London Walks

In another forgetful moment I neglected to mention in my last post that I really enjoyed eating at Jamie's Italian in Covent Garden [11 Upper St. Martin's Lane, WC].  I am a big fan of Jamie's Italy cookbook, and this restaurant was big fun and lively, and I could have eaten bowls and bowls of the parmesan-rosemary crisps.

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Without doubt, the first thing you have to do when you know you're going to London is check out London Walks, the original (from the 1960s) London walking tour company.  As  you'll discover when you take a look at the website, London Walks is "in a class by itself" and is "the premier walking tour company in the entire world."  If I'd had my way, I would have gone on a London Walks tour every day; but as it was, I had to also satisfy the London desires of my husband and daughter, so I had to settle for just one: 'Old Westminster, 1,000 Years of History.'  "Miss it and you've missed London" is how this tour is described, and I would quite agree.  The guide was superb, and one of my favorite parts of it was when we saw two original signs for bomb shelter locations, painted on the side of buildings throughout the city during World War II (pictured above).

It is, of course, the guides that make London Walks.  They are all ridiculously qualified, interesting, and enthusiastic.  And they've won mountains of awards, including an MBE by Her Majesty for services to the tourism industry and a coveted Guide of the Year honor.  Two actor-guides have performed with the Royal Shakespeare Company, the BBC, and the National Theater.  And one was on a list of fifteen of 'The World's Greatest Guides' list in Travel + Leisure.  She was the only one of the fifteen who was from England. 

There are lots of themed walks from which to choose, and really, the hardest thing is to make a decision -- just a few others are 'The Secrets of Westminster Abbey,' 'Westminster at War,' 'Hidden London,' 'The Queen's Jubliee Walk,' 'Jack the Ripper Haunts,' 'The Beatles In My Life Walk,' ' Ghosts, Gaslight and Guinness,' and the list goes on, with truly something for everyone.  All the tours are a very reasonable 9 pounds per person (7 for seniors and students), they take about two hours, and the starting point is always near a Tube stop.  Also, you don't need to reserve in advance, and of course if you are part of a group you can arrange for a private tour.  And, there are London Walks tours to Oxford and the Costwolds, Stonehenge, Bath, and beyond.   

You may remember that I recommended the London Walks book a few posts back -- it's also excellent, and is almost as good as going on an actual walk (by the way, one of the best things about the book is that David Tucker and the guides who wrote it recommend specific places in London to read each chapter -- brilliant!).  What really grabbed me when I read the book was in Tucker's Introduction -- he wrote that one night he was watching a lamplighter (London actually still has some lamplighters) and he wondered how many other people even knew there were still lamplighters around, and he also wondered how many other facts about London people didn't know and how great it would be if they did.  He writes, "London Walks guides are, after a fashion, latter-day gas-lamp lighters. Picture it: the lamplighter's figure moving along a London street in the gloaming and one by one the street lamps coming out like stars. And you think there's no romance in London? So that's what we do - light things up for people. Both out on the streets of London when we're guiding, and here, in these pages."  And this beautiful image below is now on the London Walks website (I don't know the title of the work or who the artist is, so I apologize for not giving credit where credit is due but I'm going to try and investigate and report back) and when I saw it it rather warmed my heart.  I think it perfectly encapsulates the inspiration behind this wonderful and worthwhile company.

London Resources

I am often asked to share the resources I use to plan trips, so when a friend recently asked me what I perused for London, I thought I would also share the list here, especially since I want to enthuse about  a terrific series of fold-out map/guides I discovered a few months ago from Herb Lester Associates in the UK:

 In addition to these two pictured just above, there are maps on Writing London, An Uncle's Guide to London, Clandestine London, London; You Are Here, and others on New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Austin, Madrid, Paris, Rome, Berlin, Amsterdam, and Glasgow.  Each is reasonably priced (4 pounds) and each is filled with a number of less obvious things to see and do.  I now have almost all of these and I love them and I think you will, too.

In a similar vein, Indagare has recently introduced its own Mapped Out series -- the editions on London and Paris are for families while Rome, Venice, and Vienna, are just for adults.  These are all in keeping with the high standards members and fans of Indagare have come to expect, and they combine some of the obvious sites with distinctive, lesser-known suggestions.  You can purchase the whole series for $55 or each is available individually for $12.95.   

Moving along,I should mention that for this particular trip, I only consulted one traditional guidebook (Fodor's London) as I've been to London twice before and I didn't feel I was in great need of that kind of a resource; rather, I wanted more specific, focused books, like these:

Both of these are, to my mind, 100% indispensable.  London A to Z (remember, the z is pronounced 'zed') is somewhat the equivalent of the Plan de Paris (if you're unfamiliar with le Plan, read 'According to Plan: Maps of Paris' by Catharine Reynolds in my Paris book, in which she states that "In Paris, map toting is no newcomer's proclamation of ignorance.  The most knowledgeable taxi drivers cannot know each of the city's 6,417 streets offhand; instead they pack copies of Paris par Arrondissement in their glove compartments.")

This is the book that's a compilation of walks offered by the excellent urban walking tour company (the world's oldest), London Walks.  More about the book and the company to follow in an upcoming post!

  Different from London Stories, this National Geographic Traveler guide of walks was also quite helpful and good. 
   

The Traditional Shops and Restaurants of London is an interesting and wonderful little guide that steered me to some shops and places to eat I would otherwise have missed.  Author Eugenia Bell also revealed lots of new details about places I already knew about.  Really wonderful.  

Again, as with the Traditional Shops and Restaurants book above, I learned about a ton of great places to eat and shop as well as places to stay.  This is really packed with suggestions, not only by author Saska Graville but by a handful of notable Londoners.

 The Luxe guides have attitude, and you have to sign on to this attitude in order to get the most out of these fold-out, pocket-sized, light-as-a-feather guides.  The tone is not only opinionated but witty and occasionally brutal (and sometimes annoying, like when TTFN stands for 'Ta-ta for Now').  But the retail suggestions and places to eat and drink are spot-on, the itineraries provide structure and are worthwhile, and the short-listed art and cultural recommendations are valid.  Full Stop.

The Louis Vuitton European Cities boxed set of books, published annually every Fall, routinely includes London in its assortment, and the 2012 edition was, as always, enlightening, succinct, and wonderful.  I'm not including an image here, sorry, because those I found featured the entire boxed set and not one of the individual book I used.  But I have found this set to be invaluable year after year.  The individual volumes are not sold separately, however -- you have to buy the whole set -- and there seems to be a rather small-ish print run so if you're interested in buying one you have to act quickly. 

 Both of these eating guides are terrific!  The Time Out guide is hugely helpful when you need to search for places by neighborhood.

And for my companion reading, I really enjoyed -- and highly recommend -- the following:

...and this is a typical type of research list for me, no matter where I'm going.  If you've read my books you know that I am a huge proponent of James Pope-Hennessy's book Aspects of Provence, in which he writes, "if one is to get best value out of places visited, some skeletal knowledge of their history if necessary...Sight-seeing is by no means the only object of a journey, but it is as unintelligent as it is lazy not to equip ourselves to understand the sights we see."   More London (and Cotswolds) notes to follow!