Destinations

AMERICANS LOVE London for a lot of reasons, aside from what we laughingly say about Londoners speaking almost understandable English. It’s a city with endless diversified pleasures for all tastes.

In the summertime it’s a great place to join with people from all over the world. I spent a week there last summer savoring the scene, before taking a Princess cruise around the British Isles.

Dining, drinking or walking the summer streets in London is almost like being everywhere else at the same time. The joyful chatter coming from visiting tourists is a cacophony of up to 80 different languages and it’s mostly happy talk. The attraction of London is universal.

Being in London is an immersion in culture, entertainment, shopping, dining or simply pub crawling. The London pubs are so crowded on weekend evenings, it’s standing room only extending out on the sidewalks. Soho is the place to see and be seen. Londoners are beer drinkers and the suds flow freely from taps not bottles. Any pub will have an assortment of up to a dozen or more different beers and ales to pull.

Daytime in London is a totally different scene, whether it’s upscale shopping at the world’s greatest department store, Harrods, or mixing with the lower end at Camden Lock. There are thousands of stalls at Camden Lock selling everything from far-out clothing and jewelry to trendy and more traditional things. For people watching it’s hard to beat this outdoor circus atmosphere.

Not to be missed is the London theater scene, better than New York’s Broadway for a number of reasons. London theaters are many, and mostly on the small side. No matter where you sit to watch a performance you feel more intimately involved because you are closer to the stage. And the cost of admission usually is less.

Except for the few truly hit shows, which are sold out well in advance, half-price tickets are the rule rather than the exception. In Leicester Square the city operates a booth selling tickets for many of that day’s matinee and evening performances at half price. Private ticket agents with stalls and offices in the surrounding streets also offer bargain-priced tickets for shows that may not be available at the city booth, and you can get tickets there for future performances.

One way for an economical theater evening is to purchase a package deal, dinner and the theater at cut-rate price for both. Numerous ads for this are available by looking for “London theater-dinner package” on Google.

London is a shopper’s paradise. If its toys you’re after, London has the greatest toy store in the world, Hamley’s. This store on Regent Street, near Oxford Street, is 249 years old with five floors of extensive displays of things to amuse and delight youngsters. It’s more than just displaying toys. It includes demonstrations. Hamley’s employs 50 young people to show you what you can’t live without once you see what it can do.

For a unique dining experience my favorite is an off-beat crypt in St. Martin in the Fields Church, at Trafalgar Square. The crypt floor consists of well-trodden tombstones of historic church figures. It’s a huge room with open seating tables. There is a self-service, cafeteria-style section serving both hot and cold dishes, all delightfully prepared. But the piece de resistance is a superb bread pudding, the like of which is unmatched even in the city’s high-priced restaurants.

London can be expensive for a visitor. The exchange rate with the pound hasn’t been good for the dollar lately. Hotel rooms do run high. But, there’s a good way to lower that cost. If you plan to stay at least a week, rent a furnished apartment. You get all the comforts of home in a prime area at maybe half the price of what a hotel would cost. Search for these apartments by Googling “London furnished flat.”

The song may say, “I love Paris in the springtime.” But summers in London are cooler in temperature and warmer in almost every other way.

Ed Arnow can be reached at BrentwoodBuzz@aol.com.

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