Why Everyone Should Spend the Holidays in London at Least Once
The London Eye and Big Ben in the distance (Photo: Nick Kenrick/Flickr)
No movie more romantically conveys London at Christmas than Love Actually. As a friend of mine once said: “If you have to dump on Love Actually, you probably hate Christmas itself.”
But if your idea of a London Christmas is all Dickens, if you yearn for Pip and all those ghosts, well, you can find it at the Charing Cross Theater in a musical version of the oft (too oft?) told table.
It used to be that London and England would shut up like a tomb at Christmas. Everybody stayed home — and no, they were not singing carols round the piano. They were watching TV. Promise. British TV producers pull out all the stops at Christmas. Things have changed. And contemporary London is full of delicious things to eat and sights to see, places to go, baubles to buy. You can probably find a partridge and a pear tree, if you really want to. In fact, there is a Pear Tree Pub. But first things first. Unless you’re staying with friends, you need a hotel, and a hotel where you can have a great Christmas dinner. (Quite a lot of restaurants still close on the 25th, though not all by any means.)
Related: Cheat Sheet: London
Regent Street, with its festive decorations (Photo: raghavvidya/Flickr)
I’m personally heading for the Beaumont, a smashing new hotel in an old Art Moderne building in Mayfair. It’s a few steps from Selfridges for shopping, and not far from Hyde Park. It’s owned by Jeremy King and Chris Corbin, who run a gaggle of the best restaurants in town. The rooms are large and comfortable, there’s a sleek spa, and the Colony is a stylish restaurant, where the Christmas menu includes truffle-studded ballotine of duck with apricot chutney, turkey or venison, and a fabulous pudding with gingerbread ice cream and brandy butter.
The Ham Yard hotel, all lit up for the holidays. (Photo: Firmdale Hotels/Facebook)
The Beaumont is a hotel for a romantic splurge, as is the new Ham Yard, the newest hotel in the Firmdale firmament of gorgeous boutique hotels. Ham Yard, steps from the theaters and the National Gallery, is actually a sort of complex that includes everything from shops to a nail bar. Ham Yard aso has a bowling alley and will accommodate parents and kids in one large room or a suite. A more moderate hostellerie, and great if you’re with kids, is the Ham Yard’s sister property, Dorset Square. Stay at one of Firmdale’s hotels, you’re welcome to use facilities at the others — the kids’ cinema club, for instance.
I also like the Chesterfield in Mayfair and the Milestone near the Albert Hall, as well as the Marriott on the South Bank, housed in what was the grand Town Hall.
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Skating at the London Eye. (Photo: Mauricio Lima/Flickr)
The south side of the Thames River (or the South Bank, as it’s known) has plenty of action. There is a huge Christmas Fair, with delicious food (mince pies!) at the Real Food Christmas Market. There is also Frostival, home to Eyeskate, the fabulous skating rink near the lit up London Eye ferris wheel. There are stalls, too, for fancy cocktails.
Much of London is set up for adults and kids. Just along the South Bank is the National Theatre with a great production of Treasure Island this year, and Royal Festival Hall, where there’s always great music, classic, jazz, and pop. There is, in fact, no greater city for music. For money, London is the greatest of all for theater and ballet.
The magical production of Alice in Wonderland at the Opera House. (Photo: Royal Opera House/Facebook)
At the Vaudeville Theatre, courtesy of the Royal Ballet is The Wind in the Willows. At the Covent Garden Opera House, the company’s wonderful witty Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. The Nutcracker is at the Coliseum. Me, I’ll be seeing King Charles 111 in which Prince Charles (played by the fabulous Tim Piggott-Smith) takes over the country. Also, City of Angels, a musical about Hollywood at the Donmar Warehouse, my favorite theater in town. But no English Christmas is complete without a visit to the Panto. Let me explain. English Pantomime (or Panto), best seen at the Hackney Empire, a vaudeville theatre, which opened in 1901 (where Charlie Chaplin performed) is a very odd, very English thing. It probably dates back to the Italian 17th century Commedia del’Arte. But these days, it’s become a dazzling kitsch assortment of story, singing, cross-dressing actors, dance, slapstick, jokes, where the audience gets into the action. At its heart is always “The Dame,” usually a large man got up as the leading lady. At Hackney, Clive Rowe, the greatest living dame, is back, this year as Mother Goose.
So now you’re hungry? About two miles south (15 minutes by cab) from Hackney, is Brick Lane. This was once the heart of old Jewish London, and is now a very arty party of the world. (Not unlike Williamsburg.) The Brick Lane Market is full of stuff, old, new, artistic. And there’s the Whitechapel Gallery, a famous place for modern art. But the real reason to come is for Beigel Bake, where you get the best bagels (they spell it beigel) in town, with all the fixings.
By the way if you’re stuck anywhere with kids, head for the nearest Pizza Express. It’s good, its cheap, the individual pizzas are fine.
But London is now a big-time food city, very expensive, but very very good. If you’re in the Coven Garden area, head to Balthazar, London’s sister restaurant to the great New York brasserie. If you’ve been to the theater and you want some oysters afterward, there’s the oyster bar at J. Sheekey.
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Of course, no trip to London would be complete without tea. (Photo: Blake Danger Bentley/Flickr)
At the good hotels, a lavish breakfast is included, and you can last on it until tea time. And what is better than that big English tea — little sandwiches (cucumber for me, please), fabulous cakes, hot scones with sweet butter, clotted cream, and homemade strawberry jam. A glass of Champagne, madame?
My own personal “Lady Mary,” though of London and more downtown than Downton Abbey, advises that “proper teas” can be had at the Wolseley, the Ritz, Claridge’s, or the café at Sotheby’s Auction House. Lady Mary, in this case, has an ethnic bent, and suggests Fischer’s in Marylebone. “Lovely Viennese décor, great old-style Viennese food, and great patisseries,” Lady Mary tells me. Fischers has schnitzel with noodles (if not doorbells and sleigh bells, see Sound of Music) and crisp apple strudels. But check openings on Christmas Day — some restaurants are closed, especially the gourmet delights that are studded around London like those truffles in the ballotine.
Hard-to-get-a-table restaurants that are almost too hot but worth it: Chiltern Firehouse’s Dabbous. Palomar in Soho, a branch of a Jerusalem restaurant. (Try the bar.) How to get a booking? Phone ahead and beg. For Frenchness and sharing plates, there’s La Petite Maison. For cool, the Social Eating House in London’s Soho.
When Lady Mary is out with her Russian friends she goes to Mari Vanna, which she has dubbed “a totally mad but very fun” Russian restaurant in Knightsbridge. Afterward, of course, Lady M is off to shop.
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London has many great neighborhoods for holiday shopping. (Photo: Oli Scarff/Getty Images)
If your true love is giving you those five gold rings, I’d head straight for Wolf & Badger on Dover Street in Mayfair and pick up one of Francesca Grima’s puzzle rings. Or to Pippa Small in Notting Hill for rings set with strange stones, golden quartz, and bright blue opals. Not cheap, but it’s Christmas.
Liberty, says Lady M, is the one-stop shop for “discriminating” people looking for special things you won’t find elsewhere: “Gorgeous perfumery, jewelry, stationery, clothes. Nice place to shop, lovely tea room.”
Over in Mayfair there’s CocoMaya for chocolate. Chocolate skulls lipsticks, cakes. I know a man who got into big trouble when he bit off the head of a chocolate swan decorating a grand dinner table. Too good just to look at, he said.
Postcard Teas on Dering Street (off Bond Street) is great for beautifully packaged tea related gifts, as well as ceramics and rare and small-estate teas, tea pots, and all else.
For kids, there’s the enormous Hamley’s, London’s F.A.O Schwartz on Regent Street.
Swing by the sparky Selfridge’s to shop. (Photo: John Harper/Corbis)
There is, of course, Selfridge’s, which is the Macy’s of London — and then sone. I can never go in now without thinking of Alan Rickman in Love Actually, furtively buying a trinket for his flirtatious secretary from a salesman played by Rowan Atkinson, who takes so long with the wrapping, you can see Rickman getting frantic. It’s one of the funniest Christmas scenes in any film, so now that your feet are killing you, head back to your cozy hotel, order up some Champagne, kick back and watch Love Actually on the TV. And to all a goodnight.
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