London 2013

[palmer_eldritch]

You can find lovely big green parks without driving out to the green belt too. Try Richmond Park - it has deer and a nice view. I think it belongs to The Queen so it's a bit Old Worldy by default I guess. The King of England used to hunt his deer there. (I mean, I don't know if you care about that stuff but if you're looking for a bit of Merry Olde England it might work:)

I live in the middle of a hay field, so I would be more interested in gardens.  I'm not actually thinking Middle Ages, more like what a typical Modern English would do (nyuk nyuk).  Might be hard to explain.  Jane Goodall might be the best analogy.  Trouble is, people with the pertinent info are all like "What the shit do you want to go to London for?"  Reminds me of how when I told Scots that I was just visiting their country to see the sights, they looked at me like I was a fookin moran.

Fair enough. Ordinary Londoners do go and sit in the parks though, when it's sunny. Probably Hyde Park or Green Park more than Richmond I guess. You could take a picnic. Cheese and pickle sandwiches and some apples maybe.

[DraconianOne]

RHS gardens at Wisley - but you will need a car.

[Yegolev]

Fair enough. Ordinary Londoners do go and sit in the parks though, when it's sunny. Probably Hyde Park or Green Park more than Richmond I guess. You could take a picnic. Cheese and pickle sandwiches and some apples maybe.

Very sound recommendation.  Noted.

EDIT: We will have a car.  I don't remember what we will be doing with it, but we will have one.

[Signe]

I love Kew Gardens.  I was there in the summer, though.  You'll have a great time in London.  It's good fun but it's hard to breathe here.  Not enough air. 

[K9]

As you mention gardens, has anyone recommended Kew Gardens yet?

They are fairly impressive and is the sort of attraction you can spy English people in the mist at.

I don't think so, Kew is a good shout, I'd also suggest Highgate Cemetary and Hampton Court.

That said, the gardens in Hyde Park and Regents Park are pretty nice themselves and we (Londoners) do love our parks. Holland Park, Battersea Park, Victoria Park, Richmond Park being less touristy; St. James, Green, Hyde and Regents Park being moreso.

Edit: Since you have a car, I'd be tempted to go out and visit some of the National Trust places down in Sussex, Surrey and Kent. Nymans, Ightam Mote and Wakehurst Place would be my recommendations.

[apocrypha]

Kew Gardens are superb, any time of year.

I also really like Richmond Park. It's a bit more plain than many of London's parks, but it's full of deer (at least it used to be when I was a kid) and it somehow feels very.... old. Very relaxing and a great place to people-watch. That makes me sound like some kind of weird stalker, sorry.

[Yegolev]

It didn't until you wrote that.

[apocrypha]

Hah, hoist by my own petard?


I'll stop now....   

[DraconianOne]

Trouble is, people with the pertinent info are all like "What the shit do you want to go to London for?" 

Penny slowly drops... my suggestion to Apocrypha to not go to London for a holiday doesn't apply to you. London is a great place to visit and I still do - even went for a day out there with the kids on my birthday this year. But Apoc currently lives in Leeds which is my favourite city in the UK - I can only offer my opinion that he might not find London to be as nice as is being made out here in comparison to there. The beers better in Leeds for a start. Also, chips and gravy.

[Yegolev]

Hmmm!

[Signe]

Yeah, London is great to visit and even to live if you love cities.  I can't think of many cities in the US that I'd even consider living in let alone actually do it, like I am with London.  To be honest, if I were going to visit London and wanted to explore outside the city, I'd go to France.  Paris is a city I wouldn't mind living in, actually.  I like the way they treat day to day life there.

[eldaec]

You can get a train from St Pancras to Paris in about 3 hours if it interests you. Paris does not agree with me but if you've never been it could be a worthwhile side trip.

Personally I'd recommend Cambridge more.

[Baldrake]

Cambridge really is quite beautiful. Bit of a beast to get there by train, iirc.

[Mosesandstick]

Train to Cambridge is about an hour and the coach takes around two. If you want to go there is no excuse really. My Aunt lives in Cambridge so I've been there enough times to find it boring  .

[NowhereMan]

That said, the gardens in Hyde Park and Regents Park are pretty nice themselves and we (Londoners) do love our parks. Holland Park, Battersea Park, Victoria Park, Richmond Park being less touristy; St. James, Green, Hyde and Regents Park being moreso.

Edit: Since you have a car, I'd be tempted to go out and visit some of the National Trust places down in Sussex, Surrey and Kent. Nymans, Ightam Mote and Wakehurst Place would be my recommendations.

[ur=http://www.royalparks.org.uk/parks/brompton-cemeteryl]Brompton cemetery[/url] is also an interesting spot to visit, very gothic and if you're down in central London it might be easier to fit in than Highgate (right next to West Kensington tube station, a few minutes from Earl's Court). It's the sort of thing I could imagine a kid really enjoying. For restaurants there's loads, there's been some really good suggestions already so I'll cheat a little and put in a link to a blog run-down that I've had pretty good experience with London Eater's Favourites

Cambridge isn't really too bad to get to, there's frequent trains from King's Cross and it's a shorter trip than Paris so you'd get a bit more time there. On the other hand I'm honestly not sure if the ticket will be much cheaper, if it was the same price and I had a couple of things in Paris I wanted to do (hitting the Eiffel Tower and one or two specific cafes for example) I'd probably pick Paris. Cambridge is definitely nicer for wandering around though and if you like olde worlde it's going to be a better choice certainly.

[K9]

Brighton is more awesome than Cambridge, less twee though.

[eldaec]

Ate at lardo ahead of panto at the Hackney Empire last night.

The panto isn't much use to summer visitors - but was fucking awesome as it is every year at the Empire (and blessedly not a soap star in sight).

As for Lardo - also highly recommended. The menu is a mix of pizza, pasta and sharing plates, though the pizza's are 'unusual' and work best as a bread to accompany the rest of the menu. Eating pretheatre so in something of a rush, but nonetheless got through half the cocktail and small plate menu all which were uniformly excellent, the octopus salad and quail dish especially. Given the quality it also managed to keep a very relaxed diner/trattoria feel, which outside of a gastropub can be hard to maintain in central London.

I feel this thread needs more restaurant notes.

[Yegolev]

I agree.

I don't know about going to London and then eating pizza.

[Samwise]

I don't know about going to London and then eating.     I can't think of another city where I've had so many mediocre-to-bad food experiences.

[Yegolev]

That's a large part of the reason behind this thread.  Some posters get butt-hurt when english food is insulted, so I figure I will get some good and earnest examples.

But really if you deep-fry everything, what do you expect?

[Ingmar]

My recollection of going there as a kid was that I had some really great Indian food and I don't remember any of the rest of it, food-wise.

[eldaec]

You're welcome to insult typical UK restaurants outside of London. It's not that there aren't good places, they are just frustratingly hard to find in the sea of mediocre chains. Indian is probably the obvious exception.

In London OTOH eating bad food is a choice. Do not make that choice.

[Samwise]

My recollection of going there as a kid was that I had some really great Indian food and I don't remember any of the rest of it, food-wise.

It seems like you need to know where to go for the good Indian food.  The first couple of times I tried Indian food in London I went on the theory that I could follow the same approach I do in SF for, say, burritos or Chinese, where I can pick a place at random (avoiding chains of course) and it'll be decent at worst.  This approach does not work in London.

On the other hand, the last time I used Yelp to find this place, and it was some of the best Indian food I've had.

[K9]

Tayyaabs is awesome; I'll acknowledge that sorting the good from the bad in London isn't as straightforward as in other cities, but I agree with eldaec, there really is no excuse to eat bad food in London.

Took my Japanophile sister to Bone Daddies for lunch the other day, she proclaimed it the only place worth eating Ramen in London (although she hasn't been to Ittenbari, which is also great.)

[Khaldun]

Definitely hit up either (or all): Kew Gardens, Hampstead Heath, Highgate Cemetary if you're looking for greenery.

Find some good gastropubs for lunches--there are quite a lot.

I used to like browsing Foyles Bookstore for the sheer non-intuitive hostility of the way it was organized; Forbidden Planet is nearby and that was a good geek experience. Not sure if Foyles is more coherently organized these days. Good walk from there down to Covent Garden. Sometimes I'd walk all the way from Tottenham Court Road Tube to Trafalgar Square, that was a good slice-of-London walk.

Camden Town Market was always fun but haven't done that in a long time, it could well suck now, I dunno.

[Krakrok]

I liked the Victoria & Albert Museum (photo below) quite a bit. I'd also second Hampton Court as you get a palace and garden combined. They were demonstrating medieval cooking in the kitchens.

I'd probably recommend against the car. My friend rented a car and he said they only used it to drive to Stonehenge and the rest of the time parking was really expensive. We skipped the car and spent two weeks taking the tube. Take a look at the London Pass.

[Distinct]

I liked the Victoria & Albert Museum (photo below) quite a bit.

V&A seconded.

In fact the room you photograph there is probably one of my favourite places to visit.

The work in the artifacts there are amazing.   The quality is unbelievable.

The room is full of commisioned copies of many of the most famous statues, columns and decorated walls and ceilings in the ancient world.
Some of the copies are now in much better condition that the originals and some are the only remaining record of them as the originals no longer exist intact.

[Furiously]

And if you are ever in Orlando, Victoria & Albert's is a GREAT place to eat a yummy seven course meal...

[Rake]

If you can understand this then you might enjoy your trip a little more

http://youtu.be/4RwyPDPlFA8

[palmer_eldritch]

I went to L'Escargot over the weekend, which is a little more English than it sounds (owned by British chef Marco Pierre White). It's expensive but the food is beautiful and yes they do serve Escargot, swimming in garlic butter. Just drag them out of their shells with the special fork and mmm yum yum.

It's in Soho, which is nice and central.

I know booze is probably off the agenda with a child in tow but I have to mention Lowlander which is my new favourite pub (they do food too). They'll sit you down and give you a menu of beers. Page after page just of beers to choose from. They're more likely to be Belgian than British but it's all European, right? Fantastic place. I recommend the Tripel Karmeliet. Put the child on the Circle Line and let them do a complete circuit while you have a few, they'll be fine.

That last sentence is humour

[Yegolev]

Oh, not due to the child.

[DraconianOne]

I went to L'Escargot over the weekend, which is a little more English than it sounds (owned by British chef Marco Pierre White). It's expensive but the food is beautiful and yes they do serve Escargot, swimming in garlic butter. Just drag them out of their shells with the special fork and mmm yum yum.

It's in Soho, which is nice and central.

I know booze is probably off the agenda with a child in tow but I have to mention Lowlander which is my new favourite pub (they do food too). They'll sit you down and give you a menu of beers. Page after page just of beers to choose from. They're more likely to be Belgian than British but it's all European, right? Fantastic place. I recommend the Tripel Karmeliet. Put the child on the Circle Line and let them do a complete circuit while you have a few, they'll be fine.

I went to L'Escargot years ago - when they used to breed the snails they served on the skylight above the main dining room. My steak was overdone. Not a judgement on the place now as this was 25 years ago - I just haven't been back since. I did like going to Garlic & Shots on Frith St around the corner though when I lived in London.

I'm not going to comment on the Lowlander or Belgian beer because the ensuing rant about the destruction of the British beer industry will get me relegated to the Politics section. 

[Yegolev]

If I get a good steak anywhere on the Isles, I'll eat my underwear.

I watched the video.  I might be screwed, but since I managed to find a handful of English-speakers in Glasgow I think I should be OK in London.

Waffling on the car.  If I don't have one I feel trapped, but I'll think about skipping it.

[palmer_eldritch]

Tbh you don't need a car.

I had a car and literally never used it. I sold it because I was paying insurance for nothing.

[Signe]

I just spent six months in London without access to a car.  It's way more of a pain to get in a car and drive somewhere in London than it is to walk a bit to the market or around the corner to the closest tube station.  Then there's parking in London... NIGHTMARE!