If, like me, you occasionally go to Victoria Embankment Gardens to eat your lunch then you’ll notice the dozens of workmen, strewn out on the grass, relaxing after a hard morning’s labour. Their labour is to refurbish one of the most famous hotels in the world – the Savoy. I had a quick wonder past this famous hotel to see what the workmen had been up to, but there’s not much to see from the outside at the moment. Apparently when it reopens in October there’ll be an Art Deco bar open to the public, so I’ll definitely have a look in there, though it will probably cost me about £10 for a drink.
Disappointed by the current state of the Savoy I decided it was time to see some major sights again. So one lunchtime, myself and my workmates walked through Covent Garden, on to Leicester Square, then past the Trocadero to Piccadilly Circus, through the streets of Soho and then back down through Chinatown. I hadn’t realised how close everything is in central London – the above sights and the ones previously mentioned in this blog are all within about 20 minutes walking distance of each other.
Of course it’s fine to go for a walk when the weather’s nice but on the day that I saw these sights it was unfortunately raining. Leicester Square may be the scene of many glamorous film premieres but on a wet Wednesday lunchtime it isn’t that stunning. Likewise with Soho – infamous as a setting for nighttime debauchery but during the day you’d hardly realise it. There’s a few signs for strip bars and sex shops but it appears positively tame compared to, say, the red light district of Amsterdam.
Chinatown is distinctive because of its smell – the aromatic smell of sweet and sour sauce flavoured with MSG. There’s a lot of all you can eat £3.99 lunchtime buffets in Chinatown; which while good value makes you wonder why Chinese food can be so cheap. Illegal labour and questionable food hygiene practices were the first answers that came to my slightly xenophobic mind. I’m sure it still tastes good though.
We went back to Covent Garden a few days later to spend lunchtime as a tourist. Covent Garden is famous for its street performers, and large crowds stand round watching drawn-out performances by budding entertainers. The large crowds are annoying if you’re in a hurry to get to the Tube station to catch the train home, so we thought we’d join them for a change. It didn’t last long as the performance we saw by an amateur magician was typically poor. Yet the crowds still took it all in – probably because it was their one day out in London and they wanted to take in as much as they could, good or bad.
One thing we did notice around Covent Garden was the large amount of pubs and bars that are within a short walk of the famous market square. These vary in quality from traditional pubs to soulless wine bars (All Bar One) to themed nationality bars (we noticed one Australian, one South African, one Irish and even one Canadian – which begged the question: what do Canadians drink?)
We didn’t know so the following lunchtime we went for the safe choice of the Irish bar – the Porterhouse. I like real ale and was impressed to find that this place had a beer menu about 10 pages long. I settled for an enjoyable pint of something refreshing and fruity (I forget the name, though it was English and began with a ‘w’) and flicked through the menu, thinking how I could happily spend the rest of the day there, trying to drink my way through the beer menu alphabet.
Which brings me back to a familiar theme – if you’ve got the money then you are spoilt for choice for places to go for a drink in central London. This blog could quite easily turn into a review of all the beers in the Porterhouse or all the pubs in central London; I’d have to start remembering the names of the beers I’ve drank though.
The Porterhouse is a cool place, I found it was a bit like a maze though!
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