Things Tourists Should Do in London!!

Rollonfriday is a law gossip website passing titbits on about what is happening in law practices around Britain. So I was not expecting to find them running a column on tips for tourists visiting our countries and, in particular, London.
About 30 years ago, the “New Statesman” had a competition about the same thing and some seem to have been revamped such as the customary practice on entering a tube train to shake the hand of every passenger in your carriage.
The contributors to rollonfriday have added such gems as taking your ghetto-blaster (are these still around?) to the British Library reading room and London taxi drivers are happy to be paid in euros or dollars as well as pounds (try a Scottish tenner and see what happens with some of them. I’m not sure about tourists travelling free on the tube and all you need to do is leapfrog the turnstiles and there are others that I’ll not mention here.
It suggests swimming in the Thames on one of the south bank beaches is a great treat and the best position to see a cricket match is standing in front of the white boards you find there.
For all of them see www.rollonfriday.co.uk

Big Ben is 150 Today

Walk across Westminster Bridge in London and at some stage you will be barred by a tourist taking a picture of the tall building that houses Big Ben, the bell that everyone hears at some stage in their lives. .Be it on HP sauce bottles, the opening credits of the old London Films, BBC news or a host of other services, the use of the building immediately tells the world it is related to London. To use that much overused word, it is iconic. As one tourist that was interviewed said, it is to London as the Eiffel tower is to Paris, the Opera house is to Sydney and the Statue of Liberty is to New York.
So you’ll have seen the publicity proclaiming that the bell, Big Ben itself, is 150 years old today.
Is it really or is this a convenient day?
A bell was cast in August 1856, tested until October 1857 when a crack appeared in the bell that was over 3 foot long. A new bell was cast in April 1858 and took 30 hours to hoist it from the ground up to its resting position in October 1858. It first rang from its present position on 11 July 1859 but cracked in September and didn’t ring again till 1863. Some say it is that crack that gives it the distinctive sound. One of the four bells that ring the quarter hours was used instead.
So whether it is 150 or 151 doesn’t matter. If it weren’t around there would be one very substantial fewer tourist draw. And whilst the building features in all the drawings, paintings and photographs it is this one bell inside it that attracts the visitors.

London, a Bargain for Tourists?

In New York last week, Reuters sponsored a tourism conference last week. One feature that seemed to be agreed on by the chief executives of a number of online travel sites was that London was one of the bargains for travelling Americans in 2009. (I think they probably mean Britain as well.)
The reason?
Currency fluctuations.
That helps overseas visitors since the pound has dropped quite a bit against the American dollar, the euro and a lot of other currencies. As well as that, air fares have dropped and tour operators bringing incoming tourists to Britain have held or reduced prices.
But is it better value for Britons to come to London now as well?
Hotel prices have dropped but most of us felt some were pretty expensive already. Adverts in the papers by hotel chains offering 3 nights for the price of 2 and other deals make accommodation look cheaper but since travel by business people is down, those hotels catering for them have more rooms free. And if a hotel is built on a business park, then at the weekends, these places are fairly empty. So, if there is transport or you have a car then these are the places worth considering.
But there are other costs.
As I have written before, travelling on the bus and tube in London is expensive compared to the likes of Edinburgh, Sheffield and Cardiff to name but three. But you can walk. London is bigger than Paris to walk around but, if you plan, there is a lot to see in fairly small areas.
And London has lots of free museums and events to see so I think it can be done less expensively.
But a bargain for Brits as well as overseas visitors? I’m not so sure about that.

When attracting tourists messes things up

Last December the state government of NSW in Australia decided to launch Family Funday Sunday. The idea was to bring more people onto ferries and into the city. To do this it cut the price a family ticket to just $2.50 (about £1.20). The Sydney Morning Herald reports that Sunday was already the most crowded day of the week for ferry rides so guess what happened. The ferries, already busy, couldn’t cope whilst trains and buses had loads of capacity but no discounted offers.
It got so bad that the last RiverCat to Parramatta (about an hour’s journey) couldn’t carry the last 100 passengers so they were left to their own devices.
The obvious change seems to give discounts on trains and buses and forget discounting the ferries. (although getting on the best harbour in the world on a gorgeous day is very enticing)
Now in London, we have a pretty expensive underground, a pretty expensive bus service (compared to Cardiff, Edinburgh, Birmingham, New York, Boston, Paris and almost another hundred or so places you could name) but do we entice visitors with discounts at slack times? Not really, no we just have the equivalent of a cheap day return. And if you commute into London for a visit that gets expensive. From Guildford it is £15.90 with the tube/bus usage included. Last week I got a single to Leeds from Kings Cross for £11.50!
No chance of attracting too many tourists in the south east with our prices is there?