Welcome to London!

August 2012 - copyright Viking Visual

As most travelers arrive in Britain through one of the London airports (or the Channel Tunnel), it is the most logical place to start our tour of Britain.

London is the capital of the UK and one of the oldest cities as well. In Roman times, it was called Londinium.

A thorough exploration of London would fill an entire blog on its own. However, there are other websites which will do this better than I ever could without living there, so I will leave that to them. So, I apologize for the brevity of this narrative which cannot possibly do London the justice it deserves.

How about a map or two?

First of all, it's important to know where you are going. Even in a virtual sense, it's helpful to know where things are on the map, so here are a couple of options to help you get to know the lay of the land.

* VisitLondon.com has a decent map (based on Google) which shows where some of the top attractions are.

* The one at The City of London website is an Ordinance Survey (the official map-makers of Britain) mapping tool with sites fairly easy to see – if you already know where to look...

Maybe an interactive tour will give you a better idea.

Photographs and Virtual Tours of London

Finding photos of London is easy. Finding great ones can be a little harder. Here are some sites which will help you with your virtual site-seeing.

* This one by Visualise is a pretty good way to tour London without leaving your computer. A quick warning to anyone with vertigo – it takes a little practice with this tool to stop you spinning around dizzyingly!

* Arounder has a good set of photos of main destinations in London.

* Explore London has 200 panoramas for you to discover. (Note: Westminster Bridge panorama is a tad old – before the London Eye was built!)

* Another excellent Aerial tour has some vertigo issues, but once you get the hang of it, it's an excellent way to waste a huge amount of time exploring London!

* London By Click hosts another collection of 360 degree photographs all around London.

Virtual tours of attractions

Some tourist attractions offer virtual tours as well.

* The National Gallery has an excellent online tour where you can virtually visit many of their galleries and access information about the artwork on display. Even more amazing – their entire collection can be seen online from their collection of artists. What an excellent educational opportunity!

* The Royal Air Force Museum in London also has some virtual tours of their various exhibitions.

Kew Gardens is one of my favorite places in Greater London. It's also one of the more photographed locations – simply because it's so beautiful and so much loved by most Brits. (I haven't looked specifically, but there should be tons of photos and videos out there about Kew.)

General sightseeing

Although it's relatively easy to find out about the big attractions, what about more minor attractions? The hidden gems?

An excellent resource is the Timeout magazine. Almost anything worth seeing can be read about here. They even have videos!

Visit London has a few things to offer you.

As does Lonely Planet.

Other Virtual experiences

There is even an app to allow you to run a virtual London Marathon set to be fully introduced in April 2015.

My suggestion to you – is to start with one of these websites with loads of suggestions, then find the place on Google maps and use Street View to see even more.

For more of an “in the moment” experience, you may want to go another route.

Remember, that Britain is on GMT (+1 in the summer) which is generally five hours ahead of New York or Washington DC, and eight hours ahead of Seattle, Portland or Los Angeles on the West Coast. (So noon in New York is 5pm in London; noon in Los Angeles is 8pm in London.)

There are many Webcams in London as you will find at this GoAndRoam site.

Cultural immersion

Culturally, you can do many things to immerse yourself into London culture from afar.

Drama is an obvious choice. From Sherlock Holmes to Doctor Who; Eastenders to James Bond

Fortunately, finding movies and TV shows set in London is extremely easy. Most Sherlock Holmes TV shows are set in London, as is a lot of Doctor Who. James Bond is another obvious option.

London is both easy and difficult to learn about.

The surface knowledge is plentiful and widely-distributed – which also makes it difficult to get beneath the surface. Hopefully, some of the resources I have shared with you will help you to get there.

Next, let's start exploring some of the counties.