You do not need a ticket to see the best of Buckingham Palace. The building you picture when you think of London (the long pale front, the gold-tipped railings, the balcony) is …
- London
The Churchill War Rooms: Inside the Bunker Where Britain Ran the War
by Bubblyby Bubbly 9 min readA few steps below the pavements of Whitehall, behind a plain door near Downing Street, there is a basement where Britain ran the Second World War. The Churchill War Rooms are not …
- London
Hyde Park Winter Wonderland: The Lights, the Crowd, and the Right Time to Go
by Bubblyby Bubbly 9 min readYou smell Winter Wonderland before you see it: roasted nuts, mulled wine, fried dough on the cold air. Then you come through the gate and the lights hit you, a tunnel of …
You see Stonehenge from a distance before you reach it, a grey cluster of stones alone on open grassland, and the first thing it does is stop you. I had seen it …
- London
Street Pizza by Gordon Ramsay, St Paul’s: Bottomless Slices Under an Olive Tree
by Bubblyby Bubbly 6 min readWe came to Street Pizza straight from St Paul’s Cathedral, which turns out to be exactly the right order of events. You spend an hour craning your neck up at a dome, …
- London
Hoa Hakananai’a: The Easter Island Moai at the British Museum, and Where It Belongs
by Bubblyby Bubbly 7 min readThere is a figure on the upper floor of the British Museum that stops people in a way the labels never quite explain. It stands about two and a half metres tall, …
- London
The Parthenon Marbles at the British Museum: The Sculptures, the Nereid Monument and the Argument Over Where They Belong
by Bubblyby Bubbly 9 min readThere is one room in the British Museum where wonder and unease sit side by side. Room 18 is a long, top-lit hall lined with marble, and the carving in it is …
- London
Ancient Egypt at the British Museum: The Rosetta Stone, the Hall of Colossi, and a 5,500-Year-Old Murder
by Bubblyby Bubbly 11 min readThe British Museum in London holds one of the largest collections of Egyptian material anywhere outside Cairo, and you meet it on two floors. The monumental stone sits downstairs in the long …
- London
The British Museum in a Few Hours: The Rosetta Stone, the Parthenon Marbles, and the Frog Worth Coming Back For
by Bubblyby Bubbly 15 min readI have now been to the British Museum in London twice, in 2019 and again on a cold afternoon last November, and I still have not seen all of it. That is …
- London
Harrods at Christmas: Edwardian Tile Halls, Luxury Floors, and the Truth About Visiting in December
by Bubblyby Bubbly 20 min readHarrods in December is a different kind of crowded. Not the steady busy of a Saturday afternoon at a busy department store, where people are moving through with purpose. This is slow …
- London
Sea Containers London: Tom Dixon, a Brutalist Riverside Building, and Two Stays on the South Bank
by Bubblyby Bubbly 16 min readI have stayed at Sea Containers London twice. Once in 2019, when it was still in its first design era. Again this past December, just before Christmas. Both stays were in a …
- London
The Grand by Concerto on the Strand: Cakes, Coffee, and Why I’m Not Sold on Dubai Chocolate
by Bubblyby Bubbly 14 min readI had not planned to stop here. After Trafalgar Square, the plan was to find a cab back to the hotel and call it a day. Then I crossed the Strand, looked …