Theatre in London: The West End

April 8, 2013 London Magical Tours

London's West End

The West End is a flexible term used by Londoners to describe the entertainment district in central London, notably the streets surrounding Leicester Square, Covent Garden and the shopping districts of Regent Street, Oxford Street and Bond Street, along with the bright lights of Piccadilly Circus.

Widely covered on a Private London Tour, The West End is however much more than just shopping and restaurants. It is also used to mean the capital’s theatreland!

Showing live shows every day of the week, London boasts the biggest commercial theatre scene in the world – over 14 million visitors last year spent just under $1 billon in ticket sales.

The longest running play in the world is Agatha Christie’s Continue reading

London’s Music Scene: Where to Shop and Where to Catch a Show!

March 27, 2013 London Magical Tours

For the avid music lover visiting London, Denmark Street is where you can find an array of music stores filled with vintage and modern gear. Denmark street is also home to various music venues and clubs such as the 12 bar club which hosts live music on a nightly basis.

Back in the 1950’s and 1960’s artists such as The Rolling Stones and Jimi Hendrix would set up shop here and produce their first recordings at Denmark Street’s Regent Sounds Studios. Elton John wrote his first released song ‘Your Song’ here.

Outside of Denmark Street popular haunts include Camden Town in North London, where you can find music venues such as Dingwalls and bars always filled with live music such as Camden’s Blues Kitchen.

St. John’ Wood has been a hotspot for tourists since The Beatles first recorded their Abbey Road LP at the infamous recording studio there and took what is now one of the most iconic album covers of all time, outside on the crossing of Abbey Road. You can visit Abbey Road and many more famous London music landmarks on London Magical Tours’ Private London Tours. The studios and much of the recording gear are still in use today for recording and mastering purposes for the budding musician in us.

London Airport Guide – General Information

February 27, 2013March 1, 2013 London Magical Tours

London Airport Information Guide

London has the busiest airport system of any world city by passenger traffic, with over 133 million passengers travelling through the city’s various airports each year.

As the original founders of layover tours, our tours from the London Airports are very popular with visitors on transit through London to destinations all across the globe.

In an effort to offer guests greater details on what they can expect at the airports, we are compiling a list of blog posts focusing on useful tips and information, covering topics ranging from the different terminals, to what happens to your luggage on a layover, through to where to meet your tour guide.

We begin with some general airport articles followed by useful information on the two major international airports that service London and from which our Layover London Tours are run – Heathrow Airport and Gatwick Airport.

London Magical Tours Reviews

February 22, 2013August 12, 2015 London Magical Tours

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However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results.

There is no such thing as public opinion. There is only published opinion.

I am easily satisfied with the very best.

– Winston Churchill (1874-1955)

Every year many of our clients are kind enough to take the time to write in to express their gratitude after a tour. There is no greater feeling than when this happens – for someone to go out of their way to say thank you is the biggest compliment an organisation can receive.

We do however know that for many visitors, it is not always possible to write in and this is of course, perfectly understandable. Yet it is so important for us to get a snapshot of your thoughts on the service we provide – to get a better idea of what we are doing right and see if there are ways that things can be improved. To this extent, guests over the last 12 months have been asked to rate their tour out of 5 at the end of their visit and leave a short line of feedback.

Changing of the …. guard? London Magical Tours clients at St James Palace

We were delighted to see that 96% of all tours in the last year received a maximum rating of 5/5, with only 4% of tours receiving a score of 4/5. While this feedback has been most pleasing, we now have an incredibly high benchmark set for the year and are very much excited by improving on these results. The gauntlet has been dropped and we are determined to face this challenge head on.

The section below includes a mixed selection of these short comments and reviews. Each was handwritten by the respective reviewer at the end of a tour. Thank you to all guests who agreed to us sharing their feedback, we treat private information with the utmost confidentiality and only names and locations are included for this purpose.

London Magical Tours guests at Windsor Castle

We end on a note that many of you were happy for us to include your feedback on the condition that we explain that the comments were likely written in a moving vehicle – so please – no judging handwriting!

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London Magical Tours Reviews

Rating 5/5 – Mr. Mammas Esq., Attorney MammasGoldberg, Illinois USA

A Cup Of Tea To Remember

February 13, 2013February 13, 2013 London Magical Tours

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The good old English cup of tea. Renowned throughout the world, revered by many and yet so often the source of much confusion to visitors to London. High tea, low tea, afternoon tea ….. ok we admit it can be a little complex!

Tea drinking is said to have been popularised during the first part of the 19th century, at a time when it was quite common for people to only have two main meals a day – breakfast and dinner. Although luncheon was beginning to catch on, stories accredit a certain Duchess of Bedford by the name of Anna for starting the idea of a serving light snacks with a hot pot of tea to help combat that sinking feeling in the middle of the day, essentially creating a bridge between the main meals.

Noticing how popular this idea became amongst her close circle of friends, it wasn’t long before the Duchess was sending out formal tea party invitations, the idea eventually spreading across all of London’s Victorian high society and beyond.

The upper classes in society, who could afford the addition of what was in reality a third meal, drank tea in the afternoon. This type of afternoon tea was called low tea, drank on comfortable low chairs or sofas. The poorer members of society would instead have a more filling high tea in place of their evening meal at the dinner table, the name referring to the height of the table on which the tea was served.

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Despite this, visitors to London will today typically find high tea being advertised; over time it is true that the original notion has evolved and the upper classes sought their own version of high tea but instead of the addition of potatoes or even pies, looked to add salmon and fruit. Of course as any good Londoner will tell you – tea today is really an excuse for cake!

We recently caught up with Mrs. Mclease, a guest on one of our private tours of London to share with us a tea drinking experience from her visit to the capital:

Fortnum’s (the shortened name for the store Fortnum & Mason) is an iconic British institution founded as a grocer in 1761. Today it continues to stock a variety of exotic provisions, just one of the reasons why it is an official provider of tea to Her Majesty.

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