What's happening in London this week?

London's week is built around its markets. Borough Market under the railway arches near London Bridge hits full stride Thursday through Saturday — the smell of raclette being scraped onto potatoes, Turkish gözleme sizzling on flat griddles, and the low rumble of trains overhead every few minutes. Get there by 10am Thursday for the calmest browsing; Saturday by noon the lanes are shoulder-to-shoulder. Sunday mornings belong to Columbia Road in east London, where the flower sellers start shouting prices at 8am and the whole street smells like wet soil and cut stems. By 2pm it's winding down. Portobello Road in Notting Hill does its full antiques-and-everything market on Saturday — arrive before 9am if you care about the vintage dealers at the north end, because they pack up when they feel like it. Broadway Market in Hackney runs Saturday too, but it's a locals' market: smaller, less tourist-facing, good coffee from the carts along the canal.

The West End has a weekly pattern first-timers miss. Monday is dark night — most theaters close. Matinees land on Wednesday and Saturday afternoons, which means Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday evening shows tend to have the best last-minute availability. The TKTS booth in Leicester Square opens at 10am and sells same-day discounted tickets, usually 25–50% off; the queue looks long but moves fast, maybe 15 minutes. Worth noting: the booth faces the back of the square, not the front — look for the clock tower. Friday evening in Soho the pubs spill onto every pavement along Old Compton Street and Dean Street, warm pint glasses in hand, the sound of a hundred overlapping conversations bouncing off the narrow buildings. That said, if you want a seat, Thursday is the better evening — the post-work crowd is thinner and restaurants in Soho still have walk-in tables at 7:30pm.

Sunday has its own rules. The pub roast is close to a weekly religion — beef and Yorkshire pudding with gravy thick enough to stand a spoon in, roast potatoes with a proper crunch. Book by Thursday if you want a table at a popular place; The Anchor & Hope near Waterloo takes no reservations and the queue starts forming at noon, which tells you everything about the food. After lunch the parks fill up. Hampstead Heath if you want hills and a view of the skyline from Parliament Hill. Regent's Park for flat ground and the rose garden, which peaks late May through June — you can smell it from 50 metres out. Greenwich is a full Sunday: the market runs 10am to 5:30pm, the Cutty Sark sits right at the bottom of the hill, and St Alfege Church watches over the town from the top like it has for the last three centuries.

London's major museums and galleries are free — the British Museum, Tate Modern, the National Gallery, the V&A, the Natural History Museum, the Science Museum. That still catches visitors off guard. The trick is timing: weekday mornings before 11am are manageable; weekends by midday you're shuffling through rooms at crowd pace. The V&A does Friday late openings until 10pm, and it's one of the best weekly rhythms in the city — the galleries go quiet, the light drops, and the café courtyard at dusk feels like a private garden in South Kensington. Weather this time of year sits around 15 to 18°C with overcast mornings that might clear by afternoon. Bring a layer. The air has a damp, cool edge even when it's not raining — you feel it on your forearms the moment you step out of the Tube. Rain comes in short bursts here, rarely the all-day soak people brace for.