Craig Cross's Blog, page 7

London blog: Guildhall -- Common Council

Here's a pub quiz question for you: how many Mayors do we have in London? (Nobody ever gets this right.) One? Two? If you think the answer is two then you're wrong, because the correct answer is thirty four. We have the Lord Mayor of London (covering just the City of London), another one for the City of Westminster, plus the actual Mayor of London who works out of City Hall (the one we vote for every five years). Then we have another Mayor for each of the thirty-one London boroughs. So...

London blog: London Duck Tour

Your kid wants to go on a sightseeing boat but you prefer a sightseeing bus, and you end up having a big ding dong argument about it and he stomps off in a huff. Well now you can avoid all of that drama by going on a London Duck Tour instead, because it combines a bus and a boat in one. They were originally built to transfer troops out to the bigger boats on D-Day, and you sometimes see pictures off them filled with fifty fearful soldiers as they chop through the Channel. Nowadays they look...

London blog: Sherlock Holmes Museum

If you're nuts enough to visit Madame Tussauds then you might end up doing the Sherlock Holmes Museum on the same day, because it's only two minutes round the corner. Tourists love a bit of Sherlock Holmes. Fish and chips and a cup of tea, catch a black cab down Baker Street, and then spend an hour walking round Sherlock Holmes' house. What could be more British than that? The first thing you need to do is have your photo taken with the Victorian copper outside the door. He's got a wooden...

London blog: Madame Tussauds

Madame Tussauds is something that Londoners are happy to leave to the tourists. If they want to spend forty minutes in the queue, thirty quid getting in, and two hours staring at a load of plastic people with goofy grins on their faces, then that's up to them. I honestly don't know why this place is so popular. Every time I catch a bus down the Euston Road I see a queue stretched out down the pavement with a couple of hundred people in it. The sun goes up and down while they're waiting....

London blog: Thames Barrier

The Thames Barrier is a bit of a pain to get to because you need to catch a bus from The O2. You can't really walk it (you'd need an extra pair of legs for that), and you can't catch a tube train either. TRS has some boats that go to the barrier but they don't actually stop and let you off -- all they do is sail around it. And the Thames Clippers keep motoring on to Woolwich -- that's too far to walk back. So it really is the bus or nothing. And it's hardly worth the bother, to be honest....

London blog: Albert Memorial

I wonder how we're going to be remembered when we die? Probably not with a 176 foot memorial. We'll just be a dog-eared photo at the back of someone's school album -- one of those pictures that have slipped out behind the crumpled-up carrier bags under the stairs. We mere mortals only have a choice of two memorials when we die: a gravestone covered in weeds, or a photograph covered in dust. When you're famous you can add a third type: a stone statue covered in bird droppings. But Albert was...

London blog: Abbey Road

It's amazing how many people are hanging around this little zebra crossing on Abbey Road. There are couple of benches on the corner of Grove End Road and Beatles fans are sitting on them, and on the arms of the seat, and on the brick walls, chatting happily and wondering where everyone is from. How far have you come? Who's your favourite Beatle? (Paul, Paul, Paul, Paul, and a few Ringos.) Beatles fans are generally quite a friendly lot. You wouldn't get this camaraderie with the Stones or...

London blog: Courtauld Gallery

When people sit at home planning their itinerary they usually pencil in an hour or two for a gallery (they have to squeeze in a bit of culture), but it's usually the National or Tate Modern. That's enough art for most people. They don't want to overdose on it. But if you're seriously into paintings then here's a tip from me: the best ones to visit are the National Gallery, Courtauld Gallery and Tate Britain (and Buckingham Palace if it's open). The V&A and Wallace Collection are worth a...

London blog: Staple Inn

If you want to see a Tudor building from the time of Shakespeare then here it is: Staple Inn. It's had a few renovations down the years, but it's basically the same as Shakespeare would have seen it when he was writing Romeo and Juliet. It was originally attached to one of the four Inns of Court, which were training schools for London's lawyers. Most of these fell into decay and were demolished or rebuilt by the Victorians, but Staple Inn was covered over in plain plaster and survived. In...

London blog: St. John's Gate

If you meet a St. John's Ambulance man today then it will probably be at the empty end of a church fete -- the deserted end where they put all the rent-a-toilets and first aid tables. They put a plaster on your knee, dab a bit of TCP on a bee sting if you get stung, slap you about a bit if you feint in the summer sun -- it's all simple stuff like that. Mum stuff. But if you met them 1,000 years ago then it would have been a totally different story because they started out as doctor monks in...