Tuesday 3 August 2004 3.39pm
To para-phrase TLMJJ:
Very touristy areas of London tend not to have the most welcoming and friendly people in London - lots of reasons - most of them are vistors and / or looking to make money out of visitors and / or waiting for the hordes of tourists to get out of their way so that they can get on with whatever really, really important things they are doing. Oxford Street is a good example - the bit just by the
London Eye is another.
If you go just a couple of streets back (and the best thing about London is that so many different areas stand cheek by jowl) you will see a whole different side to the city. Try and get out into some less obvious, but visitor friendly areas - Notting Hill, Portabello Market, Royal Hospital bit of Chelsea, Docklands maybe ?
I think people in London can be just as friendly as anywhere else in the UK. The one execption to this is on the Tube. Here, it is a henious crime to so much as even catch someone else's eye, let alone strike up a conversation (think Line 6 on the NYC Metro and you'll have the idea).