Explore London
Hyde Park and Kensington Gardens cover a distance of two miles from Oxford Street in the northeast to Kensington Palace, set in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. Other districts go in and out of fashion, but this area has been in vogue ever since royalty moved into Kensington Palace in the late seventeenth century.
The most popular tourist attractions lie in South Kensington, where three of London’s top museums – the Victoria and Albert, Natural History and Science museums – along with the vast Royal Albert Hall, stand on land bought with the proceeds of the 1851 Great Exhibition. Chelsea, to the south, has a slightly more bohemian pedigree. In the 1960s, the King’s Road carved out its reputation as London’s catwalk, while in the late 1970s it was the epicentre of the punk explosion. Nothing so rebellious goes on in Chelsea now, though its residents like to think of themselves as rather more artistic and intellectual than the purely moneyed types of Kensington.
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The Proms
The Proms
The London Proms, provide a feast of classical music at bargain-basement prices. Uniquely, there are more than five hundred standing places – £5, even on the famed last night – which must be bought on the door, on the day; seated tickets cost between £7.50 and £90; last-night tickets start at £55. The acoustics may not be the world’s best, but the calibre of the performers is unbeatable, the atmosphere superb, and the programme a creative mix of standards and new or obscure works. And the hall is so vast that even if you turn up an hour or so before the show starts you are unlikely to be turned away.
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Notting Hill Carnival
Notting Hill Carnival
The two-day free festival in Notting Hill is the longest-running, best-known and biggest street party in Europe. Dating back more than forty years, the Caribbean carnival is a tumult of imaginatively decorated parade floats, eye-catching costumes, thumping sound systems, live bands, irresistible food and huge crowds. It takes place on the Sunday and Monday of the last weekend of August.
