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If you’re not into losing money on pointless crap, then, I’m gonna tell you the tourist traps that you need to avoid when you’re visiting London. By the way, if you’re new, here, I’m Jess and I make articles for people who are coming to visit London and I promise they’re hugely a lot more positive than this one.
So, Leicester Square is pretty much where good taste goes to die, in my opinion. It’s lined with a bunch of the U.K.’s worst food chains, selling food that’s not good and also 15 times the price that is should be. There’s also M&M Worlds, here, and I don’t know why anyone would come to London and go to M&M World.
It has nothing to do with London or the U.K. Lots of people come to London and want to experience traditional U.K. food, which, pubs are the best place to do that at, but, some of the pubs around the most touristy areas of London are not very good. They’re overpriced and the food is really not very good at all.
So, how to spot those places is if they have the words authentic and traditional plastered all over the place. It’s kind of one of those things that if you have to say it, it’s not actually true. If you want a really nice pub with really good food, I would suggest venturing out of the most touristy areas in Central London, somewhere of the neighborhood-y areas like Notting Hill or Hackney and you’ll find lots of great neighborhood pubs, there.
In some touristy areas of London you will see these rickshaws that you can get. They used to not be regulated, so, what would happen was people would get into the rickshaw, go for a 10 minute ride and then, the driver would demand a huge sum of money at the end of the ride. I think they’re more regulated, now, so, that doesn’t usually happen, however, you just really look like a silly tourist when you get into one of those and they’re still very expensive, so, avoid going in one of those.
Near almost all of the major tourist attractions are these huge souvenir shops that are just filled with frankly, crap that’s made in China and will fall apart on you in just two months, so instead, I would recommend going to a place like We Built This City, which is an alternative souvenir shop and they source all their items from local artists.
You could also go to maybe a department store and get some tea or you could do some shopping while you’re here, and pick out something that you’ll wear for years to come and think about your London trip. Okay, we’re in Notting Hill, now, and there’s a souvenir shop, here, that looks very similar to the bookshop that’s in the movie Notting Hill.
It even named itself with the same name, but, it actually has absolutely nothing to do with the movie and rather, around the corner, is the site of where the bookshop that did inspire the movie was, however, the original owners closed it down in 2011 and then, was bought by a company and they didn’t actually even film the movie in the bookshop, so, that’s just a heads-up for ya.
Now, London has a lot of legitamit street performers, many of which had to audition to be able to busk in the area that they’re in, but, every once and a while, you’ll run across these guys that are dressed up as cheesy characters or painted as lifelike statues and then, when you go up to take a picture with them, they yell at you after that you have to give them money, so, just avoid taking pictures with any of these guys unless you want to get yelled at.
There are a few cafes and food spots around London that have become very popular pretty much just because they make for a very good Instagram photo, but, the truth is that some of these places are one, either very expensive, or they’re just have pretty substandard food or drinks and they’re not actually very special.
So, this place behind me is an example. It’s called Peggy Porschen and you can almost anytime od the day find people quing up just to take a photo in front of the door or to sit down and take some photos of some cute cupcakes, but, it’s kind of a pretty standard place and it’s pretty expensive.
Okay, next up, I think that you should watch my video about the tourist attractions that I think are totally overrated and you can do that by clicking the box that’s popping up right below me. (alert notification) In your shop here, that looks like it was. (alert notification) To shop here, that tried.
Okay, like a huge sum of mummy. Mummy.
