Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Missing from the list above is
St. Pancras Station,
the London hub for high-
speed Eurostar services to Paris and Brussels, as well as some domestic services to
the East Midlands and South Yorkshire. Restored and reopened in 2007, it connects
England with Belgium and France through the multibillion-pound
Channel Tunnel.
Visitor Information
The official
Visit London
online home is the excellent
www.visitlondon.com
. You
can download PDF brochures and maps, or have them mailed to a U.K. or U.S.
address, or ask any question about the city by filling out the online contact form at
www.visitlondon.com/contact-us
.
Once in the city, the
Britain and London Visitor Centre,
1 Lower Regent
Street, London SW1 4XT (
&
08701/566-366;
Tube: Piccadilly Circus), can help
you with almost anything, from the superficial to the most serious queries. Located
just downhill from Piccadilly Circus, it deals with procuring accommodations in all
price categories through an on-site travel agency, and you can also book bus or train
tickets throughout the U.K. It's open year-round Monday 9:30am to 6pm, Tuesday to
Friday 9am to 6pm, and Saturday and Sunday 9am to 4pm. Between April and Sep-
tember, weekday closing is a half-hour later. There are further helpful central infor-
mation points at:
King's Cross, St. Pancras,
LUL Western Ticket Hall, Euston
Road;
Holborn Station,
Kingsway;
Victoria Railway Station,
opposite Platform
8;
Piccadilly Circus Tube Station;
Liverpool Street Tube Station;
Euston
Rail Station,
opposite Platform 8;
Greenwich,
Pepys House, Cutty Sark Gardens
(
&
0870/608-2000
).
The Square Mile (see below) has its own visitor information center, the striking
City of London Tourist Information Centre,
St. Paul's Churchyard (
&
020/7332-
1456
). Opening hours are Monday to Saturday 9:30am to 5:30pm, Sunday 10am to
4pm.
London is such a web-savvy city that almost as soon as we recommend a news
source or blog, it is immediately matched or superseded by another. However, there
are some phenomenally useful London resources on the Internet. You'll find the latest
local news and weather at
www.bbc.co.uk/london
and
www.thisislondon.co.uk
.
LDN
(www.ldn.in) does a great job of aggregating information about all kinds of
events, deals, and trivia. The
Visit London Blog
(http://blog.visitlondon.com) man-
ages to combine officialdom with an eye for the offbeat.
Londonist
(http://londonist.
com) remains the best source for street-level coverage of arts, events, food, drink, and
London trivia. The
Great Wen blog
(http://greatwenlondon.wordpress.com) is
loaded with London miscellany. For the latest on London's theater scene, consult
www.officiallondontheatre.co.uk
. If you wish to attend Christian worship,
www.
cityevents.org.uk
has a regularly updated calendar of services at all the City's
churches. The Museum of London's
Streetmuseum
iPhone app uses augmented
reality and the inbuilt camera to superimpose historic images of London onto a view
of the modern streets. For regular features and updates, visit
www.frommers.com/
destinations/London
.
London's Neighborhoods in Brief
WEST END
Bloomsbury & Fitzrovia
Bloomsbury, a
world within itself, is bounded roughly by
Euston Road to the north, Tottenham Court
4
Road to the west, New Oxford Street to the
south, and Clerkenwell to the east. It is,
among other things, the academic heart of
London. There are several colleges here,
