Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Toilets
PHONING HOME
To Australia
T
0061 + area code without
the zero + number
To Ireland
T
00353 + area code without
the zero + number
To New Zealand
T
0064 + area code
without the zero + number
To South Africa
T
0027 + area code
without the zero + number
To US and Canada
T
001 + area code +
number
There are surprisingly few public toilets in London.
All mainline train and major tube stations have
toilets. Department stores and free museums and
galleries are another good option.
Tourist information
There is no proper, central tourist o
ce in London, as
there is in just about every other major city in Europe.
Instead, there's just a tiny window in the
tkts kiosk
on Leicester Square, WC2 (daily 8am-midnight;
T
020 7292 2333,
W
londoninformationcentre.com;
!
Leicester Square), and a kiosk outside Holborn
tube station (Mon-Fri 8am-6pm).
Many of the 32 London boroughs have tourist
information o
ces, with the most central one in the
City of London on the south side of St Paul's Cathedral
(Mon-Sat 9.30am-5.30pm, Sun 10am-4pm;
T
020
7332 1456,
W
visitthecity.co.uk;
!
St Paul's). Another
useful borough tourist o
ce is Greenwich in the old
Royal Naval College (daily 10am-5pm;
T
0870 608
2000; Cutty Sark DLR).
T
03 numbers are charged at local rates;
T
0845
and
T
0870 numbers are charged at special higher
rates. Beware of premium-rate numbers which
usually have the prefix
T
09, as these are charged at
anything up to £1.50 a minute.
For directory enquiries, there are numerous
companies offering the service, all with six-figure
numbers beginning with
T
118. Whichever one you
choose, the minimum charge you'll get away with is
40p. The best known is
T
118 118; for an online UK
phone directory, visit
W
ukphonebook.com.
Smoking
Smoking is banned in all indoor public spaces
including all cafés, pubs, restaurants, clubs and
public transport.
Tours and walks
Standard sightseeing tours are run by several rival
bus companies, their open-top double-deckers
setting off every thirty minutes from Victoria station,
Trafalgar Square, Piccadilly and other conspicuous
tourist spots. You can hop on and off several different
routes as often as you like with
The Original Tour
for
around £25 (daily 8.30am-6pm; every 15-20min;
T
020 8877 1722,
W
theoriginaltour.com).
The cheapest option is to hop on a real
London
double-decker
. For example, the #11 bus (with its
fleet of Boris Buses with open rear platforms and
roving conductors) from Victoria station, will take you
past Westminster Abbey, the Houses of Parliament,
up Whitehall, round Trafalgar Square, along the
Strand and on to St Paul's Cathedral. You can also
take an old double-decker Routemaster, on two
“heritage” routes (daily every 20min 9.30am-7pm): #9
from the Kensington High Street to Trafalgar Square
and #15 from Trafalgar Square to Tower Hill.
Walking tours
are infinitely more appealing and
informative, mixing solid historical facts with juicy
anecdotes in the company of a local specialist. Walks
on offer range from a literary pub crawl round
Bloomsbury to a roam around the East End. Tours
cost around £7-10 and take around two hours;
normally you can simply show up at the starting
Tax
Most goods in Britain are subject to
Value Added
Tax
(VAT ), which increases the cost of an item by
20 percent, although the prices displayed nearly
always include VAT. Visitors from non-EU countries
can save money through the
Retail Export
Scheme
(tax-free shopping), which allows a VAT
refund on goods taken out of the country. Note
that not all shops participate in this scheme (those
doing so will display a sign to this effect) and that
you cannot reclaim VAT charged on hotel bills or
other services. See
W
hmrc.gov.uk for more details.
Time
Greenwich Mean Time (GMT ) is used from the end
of October to the end of March; for the rest of the
year the country switches to British Summer Time
(BST ), one hour ahead of GMT. GMT is five hours
ahead of the US East Coast; eight ahead of the US
West Coast; and nine behind Australia's East Coast.
