I remember Craig Charles once compared London to the Inferno as described by Dante Alighieri. He actually had a good few points there.
That bad, huh? I was only there for a day once but I didn't think it was horrible at all. It's on my short list of places to visit (again).
blimey, and i thought i was sad for only having been to london about a half-dozen times! Natural History Museum Science Museum Star Trek: The Adventure Harrods and Parliament forget what else...
I'd say it's common. I'd say there are vast swathes of the population who have never been to London. I think they're missing out on a lot of really great things about the city, myself. I'm enormously fond of the place, personally.
I suppose if you live a fair bit away, the distance could be a deterrent for a daytrip. Still, surely you take holidays? And why would you not begin with a weekend in your own capital? To enjoy your own illustrious history and culture...? I mean going to Harrods or Selfridges is like a holy experience, especially for a woman... then there's the wealth of world cuisine to be had, there's the West End, and the trendy bars and cafe culture... What could you possibly have locally that could be approaching that scale? I guess, that old saying about not being able to miss what you never had is exactly true. A friend of mine had her cousin visiting from Canada this past summer, he wasn't really too concerned about visiting big cities or sightseeing, he had flown in only to see his family. Well, his cousin and I took him on a couple of days tour of the city despite himself... he was very book learned, and informed me of the history of some of the sights which I myself wasn't aware of. It wasn't as though he didn't inform himself or show an interest in things, he just didn't make a big deal out of taking special trips to visit famous places. At the end of his trip, he announced that he wanted to immigrate here and take his masters in the UK. From being indifferent, to going to THAT extreme, was quite amazing. I guess informing yourself about things through books, and actually experiencing them, are two very different things. He decided it was the best thing since sliced bread... I should have known he'd fall in love... You can't be in your 20's, come to London, and actually want to go home again...
Of course London is deserted around Christmas! After all these invasions occurring at the same period of the year!!!
Mmm. Interesting. Am I to assume travelling isn't very popular in England? I mean I've travelled well beyond my native New England to far away places such as Anchorage, Alaska, Cancun and Salzburg, Austria. I also have been to many of the major US cities such as Boston (naturally), New York, Baltimore, Washington, DC, Miami, Tampa, Chicago, San Diego, Denver, San Antonio, Phoenix, Cleveland, Cincinnati and Kansas City.
I don't get where that perception comes from. A one hour drive to do some shopping is definitely annoying! I'll drive that distance to go somewhere (getting to Chicago with mild traffic easily takes me 2.5 hrs now) but it's not as if it's nothing to me.
Not at all. I get terribly irritated when I have to drive anywhere, and only drive an hour to go to very specific stores, and then only once or twice a year for major purchases like furniture. Well, see, I live 45 minutes from DC and about 2 hours from NYC, but it's not like I go there for errands or even regularly, but I do go a couple of times a year to both, more often back when I had friends living there. Something like NYC, which is about 3 hours, has almost always been considered a weekend trip. I just can't imagine living a couple of hours from a major cultural site and never having any interest in seeing it for a even a weekend. Granted, there are some East Coast cities I haven't been to yet, but Atlanta or even Boston vs. London is really not the same thing... I'm an Urban American. I do not drive everywhere and don't consider a 45 minute trip to go shopping to be in any way acceptable. Also, I commute exactly 2 miles to work. I'm annoyed when it takes me more than 6 minutes to get here... I would never, ever consider driving 45 minutes to work. I think the question of scale applies not in the cases of every-day travel but in the cases of planned travel or mini-holidays etc. When I look at England and see that in terms of land area it's smaller than say New York State, I think I just find it difficult to believe that just through incidental trips over the course of their lives people wouldn't have at least seen the majority of the place. I get that Europe is very close and there's a lot to see there and that that's the preferred destination for a proper holiday, but I had school field trips that involved more than a 7-hour drive... Precisely. To get somewhere unique and interesting I will drive a distance.