Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Chapter 7
West End London, Soho, and Convent
Garden
Perhaps England's most visited and lauded area, West End London and Convent Garden are
a manic concoction of tourists, monuments, museums, tacky souvenir shops, fast food joints,
overpriced bars, and scam artists. Trafalgar Square, Piccadilly Circus, West End musicals;
the area swarms with famous sights and achingly authentic grandeur. The crowds can be
overbearing and it's difficult to avoid the feeling that you're one of thousand sheep ticking
off the photo opportunities. This is the part of London that Londoners desperately avoid,
however, so much of the first-time London tick list belongs here.
Soho, on the other hand, has little in the way of sights. But the streets dance on a carpet of
revelry and bohemia, mingling with the residue of the district's long-standing reputation for
prostitution and dingy music venues.
Travel Essentials
West End London and Soho sits in between the City of London and Mayfair. This is prob-
ably the easiest area to reach in the whole of London, with just about every Underground
line cutting through the central stations like Leicester Square, Piccadilly Circus, and Charing
Cross. These stations are horribly crowded, especially during rush hour, so it's much more
pleasant to explore the area on foot with either of these three stations as your entry point. To
reach Soho you can also use Oxford Circus and Tottenham Court Road. Public city maps are
ubiquitous and it's difficult to get lost.
Essential Experiences
£FREE - The UK's greatest collection of European art is housed in the Na-
tional Gallery, including masterpieces like Van Gogh's Sunflowers . Thou-
sands of classics, from the 13 th to 19 th centuries, fill a grand collection of
rooms, and there's even a free guided tour to take. While it's not as big, this
is the London equivalent of Paris's The Louvre or Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum .
Off Trafalgar Square, www.nationalgaller y .org.uk .
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