5:22 February 10, 2009 | All news from "United Kingdom travel news, blogs, deals"

Bottom ten - a London hate list

I was greatly amused by this ‘bottom ten’ list in the Eastern Daily Press, a Norwich newspaper. Admittedly one of the ten is a purely local concern - the Norwich to London train line has steadily got worse over the past several years and is a common grouch for Norwich residents.

My bottom ten?

The price of public transport - still way above what I pay when I’m in Paris, and even with an Oyster card, considerably more expensive than in most capital cities. I also dislike the way different means of transport have different fares and even different ownership and means of payment, so for instance you can’t use your Oyster on the overground rail network.
Dirt. Yes, other cities have it too - but at least they don’t make restaurants and shops put all their rubbish on the pavement outside in black plastic bags, which usually break and spew rubbish all over the street. In most European countries they have big metal bins into which businesses and householders alike are meant to deposit their rubbish. London is one of the dirtiest cities I know and it hasn’t been getting any better.
‘My friend went to London and all I got was this lousy t-shirt’ t-shirts. Not funny, not original, not worth buying.
Property price obsession. It’s still there, only now in its depressive rather than its manic phase. A house used to be somewhere you lived; you had a kitchen for cooking in and a bathroom for getting clean. Now your kitchen is a fashion statement, your bathroom is an investment, and your mortgage is about the size of Vanuatu’s national debt. The only difference from 2006 is that then, the value of your house was slightly more than Vanuatu’s national debt, and now it’s about 20 percent less than your mortgage.
Oxford Street. I agree with the EDP writer on this. What a horrible street this is - full of chain stores, cheap tourist tat stores, and rubbish. It seems mainly to exist as a service to London buses, but they move at about one mile and hour - I’ve regularly beaten a bus from one end of the street to the other, walking! It’s depressing, most of the architecture is horrible, and the only real destination in the street is Selfridges. On the other hand, dive off Oxford Street into the little streets and squares on either side - Fitzrovia, Soho, Mayfair - and you’ll find some lovely little corners and some sweet boutiques.
Buckingham Palace. If you want to see a really regal palace, try Hampton Court - or even Blenheim, in Oxfordshire, which is perhaps our most splendid palace though it never belonged to a member of the royal family. Buck House is full of the royal equivalent of straw donkeys from Torremolinos and ‘My friend went to London’ t-shirts; full marks for post-modern irony but really not worth the entrance fee.
The weather. Why is it always raining? Say what you like about the recent snow, but at least it brightened the place up. London is too grey, too wet, too cold.
The prices. It’s not just transport that is too much; every attraction in London (except the free ones, which - hurrah! - includes the British Museum and the National Gallery) seems overpriced. If you’re in London with the kids, you won’t get a lot of change out of thirty quid for a family of four. Take my advice and concentrate on the free attractions! Save your money for eating out or taking a boat trip.
The cycle paths are rubbish. Half the signs are missing. They’re full of broken glass (see no 2, ‘Dirt’ for one of the reasons why, poor rubbish collection) or parked cars. They don’t actually go where they say they do. Cyclists regularly compare Amsterdam as a city that does it right - I’ve cycled in Frankfurt and Paris, too, which are both better and where the planners have made an attempt not just to give cyclists their own lanes, but to give them some scenery to look at while they pedal.
The rush hour. It’s hateful. Don’t do it. But then, working for a living is pretty hateful, too, which is why I telework, lucky me.

I found this quite a tough post to write. Every minute my mind was wandering off and I was thinking “But the Best Kebab is superb,” or “Thank the gods that all the big museums are free, not like in Paris”, or “But the plane trees give the place some dignity”… London is, really, a marvellous place!

Can I have a bonus point, please? A bit like Spinal Tap, “let’s turn it all the way up to eleven”;

11. No free day. One of the things I love when I’m travelling in France and Italy is that many museums are free on Mondays, or on the first Sunday in the month. We don’t have that - and it’s a pity. For some Romans I know, the free Monday is the day they decide to visit the museum - they see it as the locals’ prerogative to pop in and check that all the statues are in the right place. I do wish the UK would adopt this fine way of running things. We do it once a year, with the heritage open days in September, but it would be nice to make it more often.