“London is everything.”

It was pushing 3:30 am, and that’s what we had settled on at this point.

The pubs had closed hours ago, but we were still locked in conversation, wandering through some of our favorite spots, clutching cans of Red Stripe and barking (what we felt were) profound statements into the fog.

“I will never move from this strange city!”

It’s an anxious pact we keep reaffirming, usually in the small hours.

A city with its own consciousness

As someone who’s lived here their entire life, London has always been a place of wonder.

It’s not always an easy place. It doesn’t bare its soul without some gentle coaxing.

It’s also a complex character. Exciting, infinite, scary, friendly, cold, warm and glowing.

A great amorphous, swirling consciousness with its own life force that invites you to orbit.

A place to experience your greatest ecstasies and darkest lows.

There are staggeringly beautiful areas. There are stark, brutalist landscapes.

There are scary bits. There are safe bits. But everywhere is interesting.

You can walk past rows and rows of bland houses which could be anywhere in the world. Grey boxes looking onto more grey boxes.

But 200 yards later, you emerge into a green oasis with a beautiful view of the Thames.

There are horizons to challenge any New York skyline – jagged, glass, and metal buildings and ancient churches huddled in-between.

And always that unique Thames mud.

Luminescent green algae, driftwood and forgotten treasures poking above the sand

A shopping trolley, a single shoe, half a wine bottle.

These scenes tell the story of London. Groups of friends celebrating on a park bench, echoes of a lovers’ tiff, gentlemen of the road sharing stories.

The strangeness, the contrast.

This is not a city of well-planned streets, of roundabouts or identikit houses. Everything has emerged over time.

It is its own organism.

That might sound clichéd – and maybe I should have said orgasm instead – but you really feel it here.

It has been this strange, swirling consciousness for thousands of years.

And you feel that once you drift beyond the awful chaos of Leicester Square…

Of confused tourists being shuffled around on half-empty open-top buses, getting rained on.

Of rip-off brasseries serving beige food for a king’s ransom.

You find the real magic in London walking its streets

Soak up Soho, talk to interesting looking strangers.

Go to the Coach and Horses on Greek Street and stay a while.

Then get out of the West End before you fall into a burning lake of fire.

Venture east.

Head down to its canals and walk with purpose.

Let the rage wash over you as bikes whistle past and nearly send you crashing into the water.

Feel a spark of delight as you come across a strange scrawling or artwork on a wall that makes you stop and look. In a couple of days, it might be gone.

But really, just enjoy seeing the life that lives along the water. The higgledy-piggledy canal boats.

Here you’ll find Londoners who don’t want to be locked into the rat race of crazy mortgages and unattainable house prices.

People who want to share and create and live in a warm bosom of their own creating.

Mavericks and outsiders who want to say a big FU to the system.

This cityscape of canal boats and barges is its own world.

Tips for London from someone who lives here and still knows nothing

1. Try not to dress like a bell end

Don’t wander around wearing a giant gold chain around your neck, or wave an iPhone around. Someone might nick it.

Especially if you’re in an area where there are folks struggling finally, or if there are dealers knocking about.

(To be honest that’s sound advice anywhere).

I do a lot of photography and don’t always want people noticing me, so when I go out I wear quite muted colours.

(If you’re trying to capture an interesting candid scene in London life it can scupper your chances If you’re wearing a pink feather boa and yellow pants on your head).

With that said I’ve walked around East London in fancy dress at 4:00 am and not had any bother.

Just dress in something you feel comfortable in.

Avoid wearing technical ‘travel’ clothing because no one should ever wear that unless their hiking up a mountain. You won’t necessarily get picked on but you’ll be quietly judged.

And for the love of God, sell your bum bag / fanny pack on eBay.

They’re a great placard that scream “Hi! I am keeping all of my cash, cards, passport and other nuggets of undisclosed wealth for you to take in this handy pouch.”

2. Go East, West North and South

London is an enormous, sprawling place, and each of the areas is like towns within themselves.

Many of them were towns until they were swallowed up by connecting roads and by government decree.

That means you can get a completely different experience hopping from one place to the other.

Honestly, you could be in different countries.

There are parts of South London that have a home counties feel – posh boys wearing rugby-style shirts with the colors popped up, characterful pubs with beautiful gardens.

Other parts of South London have a thriving gay scene – drag nights, gay pubs, high streets with a villagey feel, all surrounded by great green spaces or commons.

Then, when you head to North London, you’ll get a good dose of snobbery, a good deal of beauty, and some world-beating parks.

Like everywhere in London, there’s that striking contrast of the old and the new. Jagged grey council estates seemingly airdropped into the middle of Georgian squares.

East and West London are different worlds. West London, for the most part, is more leafy with a kind of stillness to the air.

There are some well-to-do areas around here, and the relatively newly gentrified Notting Hill always impresses with its colourful houses.

East London is where I spend most of my time. It’s probably the dingiest but most exciting part of London, and it’s great.

It’s traditionally the area creatives flow into.

People often talk about house prices in London being absurd. No one can really afford to live here, if they’re honest, and so if you’re not a banker or the head of evil corp, you have to cast the net our wide.

That means that the areas which become derelict or deemed too dangerous by wealthy folk become enclaves for creatives.

They arrive in little groups, often setting up live-in studios, form a creative circle, and then suddenly there’s an energy and excitement that creeps into the area – cafes spring up, cool pubs, community projects.

Now everyone wants a piece of the action, and so more creatives move in, and young families… people with more money.

That’s what you can see in East London at the moment – a city in flux.

Brand new half-million apartments springing up next to abandoned warehouses and graffiti walls. It’s interesting to see the transition.

If you are only in London for a short time, focus on one or two areas and then come back to visit the others.

3. Watch these films starring London

Watch the Phantom Thread.

I partly added this to the checklist because it’s one of my favourite movies, and this seemed like the only place I could shoehorn this in.

It’s a portrait of the eccentricity and passion and strange, closeted Britishness that can emerge out of our strange, potholed history when you have excess and obsession.

It is also extremely beautiful.

Every scene is wonderfully shot, and you will get a window into the architecture and form of wealthy London.

You can go to this square very easily. The address is 37 Fitzroy Square, London W1T 6DX.

The house is a Georgian-style townhouse built in the late 18th century and has been preserved in its original style. You can’t go in (at the time of writing), but it’s a beautiful square and a great place to walk around.

You could then wander around the Isle of Dogs and the Docklands and clamber onto the foreshore.

See the glorious hodgepodge of buildings and industrial sites. This is the meat and bones of London.

It is quiet but brooding. You can spend hours wandering around here, looking at the strange structures or people watching.

A lot of people come to London having watched Notting Hill or Four Weddings and a Funeral.

These are funny films, but they are a bizarre illustration of what it might be like to be a very wealthy person working in the film industry.

It’s an upper-middle-class dinner party at the director’s house. I’ve never met anyone anywhere in real life who vaguely resembles any of these characters.

4. Dive into London’s art scene (not just the galleries)

I’ve touched on this already, but London is a hub of creativity.

If you want to seek out the kinds of things I share in Lost in the Trip (paint-splattered walls, hodgepodge architecture), then you might want to head to somewhere like Hackney Wick.

You can get there fairly easily on public transport. Either take the orange line direct to Hackney Wick station, or you can walk there in about 15 minutes from Stratford.

Hackney Wick will immerse you in an ever-changing world of street art… but there is probably a slight time limit.

Hackney Wick is gentrifying at wharf speed.

Amidst the industrial ruins and graffiti walls, giant expensive apartment blocks are springing up.

People started to flock here as soon as it became ‘cool’, drawn in by the creativity and the art. Now old buildings, warehouses, and derelict sites are being renovated and turned into shiny new structures.

Whatever the pros and cons of regeneration, it’s a good time to see what is an interesting change here. Something emerging from something else.

The other place you can head to for a graffiti fix is the Leake Street tunnel in Waterloo.

This is a kind of state-approved (sort of) graffiti tunnel. Banksy held a street art festival here in 2008, and ever since it’s been a favorite for artists.

It’s astonishing in the sense that there doesn’t seem to be a single millimeter of wall space that isn’t covered.

Again, this is an ever-changing canvas. You are almost guaranteed to see two or three artists ‘in action’ creating something when you visit.

5. Eat mind blowing international food

If you have pots of money, you can easily bang £200 per head on a meal in London.

It’ll be very tasty, and the setting will be exquisite, but…

You could also be in New York, Tokyo, or Paris.

I’ve found Michelin star restaurants tend (not always!) to follow a formula.

You get a series of delightful small plates which deconstruct day-to-day ingredients that we have forgotten to appreciate. A single broad bean, a cube of venison, a fritter of something or other. And it’s accompanied with an exceptional sauce that probably took 20 chefs a week to create. FOAM OF IMPOSSIBLE.

It’s amazing, it’s art, and if you have the means to do it, do it.

But if you are on a budget, here’s something to consider.

For the same money, you could probably get a couple of nights’ accommodation somewhere amazing and still have an amazing, unforgettable meal in London. Something new and exciting.

London is one of the most multicultural cities on the planet.

You will find pretty much any food from any country you can imagine.

Now, they’re not usually in the well trodden restaurant districts you’ll find in guidebooks.

So if you’re prepared to visit places outside London’s traditional wining and dining spots, you can get some absolutely unbelievable food. Honestly it will be unlike anything you tasted before and it won’t cost an arm and a leg.

Your taste buds will vary but I’ll throw out a few suggestions based on what we’ve enjoyed.

One of our favourite things to do is to go out for an Ethiopian. We spent some time in Ethiopia and found the food quite unlike anything we’ve ever tried before.

The spices, the flavour, the cooking, the bed of tef it comes on (and the fact you eat it with your hands) are something else.

One day we were talking about how much we missed the food there and someone had the idea to check online to see if there were any Ethiopian restaurants in London. There are lots.

Many are in Holloway. There are some in Elephant and Castle. They are dotted all around the city and typically in areas where there is a sizeable Ethiopian community.

In our experience, these meals have been delicious and incredible value for money so it’s well worth checking out. Vegans will be in 7th heaven because you can get what’s called ‘Fasting Platter’, a common dish in Ethiopia, which is free from meat or dairy and offers a wonderful combination of different flavours.

Burmese food is another one of our favourites. There are a few less options on this front but East London is your best bet. At the time of writing there is a Burmese restaurant on Old Street and another in Bethnal Green. Again this is something definitely worth checking out.

If you do go for Burmese food try the fermented tea leaf salad. It’s life changing.

An even easier cuisine track down in London is Vietnamese food, particularly if you head to East London (Dalston and Hackney mainly).

You will be spoilt for choice here. Anyone who has visited Vietnam will know that the food is delicious.

This is not an example of Vietnamese food, but rather a burger fly tip in our local communal garden.

Want something a bit more British?

If you want to sample ‘British’ cuisine, people-watch and eat some great food without breaking the bank, I’d recommend going for food at a really good gastropub.

I hate the word gastropub. For the uninitiated, it means fancy food in a pub setting.

They’re not necessarily cheap, but you often get some incredible flavours and great cooking, particularly if you go for a roast or something people might think of as being traditionally British.

You’ll also be in a nice informal setting and get that cosy feel and character of a pub.

Two really good options are The Gun, a pub in the Docklands (on Coldharbour). It’s old, has lovely staff and incredible views over the Thames. If you are ever there on a summer’s day, have a drink outside first.

There is also the Guy Richie pub, Lore of the Land. I really wanted to dislike this, but the food was exceptional, as was the beer.

And then there is a pub in Kew called ‘The Greyhound’.

They might have done one of the best roasts I’ve ever tasted. They serve everything on the table on boards (rather than individual portions) which I normally hate, but the cooking and the taste blew my mind, so it didn’t matter.

All of the above will require bookings.

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Obviously, it is crazy for me to just point out a few here.

There are hundreds of amazing eateries in London, and they are all unique.

It is a never-changing landscape when it comes to food, and chefs come and go, and managers come and go.

So just take this as a finger-in-the-air guide to a few places I had the good fortune to visit and had a great experience in.

Talk to other Londoners and ask them what they think and where they like, and feel free to experiment.

Some of the best dining experiences we’ve had were just stumbling upon somewhere after a long walk, and we’ve found some extraordinary places that way.

We found one place in Haringey which looked like a working man’s social club. We got there, and we were pretty much the only ones there, other than another table which had a big bottle of vodka on the table. They were doing shots every 5 or 10 minutes in between grazing on snacks.

We ordered the option which gave us the equivalent of a taster menu/tapas/everything-on-the-planet, and they brought out a huge number of different plates.

Some ingredients we recognised, some we didn’t. Honestly, the food wasn’t great, but it was fresh and it was filling, and we were in such a strange environment that it was a truly memorable night.

More people piled into the place, and everyone was having fun and saying cheers. The table next to us ordered pudding and asked if they could share some of their cake with us.

And at this point, we were two hours in when a gothic-looking Turkish guy wearing lots of eyeliner emerged into the tiny space.

He had a microphone and started singing and didn’t stop for about an hour. It felt if it’s possible like he was serenading the whole room.

He lent into our table and winked at us. We we were the only ones there who didn’t speak Turkish so thankfully he didn’t put too much spotlight on us because we wouldn’t really have been able to say anything. But he headed over to the vodka table and one of the girls grabbed the microphone off him and then proceeded to sing two of the most beautiful songs.

That could be a story from anywhere in the world. And really it’s just one of those things I wanted to celebrate in Lost in a trip and in exploring in general.

TripAdvisor and blogs and guide books are great to give you a bit of a safety net.

They can be particularly wonderful arriving somewhere for the first time or if there is something very very specific that he wants to see or do or experience.

But the really magical experiences are often when you find yourself drifting off the page.

When you meet a local who takes you under their wing. When you stumble somewhere and take a chance on it and try something you’d never tasted before.

Always be safe and always keep your street smarts but do explore.

I went off on a bit of a tangent there but let’s look at our next bullet point.

6. Try oysters

You can get some amazing oysters in London, especially if you are able to venture a little further out.

One of my favourite places to people watch and have a beer and enjoy a plate of oysters is The French House in Soho.

This is a place for conspiratorial banter, speaking with strangers and getting more drunk than you should. If you go there at a quiet time during the day, it is a great opportunity to try some of their oysters.

But by far the best place to try oysters, possibly in the UK or even in the world, depending on what your taste buds are tuned into, is Mersea Island.

This is not London, but it’s also not that far. If you’ve rented a car, it is about an hour and a half to drive, and it’s a really interesting place in and of itself.

There are lots of places here serving oysters. Some of them serve a medley of seafood, and if you want to sit-down meal and you want to try all sorts of different types, it might be worth going to one of these. Some have enormous queues.

I found that actually, all I wanted was the oysters, so on subsequent visits, I have just gone straight to one of the shack-like places where there’s less queue.

7. Have a beer, wine or soft drink in a London boozer

Yes, some of us do still call pubs boozers.

Drinking seems to be something and drained in the London psyche. A pint of beer or a vat of wine in one of its hundreds of pubs is something to behold.

You don’t have to drink to enjoy one of London’s pubs. You can go in and have a cup of coffee or a soft drink.

In fact, there’s a movement I think pioneered by the young, conscientious (and perhaps less mentally scarred by the 90s than many of us were). This is about reclaiming pubs as a space for everyone, rather than just a place where you have to get drunk.

If you’re into history and old architecture, you can visit The Prospect of Whitby in Wapping. It’s one of London’s oldest pubs and dates back to the 16th century.

There are literally thousands of pubs in London so I’m not going to go on too much about this.

Suffice to say, it’s a great way to experience the city and meet some locals.