5 Reasons to visit London now

1. The City itself

Yes, it lacks Manhattan-style skyscrapers (with the exception of a few weedy blocks at Canary Wharf), has a ridiculously over-crowded infrastructure, and features the international embarrassment called Heathrow Airport, but it’s a still a wonderful city with millions of things to do. Trafalgar Square, The Royal Opera House, Buckingham Palace, Fantastic Restaurants, The Historic Westminster Abbey, The Millennium Dome, (only Brits will get that one!) and the fantastically posh Convent Garden – equivalents to this sort of place are only found in Disneyland- with perhaps the exception of Bruges.

2. Cheap Accommodation

You’re probably laughing at this one already. But before we start, I’d like to establish that a) Virtually no city worth going to nowadays has cheap accommodation and b) That by cheap, I mean cheap compared to some of its contemporaries such as Paris, New York, and Tokyo. London actually has some surprisingly good value well-known budget units where a room can be had for about £45 a night, and that’s in a fairly central location. As long as it’s by a tube station (The London Underground) you’re pretty much set for getting around easily (Tip: just don’t get on the tube at rush hour, unless you like having a total stranger’s hair in your mouth).

3. Devalued Currency

Yes, this global recession we’ve got going is doing no nation any good, but the UK is undergoing a more severe thrashing than the rest of us. Jobs are down, repossessions are high, and the Pound is undergoing a relentless devaluation (it’s lost approximately 30% of its value in the last six months) which puts it practically on a 1:1 ratio with the Euro – despite a recent jump. Oil prices are down and inflation is low, which makes it considerably cheaper for nearly everyone who’s here on holiday. Already there has been a reported increase in tourists from mainland Europe.

4. Museums

It would be safe to say that London has more awesome museums than practically any other city on the planet. The British Empire of the past (which, for those not in the know, covered one-fifth of the earth’s land surface), while now scorned by the media and the educational system as being one of the most bigoted, racist, exploitative blots on the history of mankind, did at least bear some pretty sensational artefacts in the British Museum. For people with more varied interests, there’s the Tate Modern and Tate Britain art gallery, which is pretty much up there with the Mona-Lisa hoarding Louvre, and the Natural History Museum, which contains a lot of “Epic Dino bones” which delight the six-year old in all of us.

5. Harrods

I’ve been to countries in the world where you can purchase fake shopping bags from Harrods. This massive department store is so exquisite and so exclusive that rich wives of famous men fly to London just to shop here. So what exactly do they sell? Pretty much everything, but you can be assured that all of it carries an elephantine price tag.

Thanks for reading and enjoy your travels!

Photo of Big Ben and London phone box by 13bobby

Topic:  Tips and Ideas | 2 Comments
Tags:  London

About the author

Paul Crompton is an avid reader and has a passion for cars and technology, primarily. He loves traveling to whichever exotic travel location which is cheap. His dream is to become an advertising executive.