There is one surefire way to waste time in London: use public transport. As worthy as it is in many ways, you’ve got to trek to the bus stop or the tube station, make sure you’re going the right way and then sit there while someone drives the vehicle along a preordained route that my get you fairly near where you want to go. Then you’re on foot again as you get to exactly where you wanted to go.
If you rent a car London is a much more manageable place. If you know your way around, you can just head off and you’ll be in the vicinity of yours destination in a little while, because London may be big, but it’s not that big. With satnav telling you what to do you can get there with no trouble, and if you’re the type who doesn’t trust an automated system to get you there, these things are improving all the time, so it’s time to accept the ways of the future, especially when the disembodied voice is doing you a favour.
Time is precious, and for most people a visit to London is only a matter of a few days, so it is best to organise your thoughts before you go. With a bit of planning you can work out an itinerary so efficient you’ll achieve your goals with plenty of time to spare.
One way to do this is to organise the little forays into geographical areas. North, south, east and west is and obvious way to start, and the centre is best tackled all in one day, rather than dipping in and out. If you’re visiting someone, check out what there is in the area that might be worth seeing. It’s a funny thing about city dwellers that they may only live down the road from something interesting, but they don’t bother to visit it. They think like locals, not tourists, so maybe you can show them the sights a little bit. If you rent a car London is easy to navigate, and another thing about people who live there is that many of them rely on public transport to get to work and back, which is all well and good, but it means they are missing out.
So, what is in the west that you might want to see? Not the West End – that’ in the centre. Museums, yes. The Royal Albert Hall, Hammersmith Odeon and further out there’s Kew Gardens. In the east, the Tower of London, Brick Lane and then all the buildings that have sprung up in recent years, as the docklands were repurposed and a new financial sector appeared. The Olympics did a lot for East London, so you might want to have a look at that kind of thing.
In south London, you’re on the way out to Surrey, but before you get there you have the Tate Modern and the Imperial War Museum. There’s Greenwich, with the lovely park where you can walk all the way up to Blackheath. In nearby New Cross there is historic Telegraph Hill not a million miles from the Old Kent Road. This city is full of names that ring a bell, and if you rent a car London opens up for you.
In the north you’ve got fashionable Hampstead where you can see how the other half lives. Regents Park, the British Library: whatever interests you, there is something worth seeing round there. And renting a car is the best way to do it.