|
|
|
Roughly 40 miles from the coast, the capital of
Great Britain has 33 local authorities, covers 625 square miles, has
5 main Airports, 7 mainline stations, 13 underground tube lines and
is serviced by a fast and complex suburban and national network of
road and rail services. If London was a country, its population and
economy would make it Europe's sixth largest. It's enormous.
Divided north and south by the River Thames,
London has three central areas that are bordered roughly by the Circle
Line underground: the twin inner parts of the West
End (the main centre including Westminster, Covent Garden,
Royal London, Soho, Kensington and Knightsbridge, Chelsea). The cockney
streets of the East End, and the
business fortress of 'the square mile' and remnants of the ancient
town, known as The City, within
the East End, where the streets were once thought to be paved with
gold. Today you can almost smell the green stuff and glimpse the digital
money spinning through coaxial cables behind the great mirrored-glass
buildings.
Beyond the Circle Line the city radiates to inner
London (many districts including Islington, Hoxton, Hampstead,
Highgate, Greenwich, Dulwich and Ealing) and to the sprawling hinterland
of outer London, orbited by the
M25 motorway.
For a spectacular view, try the top of Westminster Cathedral, the
Telecom Tower, Hampstead Heath, Tower Bridge, Waterloo Bridge at sunset
and the balcony of the Royal Festival Hall after dark with its view
of the floodlit River Thames.
London is a green city. There are 1,700 parks,
including the huge swathes of the Royal Parks commandeered in Tudor
times from the church by Henry VIII. The parks, heaths and open spaces
are an integral part of city life, havens of peace away from the bustle
and the traffic.
Districts are famous and fabled: Chelsea,
Soho, Notting Hill, Camden, Hampstead, Bethnal Green, Rotherhythe...
and the streets hold a magic and a history of their own: Baker
Street, Berwick Street, Abbey Road, Lavender Hill, Whitehall, Cheapside,
the Old Kent Road... |
|
