London Overview

I lived in London over about six weeks in between Sunday, July 19, 2009, and Sunday, September 13, 2009. (It's not longer because I made other trips and also flew home for two weeks.) I found it to be a decent / good city.

Architecture / City Design
There are two architectural features of London that distinguish it from all other cities I've visited.

One, its narrow streets (a.k.a., mews, closes, passages). Throughout the city (in both wealthy and less-wealthy neighborhoods), I'd constantly find little (often one-lane, if cars are allowed at all)roads fronting residential buildings. These cozy streets make it easy to escape a busy street, making it feel like you've suddenly dropped into a town's hidden backroads. Sometimes these streets have shops. Even if not, they often have a pub on a corner, near a sign warning patrons not to be too loud when relaxing outside. (It's clearly legal or at least generally acceptable to drink on sidewalks near bars.)

These lanes likely exist because they pre-date modern transportation planning (which requires wide thoroughfares). In fact, most of London's road layout pre-dates this era, the era of straight city grids.

Two, its parks. London has many parks (frequently called squares, gardens, grounds, or lawns) throughout the city. These parks are often lovely, a nice combination of grass, trees, water, and flowers: great for strolling, lying in the sun, sitting on a bench and eating, admiring flora, and appreciating the surrounding buildings. The generally high quality of these parks combined with their near ubiquity make for a very pleasing, green city.

Incidentally, many of these parks are privately owned. Indeed, it's often hard to tell whether a park is public or private without reading the sign. The majority of privately-owned parks are open to the public, making the distinctive between public and private generally unimportant. Only a minority of privately-owned parks are restricted, usually to residents of the adjacent block.

Generally, the city has attractive buildings, as do most cities with some history. Often these buildings have character, whether an old duke's residence or a centuries-old pub. Indeed, it felt as if medieval pubs were everywhere. These old bars had appropriate, timeless wood decors. I enjoyed wandering, looking around, examining buildings, and reading plaques about buildings' history.

Sights
London contains an incredible amount of tourist attractions: countless museums, preserved houses, impressive churches, large street markets, etc. In fact, I claim London is inexhaustible. (Anyone who knows me knows how much, how fast, and how thoroughly I explore. Thus, a statement such as this one, meaning that it's impossible to list everyplace worthy of attention, should truly be taken as incredibly strong as it is.) I leave London with tons left to do. For instance, I didn't visit a single site related to U.K.'s government.

Because there are so many sights in the city, it would make a great place to run a Game. In addition to the famous sights, many buildings in London (in touristy and non-touristy areas alike) have circular blue plaques attached to them, saying that a particular person (who, almost always, I've never heard of) lived or worked there. If one needed a clue site in a particular location and couldn't find any real attraction nearby--which would be surprising--, these plaques could be an easy answer.

London, while awash in history, has surprisingly little physical remains from early periods, such as when the Romans ruled. Sure, there are a few remnants of walls scattered around, but not much else. They've all been demolished during the city's various periods of rebuilding. The city's disproportionately proud it discovered about two vertical feet of stone that made part of the foundation of a Roman-era temple. They moved the foundation one block, raised it to street level, and put it on display, a sign of their inordinate happiness at finding even such a small piece of their lost past. Barcelona, in contrast, has substantially more remains from the Romans.

Also, most major museums, especially the large/famous ones, are free! :) I found this especially convenient because it meant that I, without feeling ripped-off, could sneak off from work, browse a museum for two hours, and go back to work, returning to the museum another day.

Walking
Incidentally, I explored London, getting the feel of each neighborhood and seeing the sights, by doing many walking tours. In particular, I brought with me a copy of Frommer's 24 Great Walks in London and ended up doing two-thirds of them. Some days I'd sneak off from work for two hours (more or less) and do one. Occasionally, on an ambitious weekend day, I'd do two or maybe three.

Costs
The city is a bit expensive, costing probably 1.5x costs in the bay area for similar goods (transportation, food, etc.). Roughly this means if the price is reasonable when you think of the listed number as if it were in dollars, it's reasonable for London.

Food
Restaurants in London are decent enough on average. It's certainly no New York or San Francisco. While I did go to some good restaurants in London, I never went to an amazing one, never one that I would tell a friend to go out of his way for. Also, London simply doesn't have the diversity of cuisines of those latter cities. Yes, London has a wide variety of Indian regional cuisines and a sizable Middle Eastern selection as well, but it lacks a lot: e.g., much of the rest of Asia and most of North and South America as well. (That is, London's good for places where Great Britain had colonies in recent times, but omits most of the rest of world.)

London's restaurants aside, the U.K. does have some appealing aspects to its food scene. For instance, they really care about their cream and yogurt: clotted cream, single cream, double cream, etc.

Transportation
The tube and rail system are amazingly extensive. More than ten tube lines cross the capital. Each tube line is itself complex; for instance, the one I take to work (the District Line) branches three times on its western end and two times on its eastern, making the one line by itself as broad as many major cities' whole subway systems. That said, the system can be confusing at first, especially when figuring out when to swipe cards, especially during transfers from tube to national rail and back. By the way, I rarely used national rail.

At the height of rush hour (6pm) on a major line in a non-interchange station (i.e., not many people are getting off), sometimes trains are full--not even standing room remains. This isn't so bad because people are generally good at queuing, meaning you wait in line and get on a train a few trains/minutes later.

The most interesting (impressive?) feature of London's transportation system is that one cannot see train tracks when walking around London, even when the tracks are above ground. The bridges over the tracks have high enough walls to entirely hide this piece of infrastructure. (I think this is a generally a good thing, but I'm not sure.)

England drives on the left. Most crosswalks have "look left" or "look right" signs painted on roads; I found these very helpful. Initially I snickered when I read about them in a guidebook. I was wrong -- they provided important, life-saving reminders at times.

Incidentally, almost all intersections have railings nearby to prevent jaywalking / to enforce crossing at the crosswalk. I think in crowded cities such as London that this helps coordinate pedestrian and vehicular traffic.

By the way, some large, enclosed rail stations feel open, outdoors, perhaps due to how they're covered. I liked being in those stations.

Weather
It was partially cloudy most of the time I was there. But, London weather is fickle. I learned that even if the prediction was for mostly sunny skies and no chance of precipitation, I should carry an umbrella. Even on days with such a forecast, one cloud with rain was liable to blow overhead at some point. Only once over my entire stay was the rain truly a downpour (and in that case the forecast predicted it). Most rains were gentle and accompanied by only a mild wind; thus, it wasn't unpleasant to walk around using an umbrella in these conditions. All that said, the weather during my last two weeks in London was great. It was often sunny during those two weeks, and I think it only rained twice, and the forecast was right every day.

The clouds in Great Britain are large and puffy. Also, they move quickly: when you look up, you can see them racing across the sky. This probably is related to the variability of London's weather.

Miscellaneous
I won't mention things that appear in every guide book, such as the famously difficult licensing test for cab drivers. Rather, here are some observations you may not have read elsewhere:

London has many people on the street giving away or selling newspapers. Thus, many people on the tube read the same newspaper, e.g., the metro. When I walk by the newspapermen, I always think of the people doing the same job centuries ago. The image pops into my head, perhaps because it's London, or maybe it's the Dickens I had to read in high school.

For safety, much of the city is covered by closed-circuit TV, especially on narrow streets and under bridges. One often sees signs about this.

I noticed all high, exposed surfaces where people don't walk (e.g., building ledges, on top of billboard frames) had spikes facing up. I realized these were placed there to prevent birds (especially pigeons) from landing, roosting, and pooping.

I'll close with a final interesting facts: TVs require a license fee (which is used to subsidize programming). The organization that enforces and monitors this even drives around a van with TV detecting equipment. People sometimes offer interesting excuses about why they didn't pay the fee. (I thought that list of excuses, published in 2008, is pretty funny. The 2009 list of excuses (scroll down) is also available, but I found it less humorous because the anecdotes/statements are shorter, with less set-up.