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The CSU Cougars had successful day against Aston Villa FC ladies 3:1. Daughter and Teamates have two days off in London and asked this old man for recommendations on what to see for first time colonial type visitors. Of course, I haven't lived in London for several decades. This was my first pass, what are your thoughts and recommendations? Thanks!


Day 1

1. Take a look at Buckingham Palace (from the outside and not interested in the changing of the guards)

2. Visit Westminster Abbey

3. Admire the Houses of Parliament (from the outside)

4. Admire Big Ben.

5. Admire No. 10 Downing Street. (If the road is not blocked off)

6. Walk up the side of St James's Park to Trafalgar Square through Admiralty Arch

7. Walk around Trafalgar Square

8. Walk to Picadilly Circus

9. Take the 15 bus to St. Paul's Cathedral.

Day 2

1. Tower of London.

2. The British Museum -even if just for a couple hours.

3. Harrods.

If it looks good, I can take a look at a map for bus and tube routes. Are you taking the train from Oxford into London or are you taking a private coach (bus)? It makes a difference as to where to start and how to get around.
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London eye then Take the river buses 02 arena, emirates cable car, docklands light rail back into London Central think it stops at tower bridge.

Posh shopping Harrods, libertys if only to see the building, bond st and Mayfair, normal shopping oxford st, Carnaby street, Covent gardens is a must.
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Gasmk1 wrote:
London eye then Take the river buses 02 arena, emirates cable car, docklands light rail back into London Central think it stops at tower bridge.

Posh shopping Harrods, libertys if only to see the building, bond st and Mayfair, normal shopping oxford st, Carnaby street, Covent gardens is a must.
Thanks, I figured they would only shop and not purchase at Harrods, but of course Carnaby and Oxford Streets. I put shopping last as these are 19 to 21 year old girls and if they started with shopping they might miss everything else. I appreciate your thoughts.

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But shopping will be there uppermost thought, only 2 days and so many shops Laughing emoticon

Kings road Chelsea, seeing as they are playing soccer what about wembley

The London eye is worth looking at and it's on the south bank more or less overlooking Houses of Parliament.
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Gasmk1 wrote:
But shopping will be there uppermost thought, only 2 days and so many shops Laughing emoticon

Kings road Chelsea, seeing as they are playing soccer what about wembley

The London eye is worth looking at and it's on the south bank more or less overlooking Houses of Parliament.
They have tickets for Saturday at Fulham (Fulham vs Norwich). I would have tried Wembley if it were up to me...but their Coach (he played D1 there in the early 1990's) has contacts elsewhere. Is the wait for London Eye long?
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O2 arena and the tram car over the Thames
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High gate cemetery is gorgeous too
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A day in Greenwich is a must, also take the Thames clipper up to Westminster. If you can, get on one where they do the commentary. I've lived in London all my life and didn't know half the stuff they tell you
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When you go to the Tower of London, a tour with one of the Beefeaters is a MUST!

If you can squeeze in any time at the Victoria and Albert Mueseum, it is well worth the time.

Also, look into the London Days Out Guide. The trick is to buy a London Day Travelcard from a train station ticket booth and not one in the Underground. If you get the Travelcard on National Railways stock you can use it for the 2-4-1 deals for the Days Out Guide. Make sure you get a Travelcard and not an Oyster Card.

Here are some good INSTRUCTIONS on how to get the 2-4-1 deals.
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F that tourist crap. A nice dinner with the Bdog, Genie, Kate, and crew, and you've prolly done London right. At least in my fantasies.
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Based on my Summer 2012 experience, if doing the British Museum (free!), go early or not at all.
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tomjasz wrote:
F that tourist crap. A nice dinner with the Bdog, Genie, Kate, and crew, and you've prolly done London right. At least in my fantasies.
tom, agreed. But they've not been there, and are likely banned from TWP rides as a part of scholarship requirements. We have a don't ask, don't tell policy in my family.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah... but how about getting just a block or two off the main drag and finding a pub with local ales.

The problem is we foreigners can't tell the new chain places from the locals any more. Ask someone at the hotel desk to recommend a pub.
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Go see the Cutty Sark at Greenwich. You can take a ferry along the river to get there.

http://www.rmg.co.uk/cuttysark
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Far too much to see in two days.

Not sure I can add much to the above though, looks like there's plenty to do for now.
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While the British Museum is lovely, my favourite London museum is the Natural History Museum (dinosaurs!). A walk through Soho and a good giggle at the naughty shops may well be popular with this age group

And something I've always wanted to do but haven't yet got round to: an amphibious tour! http://www.londonducktours.co.uk/
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Did anyone mention the National Gallery? always worth a stroll around, take 5 to bask in the glory that is Michelangelo's "Virgin and child with St Anne" cartoon. After, feed the pigeons in Trafalgar Square. Lunch at the Borough Market (next to London Bridge) http://boroughmarket.org.uk/ . If it's sunny a saunter up the river to the Globe Theatre, Tate modern is almost next door. Then a wobbly walk across the Millennium bridge to St Pauls Cathedral (Entrance costs but it's well worth it.)
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jimmosan wrote:
After, feed the pigeons in Trafalgar Square.
Don't do that! You might get arrested!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/london/6986166.stm
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If the weather is nice, Thames Path sign posted walk is good. You see loads of stuff along the route (including pubs 8) ), it's free, and you can bale whenever you want and just get Tube back to where you started

(I'm only talking about the London section of course)

http://www.nationaltrail.co.uk/sites/default/files/thames_path_leaflet.pdf
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Re: NSR: London Itinerary Recommendations
DucatiSS wrote:
The CSU Cougars had successful day against Aston Villa FC ladies 3:1. Daughter and Teamates have two days off in London and asked this old man for recommendations on what to see for first time colonial type visitors. Of course, I haven't lived in London for several decades. This was my first pass, what are your thoughts and recommendations? Thanks!


Day 1

1. Take a look at Buckingham Palace (from the outside and not interested in the changing of the guards)

2. Visit Westminster Abbey

3. Admire the Houses of Parliament (from the outside)

4. Admire Big Ben.

5. Admire No. 10 Downing Street. (If the road is not blocked off)

6. Walk up the side of St James's Park to Trafalgar Square through Admiralty Arch

7. Walk around Trafalgar Square

8. Walk to Picadilly Circus

9. Take the 15 bus to St. Paul's Cathedral.

Day 2

1. Tower of London.

2. The British Museum -even if just for a couple hours.

3. Harrods.

If it looks good, I can take a look at a map for bus and tube routes. Are you taking the train from Oxford into London or are you taking a private coach (bus)? It makes a difference as to where to start and how to get around.
There really is a lot to see in London and your itinerary looks good for a 'two day whirlwind see the major sights of London with teenage girls tour'.

Have fun. The people in London are very courteous and friendly with directions if you need it.
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jimmosan wrote:
Did anyone mention the National Gallery? always worth a stroll around, take 5 to bask in the glory that is Michelangelo's "Virgin and child with St Anne" cartoon. After, feed the pigeons in Trafalgar Square. Lunch at the Borough Market (next to London Bridge) http://boroughmarket.org.uk/ . If it's sunny a saunter up the river to the Globe Theatre, Tate modern is almost next door. Then a wobbly walk across the Millennium bridge to St Pauls Cathedral (Entrance costs but it's well worth it.)
this is a nice itinerary. the walk along the south bank is a must. if you're feeling ambitious you can walk all the way from borough market to the London eye. the best general rule is 'don't try to fit too much into one day'. tbh, many of the 'must sees' on your list are a bit of a letdown - expensive and packed with tourists. Buckingham palace is okay if you've got a checklist to fill out, but i find it underwhelming, and horribly crowded. don't underestimate how exhausting it will be to battle the crowds all day.

don't overlook Covent Garden - great shops, and a hidden gem of a museum: the London Transport museum. it sounds like it'd be boring, but it isn't, and you don't get anything like the crowds that you do at the other museums.

if i had to chose between the British museum and the V&A, I'd pick the latter every time. less crowded, especially if you go earlyish in the day, great exhibitions, and a spectacular William Morris café with very nice food.

Also: Selfridge's on Oxford Street is a terrific substitute for Harrods - it's huge, it's posh, but it's not full of overpriced tat that only russian oligarchs can afford.
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Big Ben. Parliament.

Brendan
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Camden market ideal for there age group
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Borough Market and the Tate Gallery
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ashbrook wrote:
Borough Market and the Tate Gallery
I'd heartily endorse that suggestion.

My day would be: St Pauls...over Millennium Bridge...Tate Modern (the pay-to-enter Richard Hamilton exhibition is better then the publicity material might suggest, but the permanent collection is excellent and free, and a coffee up on the 4th or 6th floors looking over the river is well worth it)...Globe Theatre...Oxo Tower.....Golden Hinde....Borough Market...More London.....Tower Bridge...then catch the RV1 bus and let it take you back to Covent Garden.
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lomunchi wrote:
Yeah, yeah, yeah... but how about getting just a block or two off the main drag and finding a pub with local ales.

The problem is we foreigners can't tell the new chain places from the locals any more. Ask someone at the hotel desk to recommend a pub.
aving been an all grain homebrewer, my London trip right out of the gate would be a stop where the publican pulls real cask conditioned ales...none of that bottled crap, I can get that o0ver here
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Choosing what to see is very much a personal choice, so I'll just say what I did.

After checking into the hotel, one of my priorities is to take one of the open bus tours if the weather is any good at all. Initially, I wouldn't get off until doing at least a complete loop on the route I was on. This helped me get some feeling for the layout of the city and the relative distances between certain sites that I already knew I wanted to see, while looking for anything else that interested me to add to my agenda.

My agenda - I have a very specific way I do that. Having traveled through a lot of Western Europe, I came to realize that the way most of my fellow Americans plan their trip has a lot of problems. We tend to want to see way to many things in way too little time to enjoy any of them, or at least based on what I observed and felt. Many Americans have relatively little vacation time. But we've all heard about so many things over the years that we tend to want to "see" them all. The problem is when you divide the available time you have by the things you want to see, you might end up with nothing more than an hour or two, if that, sometimes a lot less than that. Our expectations about being able to see everything tend to be way too high.

All of the major capital cities in Europe that I've been to could keep me occupied and interested for months, if I devoted the time to it. It truly isn't physically possible to see most of the things you want to see in a couple of days. So this leads to a choice. Do I want to try to "see" as many of them as possible in the limited time that I have? Or would I rather actually like to focus on spending more time on the few sites that are most interesting to me? My observation is that most Americans choose the first option. They're easy to identify. They're the ones who have a checklist and often are literally running through sites to supposedly "see" them so that they can check it off their list to get to the next one. If it was allowed to rent roller skates to get through a museum more quickly, it would be very popular for my fellow Americans.

When I was in London, I spent two full days at the British Museum, from opening to close, and my hotel room was 2 blocks away. It was one of the best experiences I've enjoyed in my life. It was better than years of history classes. Yet as I was in each hall, enjoying so many amazing items, every few minutes there were people who entered the room and walked rapidly to the exit with nothing more at a glance. They never came back so far as I could tell. I never saw them in any other room at any other time. These people seemed mostly to be the Americans, but there were other nationalities too. It was easier for me to identify the Americans, naturally. It didn't take long for this to become ridiculously funny to me, at first: the parade of checklisters, walking right past thousands of years of human history, art, culture, science, etc. It became tragic and sad after a while. How shallow and disinterested have many of us really become? Did they really think that they "saw" the British Museum. They certainly didn't see it the way I did.

I also learned that the part I least enjoyed about traveling was the traveling itself. Having a huge checklist of items to "see" ends up letting you mostly see the transport system, not the sites or items you came to experience. The fewer sites you choose to experience, the more time you have to do it instead of getting from one to the next. To each his/her own, I guess.

I feel that I really experienced seeing the British Museum, the Imperial War Museum, the Tower and Crown Jewels, and a couple of other sites. I tried a few of the touristy things. Fish and chips, are fish and chips. I picked a good stand, but I honestly can get that from a British pub 15 minutes away from my home. The selection of fish was a bit different. I preferred a Thai restaurant a block from my hotel. I still have a list of sites I want to see when I return someday. That's OK. I much preferred taking my time, not hurrying from site to site, not leaving until I felt ready to do so at a relaxed pace. 100 Americans have probably walked through the British museum in the time you read my ramblings, if you made it to this point.
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The Churchill War Rooms are well worth a visit - http://www.iwm.org.uk/visits/churchill-war-rooms

The big free museums are all very good but aren't *that* different to a lot of big free museums anywhere else, but this is a one off.

You could start near Buckingham Palace, wander through the park, do the Churchill stuff then carry on past Downing Street and the Houses of Parliament to the Thames - all very pleasant on a sunny day.
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lomunchi wrote:
Ask someone at the hotel desk to recommend a pub.
I forgot to mention...

http://www.amazon.co.uk/CAMRAs-Good-Beer-Guide-2013/dp/1852492902/ref=pd_sxp_f_r

this would be the book to buy to guide you when drinking beer in the U.K.

especially if you want to find/drink cask conditioned real ale
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Gasmk1 wrote:
London eye then Take the river buses 02 arena, emirates cable car, docklands light rail back into London Central think it stops at tower bridge.

Posh shopping Harrods, libertys if only to see the building, bond st and Mayfair, normal shopping oxford st, Carnaby street, Covent gardens is a must.
If they are going over by Parliament anyway definitely the London Eye. Pretty cool way to get a birds eye view of London. My kids (oldest was a teen) adored it. Buy your tickets online ahead of time and avoid waiting.

We were all fascinated by the Churchill War Museum and the war control center. Seeing the actual war room with its pins still intact and hearing Churchill while seeing film shot at the time made it so real. The timeline table was interesting as well as fun. So I'll second Dr Zoidberg on that one. Far more interesting in many ways than the British Museum (great institution but overload quickly for those not into art/history) if you only have 2 days in London. In a couple of hours which is the most your itinerary would allow you'd either be so rushed it wouldn't be very enjoyable to miss too much to make it worth much unless there is something the girls are particularly interested in.

Genie is spot on as well, take the time for a meal in one of the many restaurants along the south bank while you are walking.
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multiscootguy wrote:
We tend to want to see way to many things in way too little time to enjoy any of them ... Our expectations about being able to see everything tend to be way too high.

... Having a huge checklist of items to "see" ends up letting you mostly see the transport system, not the sites or items you came to experience.
really well said, and very true. i think many visitors to London really underestimate how long it can take to get from one place to another, and how draining it can be to deal with crowds all day. a few well-chosen sites, enjoyed at a leisurely pace, is a much more pleasant experience than a cook's tour of everything.
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ask
When are you visiting ?

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Thanks for the comment and support Genie!

Another advantage of a leisurely pace is that it can open up a lot more possibilities to meet some local people and have great conversations! Sure, I want to see what I came to see, but I also want to learn more about the people who live there on a first-hand basis.

Tour groups....oh the horror. Being herded around like farm animals is not something I could tolerate, particularly with other Americans. I only travel independently. I did do some guided day trips, but ones that were very small and without any rigid schedule to follow. The largest guided tour consisted of a guide and 3 other people besides myself. We traveled using local public transport. I took a few tours that were designed specifically to avoid the motorcoach tour groups by beating them to the site.

I did learn one scooter related thing when I was in London. Quite a few of the people studying for "the knowledge" to become a black cab taxi driver use scooters to get around the city to make notes and to memorize the routes.
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@ducatiss avatar
UTC

Addicted
1979 P200E, 2006 Piaggio Fly 150, 2010 GTS 300 Super
Joined: UTC
Posts: 623
Location: Atlanta
 
Addicted
@ducatiss avatar
1979 P200E, 2006 Piaggio Fly 150, 2010 GTS 300 Super
Joined: UTC
Posts: 623
Location: Atlanta
UTC quote
Thanks to All
MV'ers, Thanks to all for the itinerary suggestions. The Cougars used a great many of the suggestions. This has been the trip of a lifetime for them and ALL are committed Anglophiles.

They have been submitting video reports, this is the Day 4 and 5 of their free time in London link if you are interested.


@bjorn_toulouse avatar
UTC

Molto Verboso
px 200, lxv 125
Joined: UTC
Posts: 1167
Location: Glasgow
 
Molto Verboso
@bjorn_toulouse avatar
px 200, lxv 125
Joined: UTC
Posts: 1167
Location: Glasgow
UTC quote
froggieposition wrote:
High gate cemetery is gorgeous too
+1 loved highgate but I like cemeterys.

Shopping for the girls oxford st's Top Shop, biggest Top Shop in euorop, my mrs was in there for over an hour.

Shopping for you - Urban rider - go there every time im in london.
@der_blechfahrer avatar
UTC

Molto Verboso
ET3 & PX150 & GTS 300 Super Sport MY23 & Yamaha Neo's electric
Joined: UTC
Posts: 1898
Location: Berlin
 
Molto Verboso
@der_blechfahrer avatar
ET3 & PX150 & GTS 300 Super Sport MY23 & Yamaha Neo's electric
Joined: UTC
Posts: 1898
Location: Berlin
UTC quote
I enjoyed the National Portrait Gallery. Not far from Trafalgar, if I remember correctly. I haven't been to London in years. Maybe in September.
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