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Attractions

London presents a rare case. The touristy stuff is of course fantastic, but the real London, the everyday world of local hangouts, is exceptional. Journey a little off the beaten path and uncover London's coolest restaurants, hidden sites, and other secret pleasures.

Kensington & Chelsea
Gardens, museums, and shopping abound
The Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea is not only pretty and green, with its white stucco mansions and garden squares, but it also contains some top sights: the trio of hulking Victorian museums – of Natural History, Science, and Decorative Arts (the V&A) – bucolic Kensington Gardens and its palace, and the Serpentine Gallery. The southern part, Chelsea – the original artists' ghetto by the river – is prettier still, with tree-lined lanes and river walks, London's second-best Wren building, the Chelsea Royal Hospital, and shopping along King's Road. But bear in mind that Kensington High Street is second only to Oxford Street for general non-designer shopping.

Chelsea may harbor some of the priciest real estate, but it hasn't a single tube stop south of Sloane Square. The most accessible part of Kensington, where you'll find two new hotels, Base 2 Stay (see Where to Stay) and the Rockwell, is where the perennially depressing Earls Court Road is bisected by the traffic-heavy Cromwell Road. However, follow Cromwell east and you get to the big museums, followed by the grandiose Brompton Oratory and, presently, those symbols of luxury commerce, Harrods and Harvey Nichols. If you score a room at the delightful Number Sixteen hotel, you'll have the best of all worlds: a tube stop, the museums, and a beautiful location.

While strolling south of the park and north of the museums look out for the various institutions that mount concerts, film screenings, and other events, often for free: the Royal College of Music (and its Museum of Instruments), the Goethe Institute, and the Royal Geographical Society. Also check out the Science Museum's Dana Centre café/bar holding free evening events, and, if you're there in late summer, don't miss the Promenade concerts (the Proms) at the Royal Albert Hall. Restaurants here are abundant, as are cheeky prices. Stick to chic stalwarts (Kensington Place, Wódka), gems (Yas, Chez Patrick), gastropubs (Kensington Arms, Pig's Ear), and the trendy Tom's Kitchen (see Where to Eat).

Southwark
Theaters galore and an unmissable museum
The only one of these neighborhoods that is distinctly un-residential, Southwark (pronounced "suthuk") has a lot going on. The Tate Modern is arguably the star sight on the doorstep, but there's so much else, especially if you're of a theatrical bent. Here, for instance, is the only West End theater outside the West End, the Old Vic (artistic director: Kevin Spacey), plus the more experimental, just-renovated Young Vic, specializing in the work of younger actors and directors (with rock-bottom seat prices). Shakespeare's Globe, a recreation of the Bard's own theater, stages historically correct versions of his canon, and doubles as a museum by day. A little way downstream along the Thames, you find the most reliable of all the houses in London, the three auditoria of the National Theatre.

Heading back upstream (which is fun to do by riverboat), you quickly come to two of London's most iconic sights: Tower Bridge and the great Tower of London itself. If you haven't the stomach for crowds, stop instead at magnificent Southwark Cathedral, built between 1220 and 1420, and neglected by most tourists. Similarly under-loved are two peculiar and riveting museums. One commemorates really bad medical practices (the Old St. Thomas's Operating Theatre), and the other, appalling lodgings (the Clink Prison, in the dungeon that gave us the slang term). The latter is far spookier than that overrated (and overpriced) gore-fest, the London Dungeon.

Talking of lodgings, this area is not rich in rooms, but the businesslike London Bridge Hotel (see Where to Stay) looks spruce after renovation, and has three separate apartments with full kitchens. Foodies will appreciate those stoves when they discover the adjacent world-class haven of everything organic, homegrown, hand-raised, and artisanal known as Borough Market. Even if just for snacks, this testament to new English food-ism is a godsend. For sit-down dinners, try the nouvelle-Russian hotspot Baltic or the eateries at the Old Vic, Young Vic, and Tate.

Notting Hill
Where trendy meets pricey but deals still dwell
For those willing to go truly residential, this is one of the most desired – and most changed – areas of the city. Located north and west of Kensington, it was placed in the general consciousness by Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant (who went to school in nearby Hammersmith) and priced way out of range of the bohemians who discovered it in the 1960s as well as the Jamaicans who made it hip – and donated the Notting Hill Carnival, which takes place in late-August in the area's only tourist hit, the famous Portobello Road. This market is a living entity – not just antiques and funky vintage clothes, but also fruits and vegetables, and household goods. Vestiges of the area's insalubrious recent past are oddly obvious here under the Westway (which has the best stalls on weekends) and north to Golborne Road. The surrounding streets south of Talbot Road, by contrast, are full of the kind of boutiques I daren't enter with dollars (except during sale time), especially Ledbury Road and Westbourne Grove east of Portobello (see the Yummy Mummies and Kate Mosses of London at Planet Organic).

Stay in the rockstar hideout, the Portobello Hotel (see Where to Stay), the eccentric home-like Miller's Residence, or – more serenely minimal – The Main House, and you can waft round the leafy local streets in your carefully thrown-together outfit, peering into pastel-painted Edwardian wedding-cake houses. Stop for a coffee – or a glass of champagne: just like a local trustafarian. Also, don't miss a stroll in adorable Holland Park – in summer get opera tickets for the open-air theater in its ruined Jacobean mansion, and have early supper at a table on the balcony at the Belvedere. Notting Hill's achingly fashionable restaurants can be too insidery and packed, but two new gastropubs (see Where to Eat), Bumpkin and the Fat Badger, and old favorite the Cow are hip but still welcoming. If you need the big buzz, try E&O, the Electric Brasserie, and cocktails at the fabulous Lonsdale.

Hoxton & Shoreditch
Post-industrial galleries and flea market finds
You need a youthful outlook to feel at home in this hodgepodge of warehouse conversions, rocking cocktail bars, urban blight, garment wholesalers, vintage clothes, and art galleries in what was, not long ago, the wrong side of the tracks. But this arty inner edge of the East End is utterly fascinating. Everything including The Monument, the Museum of London, and St. Paul's Cathedral (these are also equidistant from Clerkenwell), is an easy walk south. To the north is the fabulous, criminally unknown Geffrye Museum of domestic design, with its brilliant sets of interiors from Tudor living room to millennial converted luxury loft. The star of Hoxton's galleries is White Cube, domain of gallerist demigod Jay Jopling, but there are a dozen or two more, spreading all the way east to Bethnal Green – and not forgetting the estimable Whitechapel Art Gallery to the south.

Market aficionados are in heaven here. There are four major examples: Petticoat Lane (chiefly clothing), Brick Lane (bric-a-brac; see Where to Shop), Columbia Road (flowers), and the indoor Spitalfields (antiques, fashion, books, crafts . . . ). On Sundays these all merge into one ginormous, frenetic street theater sprawl of stalls, attracting everyone from antique dealers to up-all-night clubbers.

The rest of the time, Brick Lane is an odd mix of vintage stores, leather apparel importers, design ateliers, and longstanding (good!) Bangladeshi curry houses. Heading upscale, there's plenty to eat among the dozens of cocktail-club-pub-lounges for twenteens: St. John Bread and Wine (see Where to Eat) for all-day "Nose to Tail Eating," the aptly named Real Greek and its next-door Mezedopolio, the newish Bacchus and Cru drawing raves from foodies and oenophiles respectively, and the Naked Chef Jamie Oliver's Fifteen. The sole viable hotel, the new Hoxton Urban Lodge(see Where to Stay), may be a glamour bellwether with its lobby bistro, Frette sheets, and flatscreen TVs, but it's also on the brash and funky side. If that suits you, so should the neighborhood.

Chiswick
A tourist-free neighborhood with charms only the locals know
This is advanced neighborhood London, for dedicated travelers. Chiswick is newly hip, owing entirely to house prices – young families moved west and west again, and much of the music industry did the same; plus, Sky TV and the BBC are neighbors. Also, Chiswick is the last glimpse of civilization before Heathrow. All this led Nick Jones, the tastemaker behind Soho House (here and NYC), to open High Road House (see Where to Stay) last July, a lovable operation with brasserie, screening room, and private club. This and the space age-looking Chiswick Moran Hotel remain the only places to stay, but for dinner the options are legion: Chiswick is full of restaurants and La Trompette (see Where to Eat), the pioneer, has been called the best restaurant in London.

What else can you do in Chiswick besides eat? Well, shop. Not a chain in sight, but human-scale stores like Zecca (homewares), the Green Trading Company (eco-gifts), the Old Cinema (mini antiques department store), Theobroma Cacao (handmade chocolates), (see Where to Shop) and Winnie Buswell ('50s textiles, vintage glass, and retro wares) form an absorbing line-up (see Where to Shop). Then there are two stately homes, Hogarth House, the deceptively modest country estate (in the 18th century) of satirical artist William Hogarth, and the bucolic Palladian Chiswick House. Walking along the riverfront is delightful, and a visit here, though it's a trek into town, allows travelers the chance to experience London as she is really lived.

Clerkenwell
Cultural outposts, historical oddities, and superb dining
A fine compromise between neighborhood London and the West End, this fascinating enclave is hip, historic, and only just off-center. The Royal Opera House or a West End theater is a 20-minute amble, but even closer is the Barbican. This gray elephant of a building – still, frankly, hideous despite its just-completed $76 million rehab – runs a close second to the South Bank Centre, with a concert hall, two theaters, three cinemas, the London Symphony Orchestra, and, all this year, 25 special events for its 25th birthday. A short hop west is Bloomsbury, famous for its eponymous Set and for the British Museum, and just slightly south is Holborn, where bewigged and berobed barristers (trial lawyers) keep chambers in the 14th-century Inns of Court – rare survivors of the Great Fire of 1666. Find here the mini-British-Museum-as-funhouse, Sir John Soane's Museum, where Bank of England architect Soane's (1753-1837) quirky, priceless collections (Roman marbles, over 40,000 architectural drawings, mummified cats, the 1279 B.C. Sarcophagus of Seti I and much more) are crammed ingeniously inside hinged walls, split-level floors, and secret pocket rooms.

For more historical frisson, visit the medieval Priory and Norman Crypt at St. John's Gate, the heart of Clerkenwell – you'll probably have it to yourself. Then have a pint of St. Peter's Cream Stout at the atmospheric 1720 Jerusalem Tavern. To Londoners, Clerkenwell is synonymous not with history, but with warehouse conversions, photographers, designers, architects, and cocktails. And chefs: among the perennially hottest restaurants in town are raucous minimalist St. John; Moro (see Where to Eat), for the Spanish Moorish cooking of husband and wife chefs Sam and Sam Clark; the Eagle, gastropub pioneer; and Michelin-starred (for Club Gascon) Pascal Aussignac's bistro Le Comptoir, aptly perched on Charterhouse's Smithfield, the capital's meat market (no, literally). Also try the open-since-1746-yet-modern Bleeding Heart Tavern, before pursuing the old-new theme into Hatton Garden – the traditional diamond quarter, which finds contemporary expression at the ateliers around Clerkenwell Green.

In the Rookery and the Zetter (see Where to Stay), Clerkenwell has a pair of hotels that match its essence precisely – the former referencing history, the latter expressing the hipster designer side of the neighborhood.

London Musts
Even seasoned travelers are not immune to the charms of the city's best known (i.e. touristy) sights. Four are worth the punishing crowds and long lines.

Buckingham Palace: Say what you will about declining relevance, nobody understands pomp quite like the British royal family.

Trafalgar Square: Commemorating Nelson's 1805 victory in Spain, this landmark intersection has been cleaned up and is now more pedestrian-friendly.

Hyde Park/Kensington Gardens: This pinnacle of English landscaping and horticulture is also a supremely relaxing place to spend an afternoon.

Millennium Bridge: Norman Foster's infamous span offers unbeatable views of St. Paul's and the Thames.