Menu Close

Category: In London

A place in my memory: Mottingham

Majority of my readers would most likely not know Mottingham. Do you mean Nottingham, of Robin Hood fame?… Native Londoners may recognize the name of the village but give me a quizzical look as to why I would choose to highlight a rather nondescript location instead of one of hundreds…

From your friendly [former] London resident

I was checking the score of the last night’s MNF game on ESPN, when I came across Chris Berman’s “Fastest 3 minutes in Sports”. Introducing the annual NFL game played in London, he made the frequent mistake of misidentifying one of the iconic city landmarks. People! Let’s get this straight!…

Brief weekend recap

Our desire to move house has been quickly replaced by the pragmatic contentment with staying put. A sizable reduction in the rent amount has that type of effect on us. At the same time as we started to look for different accommodations, we suggested to our current landlord that in…

Random Illustrations: Pay-by-Phone parking

I first mentioned the phone-enabled parking charge payments in this article several months ago. Recently, while visiting friends in northwest London, I came across an entire area where all of the parking meters have been converted into the pay-by-phone operation. I suppose in this day and age everyone – and…

A trip to Legoland

Taking advantage of what might be the last – and first – nice-weather weekend in September, on Saturday we took the kids for a long-promised visit to Legoland. Of course, half of London had the same idea as us… The amusement park, located near Windsor, failed to make a great…

Check your crime levels

London’s Metropolitan Police (taking after the NYPD, unless I’m seriously mistaken) is testing a website that would map certain types of crime for all areas of Greater London. The crimes accounted for so far are only robberies, burglaries and vehicle crimes, but it still could be useful for any prospective…

A Queen sighting

Our guests not only managed to visit several of the London sights that we thus far shunned; they also came by an audience with Her Majesty the Queen. Ok, not really. But we ourselves only see the reigning monarch on TV, despite living just a dozen miles away from the…

The last busy weekend of the season

The weekend was spent in various activities involving our latest visitors, which explains the first non-travel two-day post gap since sometime last year. With our approaching long holiday, it should be the last active “home” weekend for a couple of months. Anyway, here is a brief re-cap. On Saturday, we…

Another active weekend

Lest anyone thinks that we long exhausted potential destinations in or around London, let me assure you that that is not true. Our target list has certainly dwindled down from several dozen point of interest to less than a dozen, but that less than a dozen remains. Today, we used…

A day-trip to Canterbury

The notion that we might have exhausted travel destinations by now could not be farther from the truth. Still plenty of places to go and see. So, today, we made a visit to Canterbury, the medieval spiritual center of England. The chief attraction is the soaring cathedral that dates back…

Lonely guy goes to war museums

The weather has been holding up pretty well all week – sunny at intervals, and quite warm, – but turned colder on Saturday. I had an idea all week, of visiting a couple of museums that I would be unlikely to visit in the company of my ladies, and the…

Aimless wanderer

The spring showed a bit of skin today, and I could only look out the window for so long before deciding that I’d better get up and go out. One of the first thoughts was a round of golf, but my last round in December managed to dampen my enthusiasm…

Sleepovers and food markets

A quick check of my posts for the last few months reveals that the chronicles of our daily doings have been lately limited to weekend happenstance. I can’t say that I am surprised by that. Sitting here thinking about things to write about, I am quite perplexed to pick something…

London’s Low Emission Zone

The indefatigable London mayor, Ken Livingstone, has just inaugurated a low emission zone (LEZ) scheme. It establishes stinging fees – £200 per trip – for high-polluting vehicles’ privilege of driving within Greater London. The heaviest lorries are subject to restrictions effective today, while other lorries, buses, coaches, minibuses and large…