Cocktails in London

Who doesn't like a good cocktail? After a wonderful day walking around London there is nothing better than sitting down to a very cold, very dry martini or a clean, crisp daiquiri. So, here is a quick guide to some of our favourite cocktail bars on our StrollOn walks.

Soho

Our walk through Soho takes you past some fascinating sites but one addition is the wonderful bar at Bob Bob Ricard with it's deep plush seats, mirrored ceiling and top notch cocktails. Located on St James Street, just around the corner from Polpo, it serves delicious British and Russian food. It's owners, Bob and Richard are Russian and English respectively (Bob owns two thirds hence his name comes twice in case you were wondering). You sometimes have to book tables in advance but often you can walk in off the street. Try their excellent house champagne and some of their special nibbles.

Covent Garden

If you're close to The Royal Opera House (Chapter 18 on our Covent Garden Walk) then you're very close to the excellent Covent Garden Hotel. This is often where stars visiting London choose to stay when they are trying to be discrete and it has an excellent bar, The Brasserie Max. They do some delicious signature cocktails - try their Seven Dials martini, named after the area of Covent Garden the hotel is in: it is a delicious mix of passion fruit and elderflower with gin and orange flavoured martini. Just what the doctor ordered!

Westminster

You'll find The Cinnamon Club just behind the Houses of Parliament (chapters 1 - 8 on our walk). It's a wonderful restaurant that serves high end Indian food and is well worth visiting if you can. But there's also a wonderful bar in the basement. Unsurprisingly they try and bring an Indian twist to their drinks so check out some of their house specials like Curry Up! Curry Up! which mixes curry nectar with gin and lemon juice. It sounds weird but trust us, it's delicious.

Hopefully you've enjoyed our short guide to some of our favourite bars in London. If you're looking for more audio guides to London visit our website www.strollon.co.uk and if you've got any tips, please leave them in the comments below.

Beach Volleyball!

What with the Olympics being less than a year away it is little wonder that our attention has started to turn to the games. As part of the London Prepares series, there are various sports going on in London over the next few weeks in an effort to introduce us to them and to work out any wrinkles. This week, at Horse Guards Parade, it is the turn of Women's' Beach Volleyball.

If you've listened to our Westminster walk, you will know that Horse Guard Parade is usually the site for Trooping the Colour but, next year, it will be transformed into a beach for the players. This week, to test this out, the Visa FIVB Beach Volleyball International is being held here. Over the weekend you can see the quarter finals, semi finals and finals being played. Check out the schedule here. It's sure to be a fun event and it's a great opportunity to see the sport up close if you haven't been able to get tickets for next year. And, if you're looking for something to do afterwards, try our Westminster Walk which will give you a wonderful walking tour of the area that is filled with history and insight.

Audio Posts: Da Polpo and The People's Supermarket

At StrollOn we specialise in giving you audio tours that are full and comprehensive. With this in mind I thought it would be fun to post by audio for a change. So here are two posts, the first about Da Polpo and wonderful Venetian restaurant in Covent Garden (with branches in Soho) and the second is about The People's Supermarket, a wonderful community run store in Bloomsbury. Both are wonderful stop offs after your StrollOn tour around Covent Garden. Enjoy!

Regent's Park

Regent's Park is one of my favourite parts of London. Located south of Camden and Primrose Hill, it links the North West London. You can walk from Camden Market to Lord's Cricket Ground, home of the game and the M.C.C., if you want but you don't need a reason to visit Regent's Park.

We've mentioned the park before, in this post, but here are a few more tips about this wonderful place. It is home to London's Zoo, where you can see a range of animals during the day and, if you're visiting in the summer, at night too. You can boat on the Regent's Park lake too. The lake, in the South West of the park, is a lovely way to spend a summer's afternoon: you can row safely and easily and bask in the summer sunshine.

But, if this is all a bit much for you, why not take a picnic and sit in the sunshine for an hour or two? If you can face the walk, there is an excellent deli to the north in Primrose Hill. Melrose and Morgan will provide delicious pork pies, thinly cut hams, freshly baked bread and some tart artisan cheeses. It is worth visiting for some supplies but there are plenty of supermarkets dotting the edge of the park. A picnic is one of the best ways to relax in a park, so take some time and enjoy it.

If you want something to do before or after your visit to Regent's Park, why not try one of our strolls? You find out more about our audio guides here.

Hemingway in Paris

One of the oddities of Paris to my mind is that it was the centre for American Modernism as much as European Modernism in the early twentieth century. In late 1921 Earnest Hemingway arrived in Paris with his new wife to be the foreign correspondent for the Toronto Star.

Paris was a shock: it was cheap, it was full of beautiful women and you could drink legally there to boot. Earnest met his fellow American writer Gertrude Stein who introduced him at her salon where he met Pablo Picaso, Joan Miro and other modernist artists. He also ran into another American writer, Ezra Pound, who was just finishing his edit of The Wasteland by T.S. Eliot. It hard to imagine the artistic electricity fizzing through the city, but in places like Saint Germain Du Pres you can still feel an echo of it on the air.

The Paris Hemingway new is not that different to the one we visit today - he spent so much time living in the Latin Quarter, which is still full on winding side roads and cafe's that spill onto the pavement. Some of his haunts included Les Deux Margots (we mentioned it in this blog post) and The Brasserie Lipp. This is a wonderful Alsatian restaurant, serving simple ham and onion tarts and great piles of Choucroute Garni - sauerkraut, served with smoked sausage, ham and pork. Sitting here with a crisp glass of Riesling you could be almost imagine Hemingway walking in.

Do check out Hemingway's Paris if you can. It is beautiful. And if you need anything else, why not try out Sixty Minute Stroll? You can find out more about the Left Bank, seeing Notre Damn and learning about the Revolution.

London's Parks

The parks of London are one of the city’s glories. Like lungs, they let us breath by pumping oxygen into the air and no trip to London would be complete without a ramble through some of the Royal Parks like Hyde Park or Regent’s Park. Here then are some interesting facts that you might not know about the parks of London.

• At 253 hectares, Hyde Park (when combined with Kensington Gardens) is bigger than Monaco.
• Hyde Park, Green Park, Buckingham Palace and St James’ Park form a chain that take you from Kensington Palace to Horse Guard’s Parade in Whitehall.
• Hyde Park was once a hunting ground for Henry VIII and wasn’t open to everyone until 1637 when Charles II turned it into a public park.
• Green Park was once a notorious duelling venue.
• St James’ Park is the oldest of the Royal Parks in London and used to belong to Eton College.
• Regent’s Park’s real names should be The Regent’s Park but this is rarely used.
• The Official Residence of the American Ambassador is in private land in Regent’s Park
• Regent’s Park was originally supposed to be where a palace and series of villas would be built for the Prince Regent (later George IV) and his friends but this plan was only partly completed.
• Regent’s Park became a Public Park in 1835, initially for only two days a week.

You can find out more about the parks mentioned above on Wikipedia:

• Hyde Park
• Regent’s Park
• St James’ Park
• Green Park

If you want to find out more about walking in London please click here and if you have any tips please do leave them below.

StrollOn supports Euro 2008

Who are StrollOn supporting in Euro 2008?

Clearly this is the question that you're all wanting answered, in the embarrassing absence of a home nation in this years European Football Finals. So, you'll be pleased to read that we have taken our time, done our research and formulated some solid conclusions.

So what conclusions did we reach?

Well, as we are now firmly into the British summer (a fact, whether you like it or not), we have kept one eye on the football and one eye on the Pound, with a view to making the latter go the furthest when on holiday on the continent. Back on 27th May, the London Paper ran an article in their travel section called "zone out the exchange rates". In the article Poorna Shetty acknowledged that, with the pound getting a thrashing at the moment, there was a need to look outside of the Eurozone. And we have taken her advice and done exactly that. The non-eurozone european nations are at present:

Sweden
Denmark
England
Scotland
Wales
Hungary
The Czech Republic
Slovakia
Poland
Russia
Turkey and
Croatia

Of these teams 6 are represented this summer in Austria and Switzerland, being: Sweden, The Czech Republic, Poland, Russia, Turkey and Croatia. And, as you may have noticed, we have bided our time, waiting for the first round of matches to be played. The result is that we have now had a chance to eye up all of the non-eurozone challengers, the countries that offer the British the best deals abroad.

Only Sweden, The Czech Republic and Croatia managed a win in the first round ties, so we thought it best to stick with those that have gained first mover advantage. But what do these countries offer in terms of city attractions to the traveling Brit?

Sweden

Sweden, my personal favourite for a variety of reasons, offers the ever popular Stockholm, the vibrant and youthful Malmo and, on its western border, the culturally attractive Gothenburg.

The Czech Republic

The Czechs offer the visitor their Medieval citadel of Prague, which is the weekender's dream and the native's cultural, economic and political heartbeat.

Croatia

Croatia offers the first time visitor some incredibly beautiful spots, from the UNESCO World Heritage sites of Split and Dubrovnik on the Mediterranean coast to the capital, Zagreb.

Which means that StrollOn is supporting...

...Croatia, you would have thought. They have recent history on their side, performing well in the last few internaitonal tournaments; they have a confidence imbued into them by their young and ambitious manager, Slaven Bilic; they had a poor first outing against Austria and are therefore nowhere near peaking prematurely; they have not lost any key players in the immediate build up to or during the early stages of the tournament and they have a good, settled blend of youth and experience.

However, I reiterate "you would have thought".

Because we at StrollOn would actually rather the Cup go back with Karel Bruckner and his team to the Czech Republic. Our motives are selfish and not one borne out of logic, insider information or inclination. We hope that the winning team are the Czechs because, by the end of July we are hoping to release our Prague audiotours and guides and think that, on the back of the national team's success in Vienna on June 29th, Prague will be a fantastic place to visit for sometime thenafter.

Couple this with the strong pound (£10 can buy you 317 koruny) and I'm sure that you want to agree with us. So come on the Czech Republic,come on you reds, make it a summer for us all to remember - at least those that choose to visit Prague with a StrollOn walking tour!