London: Insider’s Guide

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A stone carving on Lion Bridge at Alnwick Castle in Northumberland. Photo courtesy Visit Britain.

Where to Stay and Eat

Best bang-for-your-buck hotels
In London, Philip favors many of the Firmdale hotels, including the new flagship Ham Yard Hotel, and many of the Red Carnation and Dolce Group hotels. They’re all small and quirky, the staff know Philip well and take good care of his guests, and he can often get quite good rates. Red Carnation’s Milestone Hotel has excellent family apartments. At the Egerton House, the garden rooms are especially lovely and you can help yourself at the honor bar.

Best hotels for a splurge
For location, nothing comes close to the Mandarin Oriental. It’s just across from Hyde Park and Harvey Nichols. What more could you ask for?

Outside of London, in the very green and beautiful county of Devon, Philip can sometimes arrange for guests to stay in one of the area’s most stunning manor homes. The two or three that he uses have been in the same families for centuries (one dates back to the 1500s), and they’re the perfect place to live out the fantasy of an Edwardian grand weekend, complete with curtsying ladies’ maids and butlers, and dinner tables groaning with silver and china.

Best-loved neighborhood restaurant
For simple but good food and quality service, head to Ebury Restaurant and Wine Bar in elegant Pimlico Village, just down the street from Winston Churchill’s home.

Chez Bruce is Bruce Poole’s award-winning Michelin-starred London restaurant, serving unpretentious but immaculately prepared food with a strong French influence. It is a favorite with local foodies and well worth a journey south of the river to the borough of Wandsworth.

Must-have dish
Fish and chips is widely available and eaten by everyone, but for something more unusual, try  “pie and mash,” a traditional working man’s meal, particularly linked to the East End of London, served with a green parsley sauce known as “liquor,” and topped with chili vinegar. You could also try it with jellied eels, but that’s more of an acquired taste.

Meal worth the splurge
Dinner, the restaurant from the mad genius Heston Blumenthal at the Mandarin Oriental Hyde Park, is worth every pound. If you have six in your party, booking the chef’s table makes economic sense and is a memorable experience.

Chiltern Firehouse is the hottest ticket in town. It’s owned by André Balazs, the greatest hotelier since Caésar Ritz, and the kitchen is run by the great Nuno Mendes, hailed as the modern-chef’s chef. The food certainly lives up to the hype, but at the moment it is thought that even God would have to wait for a table. Perhaps not the young royals, though, who seem to be regulars.

What to See and Do

Don’t miss
The Sir John Soane House-Museum is an absolute gem. Soane, the eighteenth-century architect behind the Bank of England and many homes of the landed gentry, collected Roman and medieval antiquities, architectural drawings, paintings, and sculptures, and displayed this amazing treasure in his London home, right in the heart of the ancient Inns of Court.

A day-trip from London, some 80 miles away, is the prehistoric Avebury stone circle. It’s every bit as impressive as Stonehenge but less well known—consequently, no crowds. Visitors can walk freely among the stones and, if visiting with an expert, seek out the hidden carvings, which are seen only from particular angles.

Don’t bother
Madam Tussaud’s is overrated and not worth the high price and lengthy queues. Even paying for priority entrance still entails a long wait.

Yes, you’ll see the best horses in the world—and the most outrageous hats—at the Royal Ascot (in June), but it’s become a little too popular unless you have the budget to arrange access to the Royal Enclosure. A much better alternative is the Henley Royal Regatta, a rowing race that takes place in late June or early July. The crowd is much better behaved than they are at Ascot. The racecourse is stunning (on the Thames), and Philip reserves a special area where his guests can watch the race; they then go to a lovely place nearby for lunch, sometimes in a private home.

Minden Band at attention. Courtesy Extraordinary Britain

Hidden gems
Four miles south of Trafalgar Square is the lovely village of Dulwich with the wonderful Dulwich Picture Gallery, filled with an astonishing collection of masterpieces. It is easily accessible by train—a ten-minute journey. A few miles downriver is the National Maritime Museum and, near it, the Prime Meridian, where you can stand with one foot in the Western Hemisphere and the other in the Eastern. Then there are all those ancient and beautiful churches in the city of London, some of which, such as All Hallows by the Tower, date back to the seventh century. All of them are open to visitors, and a number hold free lunchtime concerts.

Cheap thrills
All of London’s museums are free, including the Science Museum and the Victoria and Albert—both well worth a visit. Then there are the London markets: street markets, selling their wares from open barrows. Two of the best are the Borough Market, not far from Shakespeare’s Globe, and the colorful Columbia Road Sunday Flower Market. Soccer fans can get tickets to tour the home stadiums of some of the world-famous London teams, such as Chelsea FC and Arsenal FC.

How to spend a Sunday
The Columbia Flower Market in East London is worth a visit and is open only on Sundays, as is Spencer House in London, the ancestral home of the family of Diana, Princess of Wales. The Wallace Collection in Manchester Square is a sanctuary for lovers of decorative and fine arts, spanning the fifteenth to the nineteenth centuries. Combine a visit to this superb collection with afternoon tea or a light meal in the courtyard restaurant, flooded with natural daylight. For those who are more active, the roof climb at the O2 Arena in Greenwich is a runaway success with all ages; after, you can use the cable car across the Thames to explore the trendy East End.

A view of the Thames from Victoria Tower. Photo courtesy Visit Britain.

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