Daily Constitutional editor Adam Scott-Goulding writes…It's back! The annual London Christmas Shopping Guide from The Daily Constitutional!
This year I'll be including museum gift shops and markets for gift ideas.
As well as gifts I'll be pointing you toward local London shops for the best in Christmas food and drink. Where relevant, I'll list the London Walks tour that finishes near the shop in question.
As usual, you can drop me a line with your own tips by emailing the usual address, by leaving a comment below or via Twitter.
David Tucker writes…
Buy A London Walk!
Don’t give them a thing.
(Interesting ambiguity isn’t it?)
Give them an experience.
A thing – I mean, it’s more clutter, more baggage. Yet
another particle carried along, carried past us by the rivers (they’re one and
the same river, really) of time and life.
So instead of a thing – an object – that comes in a package and is “gift-wrapped”… give
someone an experience.
No prizes for guessing the experience I have in mind: a private London Walk.
With Karen. (Or Adam or Donald or Tom or Stewart or Fiona1
or Fiona2 or Barry or Marc or Joanne or Hilary or Kim or Judy or Shaughan or
Robert or Ruth or Richard or Peter or…any of our box-office guides.)
And that’s just a selection – 18 or so out of 75 or so. You
can read about each of them on www.walks.com
– you’ll see why they’re box-office, see why “if this were a golf tournament
every name on the Leader Board would be a London Walks guide.”
But let’s spotlight Karen. The figurehead on the prow of the
Good Ship London Walks.
Declared “the world’s greatest guide” by the august American
travel magazine Travel & Leisure.
Winner of the London Tourist Board’s Guide of the Year Award. Recovering
actress and Independent correspondent. Author of Royal London. Super mum. Well, you get the idea.
Being shown around London by Karen. Talk about a special
gift. The gift of a marvellous experience. A gift that becomes a memory. And
it’s memories – not stuff in packages – that make us rich. Do you remember what you got for
Christmas last year? Let alone five years ago. You – or whoever gets the gift
of a London Walk with Karen – will certainly remember that gift, remember that
experience.
Seeing London with Karen – or any of her London Walks
colleagues – is London as Tralfamadore. (Explanatory note: Kurt Vonnegut of
course. His novel Slaughterhouse-Five.
Tralfamadore is the home to beings who exist in all times
simultaneously…)
“All moments, past, present and future,
always have existed, always will exist.”
Or…
“It is just an illusion here on Earth
that one moment follows another one, like beads on a string, and that once a
moment is gone, it is gone forever.”
Or…
“When a Tralfamadorian sees a corpse,
all he thinks is that the dead person is in bad condition in that particular
moment, but that the same person is just fine in plenty of other moments.”
The way I put that is: every London
Walks guide has double or treble or quadruple vision. For example, when you
look at Waterloo Bridge you see one bridge. When I look at it – or guide it – I
see what you see but I also see the Ladies’ Bridge and the Rennie Bridge (“the
most beautiful bridge in Europe”) and the bridge that was the dagger driven
into the Hitler’s Nazi Germany.
And when I’ve got London Walkers with
me – well, they see ‘em too. They see what I see instead of just what they
see. One of those views is a bit
meagre, a bit impoverished, frankly.
The other one is rich and varied.
A view that’s a Tralfamadorian moment.
One of many that you get on a London Walk.
The dagger driven into the heart of
Hitler’s Nazi Germany.
You think people don’t remember that?
That’s not a memory? That’s not something that’s stored up and savoured and
shared?
So, yes, why not think about it? Why
not give someone a private walk with Karen? (Or Adam or Tom or Hillary or
Fiona….)
Give us a bell. On 020 7624 3978. Or
email us at London@walks.com
Christmas 2016 With London Walks…
Walk up an appetite with The Christmas Morning 1660 Walk – meet at 11:00a.m by the big tree in Trafalgar Square
Walk off the pudding with The Christmas Day Charles Dickens Walk – meet by the big tree in Trafalgar Square at 2:00pm
A London Walk costs £10 – £8 concession. To join a London Walk, simply meet your guide at the designated tube station at the appointed time. Details of all London Walks can be found at www.walks.com.
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