London's contrasts and cacophonies both infuriate and seduce.

London - the grand resonance of its very name suggests history and might. Its opportunities for entertainment by day and night go on and on and on. It's a city that exhilarates and intimidates, stimulates and irritates in equal measure, a grubby Monopoly board studded with stellar sights.

It's a cosmopolitan mix of Third and First Worlds, chauffeurs and beggars, the stubbornly traditional and the proudly avant-garde. But somehow - between 'er Majesty and Pete Doherty, Bow Bells and Big Ben, the Tate Modern and the 2012 Olympics - it all hangs together.

'When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford.' - Samuel Johnson

Environment

Latitude: 51° 30'N
Area: 1572sqkms
Population: 7300000
Orientation:

The main geographical feature of the city is the River Thames, which meanders through central London, dividing it into northern and southern halves. The central area and the greatest number of important sights, theatres and restaurants are within the Underground's Circle Line on the north bank of the river. In the past decade, however, the south bank of the river has been transformed into one of London's must-see district, with attractions such as Borough Market, the London Eye, Shakespeare's Globe theatre and the Tate Modern art gallery. The tourist-ridden West End includes Soho, Trafalgar Square, Piccadilly Circus, Leicester Square and Regent St. The East End, so beloved of Ealing comedies, lies east of the Circle Line; it used to be the exclusive preserve of the Cockney but is now a cultural melting pot. There are interesting inner-city suburbs in North London, including Islington and Camden Town, with leafy Hampstead further north. Further south, London includes a mix of poor, dirty, graffiti-ridden suburbs, and increasingly gentrifying areas like Clapham and, to an extent Brixton.

Society

People:

Anglo-Saxons, Scots, Welsh, Irish, West Indians, Pakistanis, Indians

Language spoken (official): English

Perhaps England's greatest cultural export has been the English language, the current lingua franca of the international community. There are astonishing regional variations in accents, and it is not unusual to find those in southern England claiming to need an interpreter to communicate with anyone living north of Oxford.

Economy

Sample prices

Pint of lager: Pound Sterling 2.50
Movie ticket: Pound Sterling 9.00
Coffee in the West End: Pound Sterling 2.25
Cheapest ride on the Tube: Pound Sterling 4.00
36-exposure colour film: Pound Sterling 4.00
Taxi per km: Pound Sterling 0.90
CD: Pound Sterling 15.00
admission to a big-name club on a Friday: Pound Sterling 15.00

Room costs
Low: 50-85, Mid: 85-150, High: 150-250, Deluxe: 150-250

Meal costs
Low: 5-12, Mid: 12-20, High: 20-35, Deluxe: 20-35

Tipping:

Many restaurants now add a 'discretionary' service charge to your bill, but in places that don't you are expected to leave a 10% to 15% tip unless the service was unsatisfactory. Waiting staff are often paid derisory wages on the assumption that the money will be supplemented by tips. You never tip to have your pint pulled in a pub.

If you take a boat trip on the Thames you'll find some guides and/or drivers importuning for a tip in return for their commentary. Whether you pay is up to you. You can tip taxi drivers up to 10% but most people round up to the nearest pound.

Eat

There is no denying London food has taken a turn for the better with the advent of high-profile chefs like Gordon Ramsay steering palates in innovative directions. However, trying to snag a reasonable meal without being left sucking on the lint of your empty pockets is still a challenge. Avoid the tourist trap chains and keep an ear out for local favourites.

Night

Choosing how to entertain yourself in London can be daunting. Whether you like your culture high or low, your dance in pointe shoes or heels, your music in strings or sub bass, being sporty or watching others play, drinking cocktails in an elegant club or a bitter at a pub, London has it all.

See

It's got a whole bunch of history. The old-fashioned kind.

London is one of the favourite urban haunts of visitors to Europe because of landmark sights like Big Ben, St Paul's Cathedral and the historically rich Westminster Abbey. The city also boasts some of the world's greatest museums and art galleries, and more parkland than most other capitals.

Shop

London is a Mecca for shoppers. Designer labels, refined classic cuts, cutting-edge street wear and Harrods hampers all clamour for attention. Make sure your plastic is in a healthy state before you set off on an expedition; shopping, like most of London's pleasures, doesn't come cheap.

Sleep

Ten years after Ikea told British households to 'chuck out your chintz', London's hotels have followed suit. Prices are still steep, but old dames are updating and the rise of 'budget boutique' hotels is throwing affordable chic into the mix . Remember, where you hang your hat will flavour your impression of London, so consider location as well as luxury.

Pre-departure

When to go

London is a year-round tourist centre, with few of its attractions closing or significantly reducing their opening hours in winter. Your best chance of good weather is, of course, at the height of summer in July and August, but there's certainly no guarantee of sun even in those months - plus it's when you can expect the biggest crowds and highest prices.

Visas

Citizens of the USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa do not need a visa for stays in the UK up to 6 months, but they are prohibited from working. Citizens of the European Union (EU) don't need a visa to enter the country and may live and work here freely.

Electricity voltage: 240V
Electricity HZ: 50Hz

Health

Dangers and Annoyances

Considering its size and the great disparities in wealth, London is a remarkably safe city; it has one of the lowest murder rates in the developed world. Nevertheless, you should take the usual precautionary measures against pickpockets, who operate in crowded public places such as the Underground and major tourist attractions. At night, a bus or taxi can be a safer option than the Tube.

A major London hazard remains its traffic. Remember to look right before crossing its highly congested roads, and don't expect mercy from couriers or taxi drivers.

Events

Most businesses close on public holidays such as New Year's Day, Good Friday, Easter Monday, May Day Bank Holiday (the first Monday in May), Spring Bank Holiday (the last Monday in May), Summer Bank Holiday (the last Monday in August), Christmas Day and Boxing Day (26 December) although London's essential multiculturalism means you'll always find some shops open.

There are countless festivals and events in London. It all kicks off with the New Year's Eve fireworks and street party in Trafalgar Square, followed by the New Year's Day Parade. On Shrove Tuesday pancake races are held in Covent Garden, and in early May more serious racers take part in the London Marathon.

All London gets its colours on for the FA Cup Final in mid-May. There's even more colour at the Chelsea Flower Show, held in the last week of May.

Trooping the Colour, the Queen's birthday parade, is held in June; Wimbledon runs for two weeks in the same month and London Pride, Europe's biggest gay and lesbian festival, also hits the streets. The raucous Notting Hill Carnival takes over the West End streets in August, although there is now a smaller celebration in Hyde Park, too. In September, some 500 normally inaccessible buildings throw open their doors as part of the Open House weekend. This month, the city also celebrates its greatest natural asset with the Thames Festival on the south bank of the river.

Things wind down as the weather gets colder, though there are plenty of bonfires on Guy Fawkes Night, on the 5th of November. The Lord Mayor's Show is held in late November, complete with floats, bands and fireworks. Trafalgar Square lights up in December with the Lighting of the Christmas Tree.

New Year's Day (official holiday) 1 Jan

Good Friday (official holiday) Mar/Apr

Easter Monday (official holiday) Mar/Apr

May Day Bank Holiday (official holiday) first Monday in May

Spring Bank Holiday (official holiday) last Monday in May

Summer Bank Holiday (official holiday) last Monday in Aug

Christmas Day (official holiday) 25 Dec

Boxing Day (official holiday) 26 Dec

London Parade (festival/event) 1 Jan

Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race (festival/event) Mar/Apr
www.theboatrace.org

London Marathon (festival/event) Apr

FA Cup Final (festival/event) May

Chelsea Flower Show (festival/event) May
www.rhs.org.uk

Trooping of the Colour (festival/event) Jun
www.wimbledon.com

Wimbledon (festival/event) Jun

London Pride (festival/event) Jun
www.pridelondon.org

The Proms (festival/event) Jul
www.bbc.co.uk/proms

Notting Hill Carnival (festival/event) Aug
www.thecarnival.tv

Thames Festival (festival/event) Sep
www.thamesfestival.org

Guy Fawkes Night (festival/event) Nov

Lord Mayor's Show (festival/event) Nov
www.lordmayorsshow.org

Lighting of the Christmas Tree (festival/event) Dec

New Year's Day (official holiday) 1 Jan

Good Friday (official holiday) Mar/Apr

Easter Monday (official holiday) Mar/Apr

Spring Bank Holiday (official holiday) last Monday in May

Summer Bank Holiday (official holiday) last Monday in Aug

Christmas Day (official holiday) 25 Dec

Boxing Day (official holiday) 26 Dec

Oxford/Cambridge University Boat Race (festival/event) late Mar/early Apr

Grand National (festival/event) first Saturday in Apr

FA Cup (festival/event) May

Wimbledon (festival/event) late Jun

Henley Royal Regatta (festival/event) Jun

Cowes Week (festival/event) late Jul/early Aug

Chelsea Flower Show (festival/event) May

Trooping of the Colour (festival/event) mid-Jun

Glastonbury Festival (festival/event) Jun

Notting Hill Carnival (festival/event) late Aug

London Open House (festival/event) Sep
www.londonopenhouse.org

Activities

If beer and chips are adding excess to your waistline, London offers a number of ways to work it off. Take out a rowboat for a dreamy drift after a picnic or promenade with a pipe in Hyde Park. Or hire a nag and go for a canter.

Paddle boating

If you feel like a paddle on the water, hire a pedalo for an hour or two and go boating on the Serpentine in Hyde Park.

Cycling

You can hire a bike practically anywhere in the city, although if you're planning to ride in traffic you might be taking your life in your hands. It may be wiser to stick to the parks.

Swimming

North of the centre, Highgate Ponds on Hampstead Heath offer open-air swimming all year round. Otherwise, take a dip in Ironmonger Row Baths or the Art Deco Porchester Spa.

Horse riding

Aristocrats of the 19th century used to promenade on horseback along the paths of Hyde Park. If you want to follow in their hoofprints, steeds can be hired by the hour.

Gym

Many hotels in London lack gym facilities. If you're missing your work-out try the popular Oasis Sports Centre in Covent Garden, which has everything a healthy heart desires.

Roller skating

Join packs of roller-blade enthusiasts in Hyde Park - every Friday evening there's a communal skate starting out at Wellington Arch.

Walking

It's good for the constitution, and London's parks - especially Hyde Park and Regents Park - are delightful settings for a stroll.

Weather

Many who live in London would swear that global warming has added a twist to the city's unpredictable climatic conditions. While locals used to complain about the frequent, but still somehow always unforeseen, arrival of rain, now they find themselves faced with sudden outbreaks of sunshine and dry heat instead.

Recent summers have seen record temperatures, approaching 40°C and autumns have been positively toasty. As the tube turns into the Black Hole of Calcutta and traffic fumes become choking, London is particularly ill-equipped to cope with such heat.

However, meteorologists point out that recent statistics don't yet represent anything terribly out of the ordinary for such a naturally variable climate. The average maximum temperature for July, the hottest month, is still only about 23°C. In spring and autumn temperatures drop to between 13°C and 17°C. In winter, the average daily maximum is 8°C, the overnight minimum 2°C.

Despite the appearance of snow in the past few years, it still rarely freezes in London. What weather forecasters do predict in the long-term, as a result of climate change in London, is drier summers, wetter and stormier winters and more flash floods.

Communication

Area Code: 020

The United Kingdom uses the tiny United Kingdom phone jack, which has a clip-in branch that protrudes at a right angle from its square plastic receptacle base.

Media

Books

Notes from a Small Island (Author: Bill Bryson)

The author recounts his London exploits in this witty best-seller.

Down and Out in Paris and London (Author: George Orwell)

George Orwell rolls back the years to describe his experiences in the roaring 1920s.

A Traveller's History of England (Author: Christopher Daniell)

A quick introduction to English history - useful for making sense of all those kings and queens.

The Peopling of London (Author: Museum of London)

This book charts the 15,000-year lineage of London's cultural melting pot.

London Fields (Author: Martin Amis)

Wordy, irritating, brilliant and unmissable, Amis novels are a must read.

Lights Out for the Territory (Author: Iain Sinclair)

Moody, dramatic, compelling and remarkable, this book explores London's architecture and history through a series of fascinating walks.

London: The Biography (Author: Peter Ackroyd)

An acclaimed history of the city that's stronger on the bygone eras than our own but is nevertheless crammed with engaging facts.

Transport

Getting around (overview)

The dirty, wrathful congestion of London streets makes both driving and cycling an extreme sport. Hop on a bus, a Thames ferry or an elegant black cab - and let a native negotiate the chaos on your behalf. Or take the Tube: you're sure to come up against its notorious, infuriating inefficiencies, but in most cases it's still the quickest way to get about.

Getting there and away (overview)

London is one of the world's major transport hubs, and your choices of ways to get in and out of it are myriad. Its major airports - the monster Heathrow and the smaller Gatwick, Stanstead, Luton and City - are all efficiently linked to the metropolis.

You've always been able to hop to the European mainland (and Ireland) by ferry, but now the Chunnel link makes it a breeze.

Culture

History Before 20th Century

Although a Celtic community settled around a ford across the River Thames, it was the Romans who first developed the square mile now known as the City of London. They built a bridge and an impressive city wall, and made Londinium an important port and the hub of their road system. The Romans left, but trade went on. Few traces of London dating from the Dark Ages can now be found, but the city survived the incursions of both the Saxons and Vikings. Fifty years before the Normans arrived, Edward the Confessor built his abbey and palace at Westminster.

William the Conqueror found a city that was, without doubt, the richest and largest in the kingdom. He raised the White Tower (part of the Tower of London) and confirmed the city's independence and right to self-government. During the reign of Elizabeth I, the capital began to expand rapidly - in 40 years the population doubled to reach 200,000. Unfortunately, the medieval, Tudor and Jacobean parts of London were virtually destroyed by the Great Fire of 1666. The fire gave Christopher Wren the opportunity to build his famous churches, and the city's growth continued apace.

By 1720 it contained 750,000 people, and as the seat of Parliament and focal point for a growing empire, it was becoming ever richer and more important. Georgian architects replaced the last of medieval London with their imposing symmetrical architecture and residential squares. The population exploded again in the 19th century, creating a vast expanse of Victorian suburbs. As a result of the Industrial Revolution and rapidly expanding commerce, it jumped from 2.7 million in 1851 to 6.6 million in 1901.

Modern History

War in the first half of the 20th century destroyed many of the gains achieved by the previous century. Georgian and Victorian London was devastated by the Luftwaffe (German airforce) in WWII - huge swathes of the centre and the East End were totally flattened. After the war, ugly housing and low-cost developments were thrown up on the bomb sites. The docks never recovered - shipping moved to Tilbury, and the Docklands declined to the point of dereliction. In the heady 1980s, that decade of Thatcherite confidence and deregulation, the Docklands were rediscovered by a new wave of property developers, who proved to be only marginally more discriminating than the Luftwaffe.

Recent History

London briefly regained its swinging reputation in the 1990s, buoyed by Tony Blair's New Labour, a rampaging pound and a swag of pop, style and media 'names'. Blair's bane, Ken Livingstone, donned the mayoral robes in May 2000, opposing plans to sell off the Tube and pushing for improved public transport and safety. The face of the city changed with the construction of the costly white elephant Millennium Dome, the London Eye and the Tate Modern. And it's set to change even more in the build-up to the 2012 Olympics. But some things never change: London's cost of living outdoes itself year after year, its chic quotient continues to soar and the gap between the haves and have-nots looms ever larger.

A series of co-ordinated terrorist bomb attacks targeting London's massive transport network in July 2005 cast a pall over the city's optimism. However, Londoners are nothing if not resolute and the city has carried on defiantly.

Factoid

Old Tube

London's Underground Rail system is the world's oldest (1863), most extensive (253mi, 407km), and most travelled (785 million journeys a year). It is also the most unreliable, with breakdowns, on average, every sixteen minutes.

Places of Interest

Royal Observatory

Web site: www.nmm.ac.uk

Summary review: Standing with one foot in the world's western hemisphere and the other in the east: that's the Royal Observatory's cheap thrill. But as well as the chance to straddle the prime meridian (of time and longitude) there's also an absorbing tale of how the observatory's astronomers battled to accurately measure longitude, and help improve maritime navigation.

Full review: Charles II, sick of ships foundering because they had no idea of their east-west coordinates, had the Royal Observatory built on the hill here in 1675, intending that astronomy be used to find an accurate means of navigation at sea. The first astronomer royal, John Flamsteed (1646-1719), set up home here, making observations of the skies and stars from the Octagon Room - a light, airy, geometrically shaped observatory that is one of the few interiors designed by Sir Christopher Wren to have survived.

Astronomy was a dog's life in those days, as the tales from the excellent observatory make clear. Today, however, that doesn't seem the case. At least, the astronomers who talk you through shows at the adjacent Greenwich Planetarium brim with enthusiasm. At night, look out for the green laser that traces the prime meridian in the sky.

In the end, it was a watchmaker who solved the problem of longitude, but Greenwich was still named as the prime meridian at an 1884 Washington conference, in recognition of all its work.

British Airways London Eye

Web site: www.ba-londoneye.com

Summary review: The colossal London Eye (aka the Millennium Wheel). At 135m (443ft) tall, it's the world's largest Ferris Wheel and London's fourth-tallest structure. It's a thrilling experience to sit in one of the 32 enclosed glass gondolas, enjoying views of some 40km (25mi) on clear days across the capital.

Full review: The Eye is at the southwestern corner of Jubilee Gardens, site of the 1951 Festival of Britain, which now extends northwards to Hungerford Bridge. The Millennium Wheel takes a full 30 minutes to rotate completely and each capsule holds 25 passengers.

Tate Modern

Web site: www.tate.org.uk

Summary review: A spectacularly converted power station, the world's most successful contemporary art gallery hasn't ever really been about the art, but about the building, location and views. So the recent rearrangement of its works into a more thematic and chronological order is a refreshing bonus rather than a vital reinvention.

Full review: The Tate's reputation for avant-garde special exhibitions is exemplified by past exhibits such as those focusing on the Italian Arte Povera (Poor Art) school and the sculptures of the late Juan Muñoz.

The building itself still continues to wow. With its two upper floors shrouded in glass and brightly lit at night, and its landmark central chimney, it was designed by Swiss stars Herzog & De Meuron (1999), who won the Pritzker award, architecture's Nobel Prize, in 2000.

National Gallery

Web site: www.nationalgallery.org.uk

Summary review: The National Gallery is to the north of Trafalgar Square and was founded in 1824. Counting some 2100 paintings on display at any one time, it is one of the world's largest and richest art galleries. The gallery's paintings are hung in a continuous timeline so you can gaze your way through the ages.

Full review: By starting in the Sainsbury Wing and progressing west you can take in a collection of pictures painted between the mid-13th century and late-19th/early-20th centuries in chronological order.

If you're keen on the real oldies, stay in the Sainsbury Wing (1260-1510); for the Renaissance, go to the West Wing (1510-1600).

The Rubens, Rembrandts and Murillos are in the North Wing (1600-1700); if you're after Gainsborough, Constable, Turner, Hogarth and the Impressionists, visit the East Wing (1700-1900).

Old Operating Theatre Museum Herb Garret

Web site: www.thegarret.org.uk

Summary review: This former Victorian surgical theatre is not for the squeamish. However, others will be compelled to see the rough-and-ready conditions under which simple 19th century operations took place - without antiseptic or anaesthetic, and on a wooden table in what looks like a modern lecture hall. There's a nod to alternative therapies in the adjoining herb garret.

Full review: Early medical instruments are on display, accompanied by discussions on body-snatching - how the medical profession bought dug-up corpses to practice on. Explanations are also given as to how, without anaesthetic, surgeons had to perform quickly on living patients; one minute to complete an amputation was reckoned about right.

Check the museum's website, because sometimes quasi-demonstrations of such 'speed surgery' are held. (Honestly, you'll leave this place praising the heavens for the progress since made in medical techniques.)

In the herb garret, the hospital's former apothecary is now hung with bunches of herbs and explanations of their perceived powers. Be warned though, that there are also human organs kept in jars here.

This small, quirky but highly recommended museum sits at the top of 32 narrow and rickety stairs, so unfortunately there is no disabled access.

Whitechapel Art Gallery

Web site: www.whitechapel.org

Summary review: The Whitechapel is one of the most interesting and challenging of London's contemporary art galleries. Behind its Art Noveau facade and entry hall, you'll find revolving exhibitions of photography, painting, sculpture and video art, plus fundraising events, poetry readings and educational programmes.

Full review: It hasn't just confined itself to exhibitions by established and emerging artists from Gary Hume and Liam Gillick to Frida Kahlo and Nan Goldin. It also regularly holds debates or talks by musicians and film-makers such as David Byrne and Robert Altman. Check the programme online, but remember there's the very pleasant Whitechapel Art Gallery Cafe, regardless of what's on.

Highgate Cemetery

Web site: www.highgate-cemetery.org

Summary review: Highgate Cemetery can't be beaten for Victorian-Gothic atmosphere and downright eeriness. Its overgrown grounds include Egyptian-style catacombs, enough chipped angels to please the most discerning Joy Division fan, Karl the more serious Marx brother and personalised tombs reflecting their eccentric inhabitants.

Sir John Soane's Museum

Web site: www.soane.org

Summary review: Sir John Soane's Museum is partly a bewitching house and partly a small museum brimming with surprising effects and curiosities, representing the taste of celebrated architect and hoarder extraordinaire, Sir John Soane (1753-1837). The candlelit night-time tours are utterly enchanting, with the light flickering off busts, old coins and dark paintings.

Full review: Soane, the son of a country bricklayer, is most famous for designing the Bank of England. In his work and life he drew on ideas picked up while on an 18th-century Grand Tour of Italy. He married into money, which he then poured into building this house and the one next door.

The heritage-listed house is largely as it was when Sir John was carted out in a box, and is a main part of the attraction itself. It has a glass dome which brings light right down to the basement, a lantern room filled with statuary, rooms within rooms, and a picture gallery where each painting folds away when pressed to reveal another one behind. It contains Soane's choice paintings, including Canalettos and Turners, drawings by Christopher Wren and Robert Adam, and the original Rake's Progress, William Hogarth's set of caricatures of late-18th-century London lowlife, for which a specific gallery was built.

Spitalfields Market

Web site: www.spitalfields.co.uk

Summary review: Spitalfields has always been about snaffling. Up-and-coming designers tout clothes, cutting-edge jewellery and household objects, and adventurous shoppers get their fill. Unfortunately, a new retail complex now hogs a good deal of the market's space, but not enough to seriously dent its status as one of the city's best and busiest hangouts.

Rellik

Web site: www.relliklondon.co.uk

Summary review: One of London's most-lauded retro clothing stores, this place is not cheap, but there is a chance of unearthing secondhand designer labels, including from the likes of Vivienne Westwood, Zandra Rhodes and even 1960s icon Ossie Clark. While you're here, have a look at Trellick Tower opposite - another love-or-hate London building.

Lesley Craze Gallery

Web site: www.lesleycrazegallery.co.uk

Summary review: One of Europe's leading centres for contemporary jewellery, this has exquisitely understated, and sometimes pricey, metal designs, as well as a small selection of cheaper, mixed-media pieces. Perfect if you're looking for something out of the ordinary.

Ottolenghi

Web site: www.ottolenghi.co.uk

Summary review: Stylish Ottolenghi is one of Islington's best, with its long white communal table (plus a few private ones) and arty meringue displays. It's casual enough for a relaxed breakfast and chic enough for a night out. Meals are usually composed of two or three servings of delicious modern Mediterranean dishes. There's other branches in Notting Hill and Kensington.

Baltic

Web site: www.balticrestaurant.co.uk

Summary review: Baltic starts off designed to the teeth in sci-fi surreal, but as you follow the vodka-lined stainless steel bar around to the restaurant area, things start to look a little more ordinary. Only a little, though, as the high-ceilinged roof has exposed, inverted V-shaped beams, there's a chandelier of rough-hewn chips of amber and the food is Eastern European.

Bumpkin

Summary review: This faux rustic outfit is good for an unpretentious helping of old-fashioned comfort food. Wash down everything from dorset crab bruschetta, to beef pie and huge steaks, with a glass of Guinness, Adnam's or some very unusual whisky cocktails. The cooking's not fancy and it does get noisy, but there's something uncomplicatedly pleasant about the experience.

Busaba Eathai Bloomsbury

Summary review: This is a 21st-century Wagamama-style noodle bar - a bit more stylish with it, but brought to you by the same man, Alan Yau. Below ceiling fans and golden buddhas, customers lap up delicious Thai curries and soups on dark wood benches and communal tables. There's another branch on Wardour St in Soho.

Brick Lane Beigel Bake

Summary review: This renowned round-the-clock bakery turns out some of London's springiest, chewiest bagels and attracts daytime and after-club crowds. It's a slice of real London, but not kosher (in the Jewish sense). The hot salt-beef bagels have eager punters queueing out the door, a sure sign of a good thing.

USA Consulate
Canadian Consulate
Heathrow TIC
Australian Consulate
Britain Visitor Centre

Summary review: This comprehensive centre has a map and guidebook shop, hotel-booking desk, travel desk and theatre-ticket agency.

Grange City Hotel

Web site: www.grangehotels.com

Summary review: There are some things that women travellers are almost guaranteed to experience when roaming away from home, and trying to put on make-up in a dimly lit hotel room is one of them. It might not be the biggest thing you've got to worry about, but it's nice when someone does address your problems, however small they might be.

Full review: The Grange City Hotel has recently opened a 'female friendly' wing catering solely to women. The women-only rooms feature such female-friendly designs as full-length mirrors, spy holes in the door and security latches. There are also additional toiletries (all Molton Brown), a hairdryer and extra lighting in the bathroom, and a vanity mirror in the bedroom. Girly gadgets aside, most rooms at the Grange City have floor-to-ceiling windows that offer some of the best city and river views in town.

Luna & Simone Hotel

Web site: www.lunasimone.com

Summary review: Despite having a name that sounds like it should be on the Costa del Sol, this sparkling budget option is a rare find in central London and is easily the best choice in the area. Luckily for them, more budget hotels aren't like this.

Full review: The hotel was completely refurbished a couple of years ago, but the rooms and bathrooms look so new that you'd be forgiven for thinking the builders had only just left. The bedrooms aren't huge and there's little going on in the way of interior design, but the pale wood furniture and cheerful blue-and-yellow bedspreads keep them feeling fresh and uncluttered. It's the bathrooms however, that really deserve a mention. Rather than install the moulded plastic shower units (so popular in budget hotels) that last all of about five seconds before they begin to look old and grubby, the Luna & Simone team have actually taken the time to tile and decorate every en suite. Downstairs is a sunny breakfast room where you're served at the table and the charming staff are anxious to please.

Rookery

Web site: www.rookeryhotel.com

Summary review: These days Smithfield is seen as one of London's hippest postcodes for clubs, bars, restaurants and hotels, but this wasn't always the case. Old Smithfield, being outside the city jurisdiction, was a haven for crooks and criminals and was commonly known as The Rookery.

Full review: Built within a row of once-derelict 18th-century Georgian houses, this 33-room hotel is brimming with history and personality. Each of the rooms - named after colourful local characters - has been individually designed and decorated with period features and furnishings including original oak panelling, carved four-poster beds and Gothic headboards. Craftsmen were hired to restore and update the period plumbing fixtures, so most of the rooms house remarkable Georgian and Victorian bathing contraptions and commodes. The highlight of the hotel is the 'Rook's Nest' suite tucked away in the top of the hotel, which houses a restored Edwardian bathing machine and has a ceiling that opens up to reveal a rooftop garden from where you can see St Paul's Cathedral and the Old Bailey.

Hollybush

Summary review: A beautiful pub that makes you envy the privileged residents of Hampstead, Hollybush has an antique Victorian interior, a lovely secluded hilltop location, open fires in winter and a knack for making you stay longer than you had intended at any time of the year. Plenty of real ale on offer and a top-shelf asking to be sampled.

Bethnal Green Working Men's Club

Web site: www.workersplaytime.net

Summary review: London's club of the moment mines a rich vein of post-modern irony, with its red-heart of lights on stage and events like 1950s tea-dances (girls on roller-skates serving Earl Grey tea and trestle tables laden with cakes), lounge-meisters The Karminsky Experience, cabaret evening Toot-Sweet, the goth Hellfire Club, Dolly Parton evenings and more.

Fabric

Web site: www.fabriclondon.com

Summary review: The first stop on the London scene for many international clubbers, 1500-capacity Fabric is still going strong, with lengthy queues waiting to feel the music through its main 'bodysonic' dance floor. The music - mainly electro, house, drum and bass, and breakbeat - is as good as you'd expect from London's top-rated. Live music is a newer addition.

Shakespeare's Globe

Web site: www.shakespeares-globe.org

Summary review: The Globe is a near-perfect replica of the building on this site where Shakespeare himself worked in from 1598 to 1611. Even if the particular production you attend comes across a bit 'theme-park Shakespeare' - and they occasionally do - you'll never forget being in this up-close-and-personal open-roofed theatre in the round.

Full review: 'Groundlings', with their much-cheaper tickets, will need the stamina to stand all evening, as fire regulations prohibit sitting on the ground.

Loungelover

Web site: www.loungelover.co.uk

Summary review: If you're in the mood for a little glamour, make your way to this 'maximalist' styled bar. Entering from the run-down streets outside, you'll find yourself faced with an entrancing mish-mash of chandeliers, antiques, street lanterns and comfy lounge chairs. The cocktails aren't cheap, but you'll have a memorable evening.

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