Going to London... advice?

[Land Outcast]

Well, in July I'll be visiting London for an awfully short period of time. I will be staying 4 days or so in London, also going to Edinburgh, and somewhere else...

All I know [for the time being] is that I'll be there sometime between June 28 and July 12, in the Royal National Hotel (Russel Square). The lack of information is not my doing: The school organizes a trip to the UK because this is our last year (of school) before Uni.

Aside from perhaps searching for a game to join (as soon as I get a schedule of our movement within the UK) I was thinking on paying a visit to a gamestore -at least to see a physical place where D&D material is available for purchase-. Any advice/map/warning/candy is welcome.

Thanks in advance.

EDIT: I could also use any other advice regarding London.

note: discovered that those 4 days are actually our "free days", the rest of my stay in London (other 3-4 days) I'll have "tourist schedule" until 6 p.m.

 

[humble minion]

Kill some time in the British Museum while you're there. It's within easy walking distance of where you're staying, is AFAIK free to enter (donation appreciated), and has a truly amazing collection of statuary, weaponry, artifacts, jewellery, and other D&D-related stuff. You'll get more out of that than a week spent in a game shop.

 

[Mighty Veil]

I've been to London 5 times. Love the city. It's the type of city you'll find something you'll like and never feel the need to venture outside of the city to visit tourist places.

London is expensive. Aside from what your hotel offers for meals. Grocery stores and pubs are a cheap place to get a meal. Your hotel should have all the tourist spots if you're interested in stuff like that. Like a boat ride down the Thames river. Most clubs are in the Piccadilly area and a couple others. Goods stores are found on Bond street.

Buy a Time Out magazine at the airport. It'll tell you what's there to do that week. Use the internet - lots of good sites. Get a city map. Taxi can be difficult but I find they're cheaper than what amateur taxis charge (also feel safer).

If you like clubs my experience is this: if there's Japanese, the more of them, better the hot spot (do eat at Yo Sushi! at least once). Muslims tend to give white Westerns a cold shoulder. I wouldn't stay in a club or restaurant with many. You could get roughed up and their table manners are considered rude by our North American standards (unless you like loud burps throughout your meal). Not very PC but it's honesty.

Plan your day in advanced, especially Sunday. The city shuts down. The subway (the Tube) is easy to learn but does take time to go from one place to another. If you like sight seeing. Do that on one day. Do your interests next days (museum or shopping).

Let me dig out one of my maps. Your hotel might be farther away from areas you'd want to see then you think...

 

[Mighty Veil]

Oh geez.. you are far from the action. Plan ahead or you'll spend your days traveling from tube to another.

http://www.tfl.gov.uk/assets/images/general/mapt-tube-standard-colourmap.gif
http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?hl=en...97,-126197,170908502815309465&li=lmd&z=14&t=m

Visit Leicester square.

I don't know any game stores. I'd sooner shop for what I can't buy here than pay double for stuff I can. A simple google search brought me to Orc Nest (6 Earlham St) - http://www.orcsnest.com/clubs.htm

Stay out of East London (unless you're very good at blending in and are used to rough neighborhoods). There's reasons why the tubes and taxis tend not to go there.

http://www.games-workshop.com/
http://www.fantasycentre.biz/

And I'm sure there a few indie publishers too. Mongoose isn't in London.

 

[Sidekick]

Having just got back home from 2 years in London here's my recommendations.


The British Museum - in my mind only topped by the Met in New York. The British Museum is a king of museums - and there's plenty of weapons etc in it for the whole D&D inspiration. The Rosetta Stone, the reading room (where Karl Marx wrote the communist Manifesto), the marbles from the Parthenon in Athens.

You won't regret spending time in there - allot a minimum of 4-5 hours.

Gaming stores There is Forbidden Planet on Shaftsbury Avenue, which is a good all round geek/comic/collectables store. Te Orc's Nest is a nice, small RPG/minatures store, but their books are all shrink wrapped - so you can't browse there.

General Sight seeing: If you have the funs and the time you should go u the London Eye - at that time of year it'll be great. Hmm take a walk through Hype Park on a sunny day and people watch.

The galleries and museums are almost all free - the National GAllery, the Tate Modern and the National Portrait Museum (between Trafalgar square and Leicester Sq) are all very good. Oh and Camden Town is GREAT for more alternative fashions and a more edgier feel to a market area.

Safety tips: The East end isn't as bad as everyone says it is but you should probably avoid it just to be safe. If you're female then never get into a minicab (unlicenced taxi) alone. Also sounds silly but at that time of year always take some water with you on the tube, it can get up to 55 celcius down in the lower tubes (northern, piccadilly lines etc) and there isn't a week or day that goes by during the summer where someone doesn't faint on the tube.


Also invest in a London A to Z of some kind.

Have fun man. London is a great city and you should enjoy it. Just remember you'll never be able to see it all in 4-5 days. Just like New York, Tokyo or Paris. They're too big and there's soo much stuff to see. Just firgure out 2 things you want to do, places you want to see each day as a max.

Have fun!

 

[S'mon]

Kill some time in the British Museum while you're there. It's within easy walking distance of where you're staying, is AFAIK free to enter (donation appreciated), and has a truly amazing collection of statuary, weaponry, artifacts, jewellery, and other D&D-related stuff. You'll get more out of that than a week spent in a game shop.

Go to the British Museum and visit Playin' Games right outside the entrance - it's the best games shop in central London. If you can you should visit the Victoria & Albert museum also, it has a great collection of artifacts.

 

[S'mon]

If you like clubs my experience is this: if there's Japanese, the more of them, better the hot spot (do eat at Yo Sushi! at least once). Muslims tend to give white Westerns a cold shoulder. I wouldn't stay in a club or restaurant with many. You could get roughed up and their table manners are considered rude by our North American standards (unless you like loud burps throughout your meal). Not very PC but it's honesty.

Far be it for me to be Politically Correct, but (1) all us Brits are rude by North American standards - why I was insulted in a local Thai restaurant just last night*! and (2) Muslims may not be very friendly on average, but they are very very unlikely to rough you up! Our 'Indian' restaurants (which may be Hindu, Muslim or even Buddhist) sell often very tasty food at low prices, and are perfectly safe. Even food poisoning is extremely unlikely.

*By a white father with his family, who decided I'd been talking too loudly for his delicate little offspring.

 

[S'mon]

Safety tips: The East end isn't as bad as everyone says it is but you should probably avoid it just to be safe. If you're female then never get into a minicab (unlicenced taxi) alone. Also sounds silly but at that time of year always take some water with you on the tube, it can get up to 55 celcius down in the lower tubes (northern, piccadilly lines etc) and there isn't a week or day that goes by during the summer where someone doesn't faint on the tube.


Also invest in a London A to Z of some kind.

All good advice. I worked in the East End for years, it's not like parts of some north American cities, and it doesn't have huge mono-ethnic ghettoes, but it can be dangerous by British standards. London is a fairly high crime city; take sensible precautions against pick pockets and street robbery, though most street robbery is teens mugging other teens for their mobile phones. ALWAYS TAKE WATER ON THE TUBE. An A-Z is vital so you can walk five minutes from Russell Square to the British Museum (and Playin' Games games shop outside) without paying £10 for a taxi.
BTW, I worked at Russell Square too - where most of London is jam-packed with great cafes, restaurants etc, the immediate vicinity of RS is kind of a wasteland, I think because it's mostly University owned - it's in the main London University district. There's a million great places on side streets just off Oxford Street, though.

 

[covaithe]

Here's a bit of random London advice that has served me well: you can tell a good kebab shop from a mediocre one by the meat on the spit. The good ones have actual sliced meat piled up on the spit, and the mediocre/bad ones have a compressed formed meat.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Go to the British Museum and visit Playin' Games right outside the entrance - it's the best games shop in central London. If you can you should visit the Victoria & Albert museum also, it has a great collection of artifacts.

Quoted and bolded for truth. Playin' Games is on a street right opposite the British Museum main entrance and is an excellent games store, with a wide range of stuff you can browse through. Orcs nest seal everything in plastic bags, so you can't really browse there. Forbidden Planet has a huge magazines area (it is their main stock in trade), but a tiny RPG area. Don't go there for RPG goodness!

I work in central london and zip around it a lot. Most of the advice you've been given here is for long term visits; you are only here for 4 days so it probably won't be necessary. I wouldn't get an AtoZ for just 4 days unless you are going to be doing a lot of travelling by yourself.

Are your days free, or have you got a lot of stuff scheduled by the trip organisers?

To get an idea about where to find 'playin games', go to maps.google.co.uk and search for 'Royal National Hotel'. This is on Bedford Way. Go south to Bloomsbury square, and then out of the bottom corner at montague street, then turn right into Great Russell Street. Playin Games is on Museum Street which is then the second on the left (drag the map upwards to see it)

Is there anything else you'd like to know about? (memorable museums or monuments, types of food you like eating?