Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
you'll now find lots of trendy bars, clubs,
restaurants, and vintage clothing outlets.
Much of the most fashionable life is found
just north of the Square Mile, around
Hox-
ton Square
and its periphery, including the
“Shoreditch Triangle,” formed by Old
Street, Great Eastern Street, and Shoreditch
High Street. There's always plenty going
on, making it a place to base yourself if you
want to take advantage of the intense, fluid
nightlife, but perhaps a little hectic if you
prefer your 8 hours and an early start.
Options for accommodations have grown
(p. 193) and there are plenty of good,
affordable places to eat, particularly in
Shoreditch
and
Dalston.
Immediately east of the City, the rede-
veloped Spitalfields area boasts a number
of great (and historic) markets, including a
craft market still trading in the old
Spital-
fields Market
(p. 152) building.
Brick Lane is the heart of London's
Bangladeshi community, and still a great
place for a curry. Farther east, the shiny
stadia of
Olympic Park
(p. 176) represents
the area's biggest development for a
generation.
Docklands
In 1981, in the most ambitious
scheme of its kind in Europe, the London
Docklands Development Corporation
(LDDC) was formed to redevelop the then-
moribund dockyards of Wapping, the Isle
of Dogs, the Royal Docks, and Surrey
Docks. The area is bordered roughly by
Tower Bridge to the west and London City
Airport to the east. Despite some early
setbacks and a couple of ill-timed reces-
sions, the plan was ultimately successful.
Many businesses have moved here;
Thames-side warehouses have been con-
verted to Manhattan-style lofts and muse-
ums, entertainment complexes, shops, and
an ever-growing list of restaurants has
popped up at this 21st-century river city in
the making.
Canary Wharf,
on the Isle of Dogs, is the
heart of Docklands. This 28-hectare (69-
acre) site is dominated by a 240-m (787-ft.)
tower, One Canada Square, which remains
the tallest building in the U.K. until the
“Shard” is completed at London Bridge.
NORTH & NORTHWEST LONDON
King's Cross & St. Pancras
Long a seedy
area on the fringe of central London, King's
Cross is in the midst of a massive regenera-
tion program. Millions of pounds are being
ploughed into its decaying infrastructure.
Six Tube lines convene underneath King's
Cross Station, and it also provides direct
links with airports at Gatwick (via regular rail
services) and Heathrow (via the Tube). Adja-
cent St. Pancras International is the new
transport hub for Eurostar services to Paris
and Brussels, and one of the finest architec-
tural icons of the Age of Steam, with a huge
single-span roof—the largest in the world
when it was built—gargoyles, and Gothic
revival towers. Once pretty much the last
place you'd want to base yourself, King's
Cross is now no more (or less) dangerous
than anywhere else in central London.
Camden
London's alternative heart lies
just east of Regent's Park. Since the 1960s,
its thicket of clubs and pubs have been at
the forefront of a succession of—usually
short-lived—musical scenes: Punk, Brit-
pop, alt-folk, the embers of which often
continue smoldering here some time after
the wider blaze has died down. Camden's
various sprawling markets (p. 152), which
occupy a number of venues north of the
Tube stop and sell a vast abundance of arts,
crafts, and fashions, have turned the area
into one of London's major tourist destina-
tions, with tens of thousands pitching up
here each weekend. It's a noisy, vibrant,
crowded, and intense place, and for all
those reasons, perhaps not the best area to
base yourself unless you're here to party. In
any case, Camden doesn't really have much
of a hotel scene, although there are some
good restaurants. Adjacent
Primrose Hill
is
a pretty urban village of Victorian terrace
houses rolling up a hill on the north side of
Regent's Park. From the hill, some 78m
(256 ft.) up, you have a panoramic sweep
of central London to the southeast.
Hampstead
This residential suburb of
north London, beloved by Keats and Hog-
arth, is a favorite excursion for Londoners.
Everyone from Sigmund Freud and D. H.
Lawrence to Anna Pavlova and John Le
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