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Off to London

KalTorakKalTorak One way or another, they all end up inthe Undercity.Registered User regular
edited November 2006 in Help / Advice Forum
So I'm going to study abroad in London in the spring - fish, chips, cup o' tea, bad food, worse weather, Mary fucking Poppins... anyway, what are some things that I should know/bring? Places I should visit (including most of Europe), tricks to know, et cetera. I'm also putting together a list of things to ask for for Christmas that would be helpful on the trip. I'm planning on getting a DS Lite for the travel time - what else do i need?

KalTorak on

Posts

  • bsjezzbsjezz Registered User regular
    edited October 2006
    I'm not sure if they still do this, but there's a place right in the middle of Chinatown called BRB which did a five quid lunch, including a big 12" pizza and a pint of beer. It used to be a lifesaver on the days that I was heading into town to check out the tourist traps of central London.

    bsjezz on
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  • KalTorakKalTorak One way or another, they all end up in the Undercity.Registered User regular
    edited October 2006
    Oooh I'll keep that in mind. Yeah, I forgot to mention that living rather cheaply will also be something of an issue (going from dollars -> pounds = ow) so any good and cheap food/grocery places are mightily appreciated as well.

    KalTorak on
  • kaliyamakaliyama Left to find less-moderated fora Registered User regular
    edited October 2006
    My philosophy when doing london is to live as cheaply as possible during the weekdays, and then have a blast during the weekend.

    A) Where are you studying? LSE, Royal Holloway, what? Do they give you a dorm? If not, their craigslist equivalent is www.gumtree.com. I found my apartment that way whilst in Prague.

    B) If you know, where are you living? If you don't, we can talk locations..

    C) Gifts to get: I'm not sure if you're aware that the government has started the War on Liquids, but travel restrictions are ridiculous. Also, lugging everything from airport to bus to tube to home would NOT be fun. As long as you have enough upper body strength, I recommend taking one large suitcase if at all possible. If you want a smaller one to travel in, put it inside the larger one, and pack it. You'll have a little less space, but odds are you'll buy stuff you want to take back with you ,and that way you can wrestle with the two bags only when you go back home and know the ropes.

    When are you arriving and leaving? London weather is famously crappy and balmy. It will probably be wet when you arrive, and it will get hot if you stay through June, especially since they don't air condition the underground.

    Maybe a stereotypical hiker's backpack (I had a small, old leather suitcase I put a guitar strap on so I didn't look like a typical study abroad student. But it would only carry me for three days at the most without doing laundry.)

    The exchange rate sucks, though. If you can get away with it, you're best off asking for extra money to fund your travel across Europe. Or you could ask for some plane tickets that you can pick out later.

    When you get there: Buy some of the London Walks books by Time Out. They'll be in any bookstore downtown. They are a great way of getting to know the city.

    D) Eating: I only ate out in london when it was on my employer's expense account. I am a lousy cook; I solved this problem by living with a chef for the Mandarin Oriental and an Italian girl, so I bought ingredients. I suggest learning how to cook better since eating out really isn't an option. Fast food worth having is mostly kebabs, and it's relatively affordable but unless you are loaded it still gets prohibitive. You are sort of reduced to shopping at Tesco, which is a supermarket like any other.

    E) Seeing the rest of Europe: People will probably tell you eurorail pass blah balh blah. It's not really worth it. It doesn't cover eastern europe very well, it's hard to deal with restrictions and it's slower than plane travel usually and not much cheaper.
    It's a requirement if you want to go intercity once you set foot in a country, but you should use low-cost air carriers like Easyjet, Ryan Air or Centralwings to take you around to see places.
    Most of europe is worth seeing. Germany, Italy and France can be VERY expensive depending how you do them.

    Cities I would definately go to, in rank order. In terms of quality, I think it is much more fun to spend two or three days in one city and really get a feel for it than do a whistlestop tour of the biggest touristy spots in every place imaginable. Take in as much as you can, but don't try too much or it'll all be less cool. Save some for the next trip! If you are on a budget, eastern europe can't be beat:

    1) Warsaw (I think my favorite city with the prettiest girls in Europe)
    2) Berlin
    3) Prague (Like Warsaw, the people are less friendly, the beer even cheaper and better.)
    4) Paris (Meh. But you sort of have to. This is an exception: From London you can take the chunnel bullet train and it's a lot less of a hassle.)
    5) Naples
    5) Brussels
    6) Helsinki (Or Stockholm. But if at all possible do one of the two!)
    7) Hamburg
    8) Barcelona
    9) Edinburg (Another case where the rail works as well as a plane
    10) Rome (You can train between here and Naples in like 8 hours.)

    kaliyama on
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  • Locust76Locust76 Registered User regular
    edited October 2006
    Well, if you're going to be living on a tight budget, the "Gentlemen's Club" Stringfellows in downtown London is pretty much out of the question :)

    Either way, as far as interesting places to visit, I can wholly endorse Germany. Berlin's a bit on the expensive side and not really a good idea if you get depressed easily (because of the wall and communism and all that), but very interesting and historically rich nonetheless.

    Smaller German cities like Düsseldorf, Köln and Bonn are extremely nice places to visit. In fact, Bonn is pretty much a city of museums. There's the "Haus der Geschichte" (House of German History) which is a comprehensive museum on German history since WWII to present day. It doesn't focus too much on WWII, rather on things like the Woman's Rights movement, collapse of the wall and things like industry and art. Best of all, it's free to visit! On the same street is also the Guggenheim Collection and several other museums on the so-called "Museumsmeile" (Mile of Museums).

    But yeah, my advice is to get on that train and travel around as much as possible. London's a fabulous city, but it's only a small part of this side of the world and you'd be doing yourself a huge disservice by not exploring.

    Locust76 on
  • RamiRami Registered User regular
    edited October 2006
    Ooo what university are you going to?

    Tescos is the cheapest supermarket chain in the UK, you can also try Morrisons for budget goods.

    Bring an umbrella and a wind proof coat. It does get very hot during the summer, so if you're there long enough you might experience that.

    Remember that chips = crisps, and fries = chips

    Bare in mind that the personal space for people in most European countries is slightly larger than that of Americans, if you're talking to someone and they take a small step away from you don't be offended or take a step towards them, they're just adjusting to their comfortable distance.

    Don't talk to people on public transport unless you know them or there's a good reason.

    Visit Forbidden Planet, its probably somewhere on Oxford Street, its a cool shop all about comics, sci-fi, fantasy etc. Also visit the London Planetarium, its being taken down soon so it won't be around for long. You can probably get a ticket for both that and Madame Tussauds, the famous wax works, together.

    Rami on
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  • FloofyFloofy Registered User regular
    edited October 2006
    Interesting london stuff you probably won't get from guidebooks:

    Camden Town Market is a must, even if you're not a goth, it's a strange, massive warren of alleyways with the most incredible stuff on sale, great for peoplewatching strange individuals, and there's a whole array of fantastic food stalls, too. Just beware of mad druggies.

    I don't know where you're staying, but Generator is a hostel I've stayed at when visiting london, and it beats the hell out of all other hostels I've been to, clean, modern, a decent bar, and a free breakfast.

    Madam Tussaud's is a bit crap to be honest. Tower of London was decent but extremely crowded.

    Floofy on
  • areaarea Registered User regular
    edited October 2006
    Rami wrote:
    Tescos is the cheapest supermarket chain in the UK

    Does Aldis not pip it?

    area on
  • saint2esaint2e Registered User regular
    edited October 2006
    Truth to Camden Market.

    Tower of London is a must. Madame Tussauds is disappointing (at least it was for me).

    Seriously though, on a budget check out the the National Gallery and the National Museum. Both are free and incredibly cool.

    If you're staying in London, then be prepared to:

    a) Pay a lot
    b) Have a lot of roommates and not pay as much

    You may want to live in the outer regions which still have tube access (ie- Wimbledon) as rent won't be AS expensive and so the trade off for having a monthly tube ticket vs. cheaper rent might work in your favour.

    I live in Woking, Surrey which is about 25 minutes by train to Waterloo station, and I came over here 16 months ago, so if you have any specific questions about what to bring over, let me know.

    saint2e on
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  • KalTorakKalTorak One way or another, they all end up in the Undercity.Registered User regular
    edited November 2006
    Thanks for the replies; i went to an orientation meeting last week so I've got some new info.

    I'll be studying at the Ithaca College London Center - we've got Fridays off so 3-day weekends should leave me a lot of time for exploring. So far the plan is to find an 8-person flat - i'll definitely be living with one friend and we're searching out more people now. The 8-person flats are supposed to be a lot cheaper and have free internet (so i'm told) which is a big plus.

    We're going over at the beginning of January, leaving around the middle of May, so we won't be dealing with summer weather. I'm told that London winters are warmer than Ithaca winters, but there's a lot of rain. As for luggage, I tend to pack pretty light - all my clothes for college fit into one big duffel bag. I'm planning on bringing that duffel bag, a computer-carrying backpack and an all-purpose travel backpack that I use for shorter trips to carry clothes and books.

    I don't really plan on getting a Eurorail pass - from what I hear it's much cheaper to fly everywhere. I'm hoping to go back to Italy (my parents brought me to Venice and Rome when I was too young to care), Lyon (my ex-gf is studying abroad there), Scotland (another friend goes to St. Andrews), Paris, Amsterdam - cities you have to go to if you're in Europe. I hadn't considered Germany or eastern Europe (I guess Americans sort of forget that eastern europe is there) but I'll definitely check it out.

    I'm also looking at getting a mobile phone while i'm there. The school has a package plan with PicCell wireless where you pay-as-you-go - Incoming calls are free but calling someone within the network is .097 pounds per minute, which seems to convert to 19 cents. Seems a bit pricey to me, although I don't plan on having long conversations on it (skype ftw). Should I go with this plan, or are there better options once i get there?

    KalTorak on
  • GiganticusGiganticus Registered User regular
    edited October 2017
    DELETED

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  • TexiKenTexiKen Dammit! That fish really got me!Registered User regular
    edited November 2006
    Dusseldorf is the best city I've been to in Europe. It's small, but large enough that it's on the radar, so the speak. People speak english there if you don't speak German, it has a large japanese quarter that has really good food, and the Konigstrasse is beautiful at night. Napolean did good there.

    It's got the right touch of old age (altbier is very good stuff), yet the modern architecture and business center is a sight to see. I feel like a schoolgirl talking about the city, but it beat other "big name" cities I went to like Prague, Amsterdam, and Munich hands down. It's also pretty cheap to stay there, compared to other European cities (Europe in general, outside of England, is about 20% more expensive than the US in everything).

    If I had to live in Europe for a long time, Dusseldorf would be the place.

    And yeah, try flying to cities if they aren't close together. There is a cheap, Jet Blue like company Lufthansa operates called Condor that gets you to cities in Europe cheap. You have Lufthansa safety and quality but cheap, Southwest Airlines like prices.

    The only time I could see train travel is going from the Netherlands to Belgium to Northern Germany to Northern France. Europe has this neat little speed train system in that part of the continents where you can get to all those places in about 2-3 hours.

    TexiKen on
  • Nitsuj82Nitsuj82 Registered User regular
    edited November 2006
    My girlfriend went to Royal Holloway for a year. She loved it, and from the pictures I've seen, the campus is incredible. Plus, as I understand it, all the colleges have PUBS on campus :shock: . However, I hear everything costs almost twice as much and the food is horrid.

    Nitsuj82 on
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  • RohaqRohaq UKRegistered User regular
    edited November 2006
    Stay till the summer, we're likely going to have UK PAX '07 around then.

    Rohaq on
  • ComahawkComahawk Registered User regular
    edited November 2006
    Nitsuj82 wrote:
    My girlfriend went to Royal Holloway for a year. She loved it, and from the pictures I've seen, the campus is incredible. Plus, as I understand it, all the colleges have PUBS on campus :shock: . However, I hear everything costs almost twice as much and the food is horrid.

    Your college in the states don't have pubs in them?

    There are usually bars/pubs in the universities and college in Canada.

    Anyways, as far as visiting Europe, I suggest checking out Ypres, site of the first gas attacks. Kick ass little place.

    Comahawk on
  • Nitsuj82Nitsuj82 Registered User regular
    edited November 2006
    Comahawk wrote:
    Nitsuj82 wrote:
    My girlfriend went to Royal Holloway for a year. She loved it, and from the pictures I've seen, the campus is incredible. Plus, as I understand it, all the colleges have PUBS on campus :shock: . However, I hear everything costs almost twice as much and the food is horrid.

    Your college in the states don't have pubs in them?

    There are usually bars/pubs in the universities and college in Canada.

    Anyways, as far as visiting Europe, I suggest checking out Ypres, site of the first gas attacks. Kick ass little place.

    We had one at NAU, but that's because we had a big Hotel and Restaurant Management school. Otherwise, I don't think a lot of colleges here have them ON campus.

    Nitsuj82 on
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