escorted day trips, and other excursions. It is actually a clearinghouse for many local tour companies and outfitters, and since it gets a bulk-rate deal on pricing (and takes only a token fee for itself), you can actually sometimes book an activity through Viator for less than it would cost to buy the same exact tour from the tour company itself. (I once booked a Dublin pub crawl via Viator and later discovered that I saved about $1.50; also, the tour turned out to be sold-out, and they were turning away the folks in front of me in line, but since I had a pre-booked voucher I got in.)Partner
- Londonwalks.com - Since the 1970s, the gold standard in city walking tours and museum tours—and cheap, to boot. Just meet your guide at the appointed time and place (usually a Tube stop), pay your £10 (students or over 65s are £8; under 15 free), and prepare for a good two hours of amazing cultural insight and historic anecdotes. If you plan on taking three or more walks, buy a "Frequent London Walker" card for £2 from your first guide, then each subsequent walk costs £8. They also run popular excursions outside London for £18. Note that the fee just covers the guided tour; you pay for any admissions (or, for excursions, travel expenses) yourself.
- Contexttravel.com - This bespoke walking tour company doesn't even call its 200 tour leaders "guides." It calls them "docents"—perhaps because most guides are academics and specialists in their fields: history professors, archeologists, PhDs, art historians, artists, etc. Groups are miniscule (often six people maximum), and most docents can be booked for private guiding sessions as well. They aren't always the cheapest tours, but they are invariably the best. People rave about Context.Partner
- City-discovery.com - Chief rival to Viator (though with a less spiffy interface and often sub-par text descriptions), representing many of the same tours (at the same prices). However, it also seems to cover more destinations, especially secondary ones. When it comes down to it, City-Discovery and Viator have maybe 70% the same inventory, but then 30% will be completely different (some Viator has City-Discovery does not, other vice-versa) so it pays to check through the offerings from both.Partner
- Visitlondon - Official tourism information site for London.
- Londonpass - Sightseeing and transport discount pass.Partner
- Londontown.com - Excellent independent tourism office and online guide to London.
- Timeout.com - Premier events, theater, and cultural happenings guide (plus food and drink) for major cities. In the U.K, covers London, Edingburgh, Glasgow, Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham, and Bristol, and Brighton
- Cityoflondon.gov.uk - The City of London has its own tourism site—and the only sizeable info kiosk in the center of London. they're also the only ones who will answer the phone.
- London Evening Standard - London's top free local paper has good events and restaurant listings
- Where London - This is that events guide and mini-guidebook magazine you get free in mide-range hotels all aroudn the world. Covers the top stuff, and current events, but a distant second to Time Out.
- Visitgreenwich.org.uk - Covering the semi-independent Royal Borough of Greenwich—part of Greater London, but really a (well worthwhile) daytrip in its own right.
More on Reid's List in London
Sights in London
The Cabinet War Rooms and Churchill Museum in the underground bunker from which Britain waged World War II
A collection of the English language's greatest books and manuscripts, from Beowulf to Beatles lyrics by way of the Magna Carta, Shakespeare, James Joyce, and more
Spend a day in Greenwich, a Thameside village on London's eastern outskirts by which the world sets it clocks, with a rich maritime history, stellar little museums, and the Prime Meridian
Set your watch by the actual Greenwich Mean Time clock, straddle the Prime Meridian line that divides the eastern and western hemispheres, and tour the fascinating little museum about it all
Fantastic modern art museum in a massive former power plant, with blockbuster exhibitions and a fab gift shop and bookstore
The history of London Town from prehistoric times to the 21C, told in artifacts, scale models, archaeological finds, photographs, and paintings
London's iconic exclamation point, the clock tower housing Big Ben, sprouts from the honey-hued complex of be-spired 1840 buildings where British Parliament meets (and you can attend sessions)
A vast park in North London, with lovely views, wooded rambles, swimming ponds, cozy pubs, and Old Master art in a genteel manor house
Fantastic, small, bit-of-everything museum—ancient Roman and Egyptian sculptures; paintings by Turner, Reynolds, and Hogarth; architectural remnants and Cantonese furniture—all crammed into the formerly private home of an eclectic collector
Experiences in London
Raising your pinkies at a proper British afternoon tea in London (preferably with scones)
The play's the thing... to do at Shakespeare's Globe, a faithful recreation of a genuine Elizabethan theater in the round.
Quite possible the greatest museum gift store on the planet—perfect for souvenir and holiday shopping
Lodgings in London
Of all London's boutique inns, this Chelsea hotel succeeds the best at leaving behind the aura of impersonal hotel to create instead a cozy private home feel—with discreet hotel comforts—in a building from the 1800s
Luxury apartments 100 meters from St. Paul's Cathedral
This Old World, clubby Mayfair hotel with a residential ambiance is consistently lauded for its service, food, and ambiance
The Leonard links four 18C Marlyebone townhouses for a British atmosphere with an Imperial touch
This classy Mayfair hotel has been popular with writers since 1937 and hosts one of London's most traditional afternoon teas
The Pelham is an oasis of tranquility in a busy road hub in South Kensington, mere steps from a Tube stop and blocks from the shopping of Brompton Road
A cozy and friendly moderate Covent Garden hotel on a pedestrian street
Basic, bland motel with a great location—and attached to one of London's most historic pubs where Shakespeare once drank
Dining in London
A great Indian restaurant with a wonderfully funky decor in the Mayfair district of London
Favorite Southwark pub filled with cozy snugs and literary associations just a block from Shakespeare's Globe
A 17th century pub and National Trust Landmark, set on the ground floor of an old coaching inn
A 16th century pub on Hampstead Heath that inspired Keats, Dickens, and Stoker
Breakfast at London's Fox & Anchor pub comes with a pint of Guinness and the company of the slaughterhouse workers
A fabulous, inexpensive lunch spot atop tombstones in the crypt of St. Martin-in-the-Fields church on Trafalgar Square
A rambling, 150-year-old Greenwich pub with decent grub, Dickens associations, and a small terrace overlooking the Thames
Topics in London
Lodgings in England
Hostels, B&B's, apartments, farm stays, castles, university dorms, campgrounds...there are so many of these budget options I needed to create a whole separate section on this website just to fit them all in
