Marian Elsden - Its EZE London!: The Essential Guide for Visitors to London, England

Contents

Welcome to London!

London is one of the great cities of the world and there is more than enough here to keep any visitor happily occupied for ages. Youll find museums and galleries of world importance, churches and cathedrals dating back hundreds of years, magnificent government buildings and royal palaces. There are monuments to famous people - both ancient and modern, open spaces galore and the theatres and concert halls are second to none.

This guide scratches the surface of a great city if you walk around youll find many more things to see and do. And if you would rather go shopping youll be spoilt for choice.

Its a very cosmopolitan city with an endless range of restaurants and cafes serving practically every cuisine in the world. You will find every chain of coffee shops you can think of as well as fast-food outlets and sandwich bars some tiny independent, some parts of well-known chains. There are Michelin-starred restaurants, chop houses and even eel-and-pie cafes.

Pubs (public houses) come in all shapes and sizes and most serve food as well as drinks these days. There are a large number of pubs that are tied houses (owned by a brewery or pub chain). Free houses are not tied to an individual supplier for their drinks. Whatever the ownership, many off them offer great food. Oh and eel and pie cafes. This is an East End tradition, though there are not very many of them left. They are typically workmens cafes, simple places offering meat pie and gravy, mashed potatoes and eels in liquor no, not alcohol, just the cooking juices.

London lies along the banks of the River Thames and a trip on a river-boat is a good way to see quite a few of the landmarks. The river is criss-crossed by lovely bridges with Tower Bridge being the best known but do go and take a look at Albert Bridge its really pretty both by day and night, the Millennium Bridge by Tate Modern and the new foot-bridges alongside Hungerford Bridge between the South Bank and Charing Cross.

London is easy to get around using public transport there are lots of buses and a variety of train services both over and underground as well as a multitude of taxis. The road system in central London is medieval with narrow winding streets and complex one-way systems (well at least to non-locals). Car parking is both expensive and scarce and there is a congestion charge (a daily fee) in the inner zone so it is probably sensible to use public transport wherever possible. Throughout this guide we give details of the nearest underground (tube) stations or a mainline station, if that is more appropriate, as the simplest way to get around bus routes can seem very complicated to the non-local. And to make life even easier youll find lots of brown and white tourist signs to point you in the right direction.

London has a reputation for being very expensive. True, it can be, there are some of the most expensive hotels and restaurants in the world but there are also a lot of reasonably-priced places to be found. And remember that many of the great museums and galleries, owned by the state, are free to use.

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Galleries & Collections

National Gallery

The National Gallery has one of the greatest collections of European painting in the world, with works dating from about 1250 to 1900. You can see works byLeonardo Da Vinci andRembrandt,Van Gogh andGoya - and many, many more. The collection is owned by the nation and admission to see them is free.

The enormous building on the north side of Trafalgar Square is home to some of the best -known pictures in the world. Turners fabulous Fighting Temeraire, Cezannes Bathers, one of Van Goghs Sunflowers, Titians Bacchus and Ariadne, let alone Stubbs enormous painting of Whistlejacket are all there. But the whole collection numbers well over 2,000 pictures so theres lots more to discover. There are special exhibition too often featuring major works on loan from other galleries around the world.

The collection started with a purchase by the nation of the collection of banker John Julius Angerstein. This complemented a gift by landscape painter and art collector Sir George Beaumont of his collection of pictures to the nation - provided that suitable accommodation could be found. The collection was expanded with purchases from across Europe. There were bequests too. Turner bequeathed over 1,000 paintings and drawings to the gallery in 1856 just eleven years after Robert Vernon bequeathed a large collection of English works, these two collections later forming the nucleus of the Tate Britain Collection. And the collection has continued to grow throughout.

The National Gallery started life in Angersteins house in Pall Mall and moved to the purpose built gallery in Trafalgar Square in 1838 - a site that was easily accessible to all of London. The building quickly proved to be too small as the collection grew rapidly. The Turner and Vernon bequests had to be housed in Marlborough House initially before moving to Trafalgar Square in 1876 following a redevelopment of the site before moving on again to the brand new gallery on Millbank that is now the Tate. The Gallery itself is a Grade 1 listed building - regarded as of immense importance.