What should I avoid in London?

Leicester Square and the streets radiating off it — Cranbourn Street, Bear Street — are where London puts its worst restaurants in its most visible location. The Angus Steakhouse chain, with its backlit photos of steaks that look nothing like what arrives, has somehow survived decades despite nobody recommending it. If a restaurant has a laminated menu in six languages and someone standing outside trying to seat you, the food is coming out of a microwave. Walk ten minutes into Soho — Baoziinn on Newport Place does hand-pulled noodles for £9, or cut through to Frith Street where Barrafina's counter seats serve prawn tortillas that smell like seared garlic and the sea. The price gap between the trap and the real thing is often smaller than you'd expect.

The pedicabs clustered around Shaftesbury Avenue and Covent Garden don't have regulated meters — or rather, they have meters that seem to run on a different counting system. A ten-minute ride from the Strand to Oxford Circus can come to £40-60, which is absurd when the Tube does it in four minutes for £2.80 on a contactless card. Black cabs from Heathrow are another one: the metered fare into central London runs £60-80 depending on traffic, while the Piccadilly line covers the same ground for £5.50. The Elizabeth line from Paddington is faster and more comfortable than both — about £12.80 on contactless. On the Tube itself, stand on the right side of the escalator. This isn't a suggestion. The locals queued behind you will let you know.

The three-cup shell game on Westminster Bridge is still running most afternoons. It looks spontaneous — a guy with three cups, a small crowd, someone wins £20, you think you can track the ball. You can't, because the 'winners' are part of the crew and the ball isn't under any cup when it's your turn. Walk past. The charity clipboard approach near major stations — King's Cross, Victoria, Waterloo — uses eye contact and a friendly 'do you have a minute?' to lock you into a guilt-cycle that ends with your card details on a recurring monthly donation. A firm 'no thanks' and keep moving. Fake ticket sellers occasionally appear outside the Tower of London offering 'skip the queue' deals — buy from the venue's own site or a verified booking platform, full stop.

Oxford Street on a Saturday is probably the least pleasant shopping experience in Europe — 500 metres of shoulder-to-shoulder foot traffic, fast-fashion chains identical to every other high street, and that specific smell of warm synthetic fabric and vape clouds leaking out of doorways. If you want the shopping without the crush, Marylebone High Street is fifteen minutes north and feels like a different city: independent bookshops, quiet cafés where the espresso actually tastes of something, and you can walk at your own pace. The Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace draws enormous crowds for a distant view of soldiers you can barely see over the phone screens in front of you — the same ceremony at Horse Guards Parade on Whitehall happens daily, the soldiers are twenty feet away, and there's a fraction of the crowd. The London Eye queue can hit 45 minutes even with timed tickets; the view from the Sky Garden at 20 Fenchurch Street is free (book a slot online) and, frankly, better — you can see the Eye from up there, which is more than the Eye can say about itself.

London rain isn't tropical — it won't drench you in five minutes and stop. It's a persistent grey drizzle that soaks through cotton over an hour, the kind that doesn't seem worth opening an umbrella for until your shoulders are damp and the chill settles into your joints. Pack a proper waterproof layer, not a fashion rain jacket. Wind along the Thames — the Embankment, the South Bank, any of the bridges — cuts through hard even in summer, and the temperature at 9am in Greenwich bears no relationship to the temperature at 2pm in Kensington. Layers. Always layers.