To ask what you love most about London?

[Lopsidedlou]

Decided to take the bus instead of tubes home today just because I had some time and like looking down from the top of a double decker and was just reminded of how much I love the city.
I’d say I love (apart from the typical attractions and museums and parks) the sense of just ‘coolness’ around the place- real sense of style with lots of the people you see. And Morley’s (south )

I lived in London for 11 years. I miss the diversity of people, the places to eat, the bus service, walking along the Thames very early morning on my way to work in Westminster, the climate, and proper cafes doing egg and chips.

Leaving it.

Sorry!

This thread makes my heart soar!

Bloody love my / our city.

Lived there a good few years ago and loved it. Since I moved out I‘ve visited family and friends but now find the whole vibe has changed. Enjoy visiting, but absolutely would never want to live there again. I find it so unfriendly compared to up North.

But @Hedgesfullofbirds if you’ve never been there how the fuck do you know it’s ghastly???

I absolutely LOVE London - lived there for 7 years and would move back in a heartbeat. Still live close enough for regular day trips and visit as often as I can.

Love the vibe, the life, the cosmopolitan nature of it all. Give me London over rural any day of the week. I’ll retire there if money allows.

Brick Lane on a Sunday morning.

Foreign food from market stalls.

Throwaway bbqs and cans of cheap beer in Vicky Park on the first warm day of the year

I love the people, delicious food, history and especially being able to get a job (very easily) despite wearing my scarf.

Sadly, I did not have the same experience in Canada where 25 minutes into an interview the person interviewing me remarked :”So you DO speak English!” He must have been amazed that someone who looks like me can speak any language other than Arabic. 😏😏😏

When I go for an interview, I always look for that brief look of disappointment in the potential employer’s eyes when they first meet me. I am happy to say that I have never seen that disappointment once since I’ve moved to London. I have been treated like any other person and if my skills were good enough, I got the job...if they weren’t then I didn’t, which is fair.

I love London. It is home and I feel like I belong here.

I love how easy it is to get around. I live over 100 miles away and it's easier to go for a night out in London and get the train home than it is go for a night out in the next town 10 miles away because the taxis finish at midnight.

The people, weirdly "too cool to chat" but really nice and helpful. DS's buggy front wheel got stuck in the gap between the team and the platform when we were on the DLR and everybody stopped to help.

That and being a 5minute walk from a tube station means I can get anywhere pretty easily.

So true that when you're tired of London, you're tired of life.
Friends outside London seem to be ageing faster, they've no interest in anything outside their own family circle. My oldest London friend is 80 and I can't keep up with her!

I loved living in London for many of the reasons above, mainly the villagey feel and how all had different vibes. My son also loves it and wants to live there when he grows up.

I do have to say in defence of the rest of the country that there are theatres and restaurants and parks!

Katy what a weird thing to say about people outside of London.

The Tube - DH hates it and needs bribing to go with me. I wear a FitBit and you can actually see my heartbeat rise a little when I get near the station

Something I also love about living in London is the diversity, although to be fair you could say the same about most cities.

It's something I and my kids take for granted but it really drives it home to me when I see Mumsnetters starting threads like, "My child has a Muslim friend and his mum is coming with him on a playdate. How do I entertain them so as not to offend?"

Or "I have a Muslim neighbour and I want to send them a gift, what can I get them that doesn't offend".

Honest to God even though I know the OP is posting in absolutely good faith, it really winds me up because it's so 'othering' that they can't see past their religion and see the fact they're an average everyday school parent the same as everyone else.

Then I remember that not everyone comes into contact with people from different religions/cultures/countries every day.

I love London because it’s where I was born and grew up. I wouldn’t want to live there permanently but wouldn’t mind a second home overlooking the river to save the long trek home after a night on the town.

So true that when you're tired of London, you're tired of life

No, it's bollocks. I'm ex-London. I left because I was tired and wanted more out of life. I still love to visit, family still there and so on, but my life is much richer and broader now.

Friends outside London seem to be ageing faster, they've no interest in anything outside their own family circle

You're an ace friend.

I forgot to add what I love about London - the fact that no one dresses up! Much more casual than further North.

Also the food and food markets. They're brilliant, and still better than others I frequent now.

I love London and made the worst decision of my life moving to Sweden. We have a huge mortgage free home but I would swap it for our cramped London flat anytime.

So much to do, see, always something going on and who knew but London IS child friendly. I knew all my neighbours, loads of different nationalities.

I miss you London - love you. xxx

I love everything about it. I lived there for a long time, but was eventually forced by circumstances to leave. It felt like my life had ended, and I still haven't got over it. Everywhere else feels like a dead zone.

I don't live in London but I live close enough (by train) to visit quite often.
My style is quite 'out there' so I just love going somewhere where no one cares what I look like. I was sitting in King's Cross station a couple of years ago and just felt at home in all the busyness of it. Some people might feel lonely, but I didn't.

Never running out of new things to see or explore, the different places to eat and the many wonderful independent bookshops. And just the sense of freedom from being in a place where any style goes and nobody cares if you look different.

There's so much stuff to do. And so much of it is free. Great museums and parks and even just walking along the South Bank or through Westminster feels like you're doing something special even though it costs nothing.

You could go to a different neighbourhood every weekend for a year and still have different places to explore. I did that a lot when I lived there.

And you can get any type of food you want! Stuff that is obscure in other cities like Korean or Malaysian is easy to find and often very close to the original.

Theatre is great too and so much more than just the West End. Smaller places like Battersea have amazing productions for cheap.

Oh and the lack of racism. I'm white but husband is Asian and it's the only city we go to (both in the UK and abroad) where I can be reliably certain we won't get any comments about either of our races (I mean in primarily white countries, he'll get comments and in primarily Asian ones, I get them.)

Groups of high school students will definitely say shit to him (ni hao, usually, how original) if we're in France or Italy or the north of England, but in London, no one even blinks.

It's heaven tbh.

I love how expensive it is. How wrapped up people are in their jobs. How people work too hard instead of prioritising better things. How people take themselves just a little bit too seriously. How divided it is by money. Some say villages others say ghettos. How crime ridden it is. How great it is to have so many attractions galleries etc that I can ignore as I race to and from work. How there are restaurants and coffee shops - actual restaurants where they cook food so instead of cooking/making coffee myself I can fuel a throwaway culture of consumerism before I’ve even got to my office. How, according to the Sutton Trust, it’s so completely stitched up financially. How I couldn’t possibly be part time/SAHM as dual incomes are the norm. How I have to drop my darling children at an incredibly expensive nursery instead of being with them every day. How people think their bit of London is tucked away/undiscovered but that really every inch of London is known, mapped, rated and trodden. How endlessly repetitive it is - how you get fixated on tiny wins “yes got the tube/got a seat/got that bus not the next”. How Londoners celebrate ethnic diversity whilst ignoring that finance segregates all of them on issues from housing to education to childcare to health. How materialistic it is. How filthy and polluted the air is.

I love London, the only way I’ll leave is in a coffin.

There is so much to do, if you leave your front door it is impossible to be bored.

As an asian person I fit in and I’m not subjected to the amount of racism I received elsewhere.

As a gay person I don’t entirely fit in, but I’m not subjected to the same amount of homophobia as other places I have lived in the UK.

Getting around is really easy and cheap.

Stones throw from a huge lovely park.

Nothing is unusual, I was on the tube this summer with a friend who was essentially wearing a silver glitter tracksuit, no one really took any notice of his ridiculous outfit.

People are generally friendly and approachable.