Fabulous experience from start to finish!! David was wonderfully communicative and flexible in…read morehelping schedule a private tour for our group of eight. We met our tour guide, MD, and were immediately impressed by her passion for street art...she focused her PhD in Philosophy thesis on street art! We spent over two hours walking the colorful streets of Shoreditch learning the difference between graffiti and street art and gaining huge appreciation for both art forms. MD was so thorough that soon we were starting to recognize artists on our own. We would highly recommend this tour! You spend the day in the fascinating Shoreditch neighborhood, drinking in the sights and scents of a truly diverse area, while seeing art from different artists and perspectives. We learned so much on the tour and loved every minute of it. We spent the rest of the day in Shoreditch looking at other street art and taking in fantastic Brick Lane and its market. This is a wonderful way to spend one day during your holidays. Thank you David and MD, we would do this again!!

My niece is a first year art student at SCAD here in the USA. I booked it for her and I ended up…read moreenjoying it as much as she did. Our guide John was so knowledgeable and is a natural teacher. I now know what paste ups are, the difference between graffiti and street art, and everything in between. This tour was worth every reasonably priced pound. I consider it a "must do" for anyone coming to London. Fellow Miamians think of Wynwood but on a massive scale. The tons of vintage shops are also great to wonder through after the tour.

Having made London my home a couple of decades ago, I also still like to delve into tourist…read moreterritory every now and again. Walks are the best way to get to know a place, and this is one of the best organised tours I have been on. I was a bit worried at first that Street Art London might be a big, almost corporate outfit with an aim to profit from the growing (and increasingly mainstream) interest in street art - what with the highly professional website and efficient paypal payment option. Very happy to find out that instead this is a project based on a man's personal interest in pictures on walls and those who create them. Griff is very knowledgeable and happy to share his wisdom, even recommending further sites too far to reach on the day. Street Art tours are available twice a week on Thursday evenings and Saturday mornings. I spontaneously booked a one-off this May Bank Holiday just gone. The group met at 11 o'clock near Old Street station with the tour then winding through streets and back alleys until it was time to take a little break at lunchtime, giving everyone a chance to refuel and get to know each other. I think we were on the road well over the promised four hours! And it didn't stop there; Griff takes the time to contact everyone personally after the tour with links to interviews he has conducted, locations and whatever else might have come up. One of the best days out to be had in London at the moment!

Really interesting! This was a great way to walk around Shoreditch, see both older as well as…read morenewer street art, learn some history and context, and understand more about what and why people do this. I'd highly recommend as a unique way to see London, and it's the kind of thing you can probably do multiple times as things change so much over just a few months.

I'm not one to post feedback unless something was really fabulous - I highly recommend booking a…read moretour with Nicky. Four of us had a stopover in London and wanted to check out the main attractions (Abbey, Parliament, Tower of London, etc...). We booked a private tour which turned out to be a highlight of our visit. Nicky is not only well versed in the history of London, but has a fabulous sense of humor and the ability to bridge the past and present by weaving in modern day tidbits tied to historical relics. It amused the 4 of us in our 50's and I'm sure would make history fun for today's youth.

From the owner: Tailor made and private London tours for groups, families or individuals. We can include a private…read moreWestminster Abbey tour, the Tower of London or the British Museum. If you visit the Abbey with me we'll skip the long entrance lines. Your tour of London can be tailored to your interests and time available. Only registered guides like myself are allowed to guide in Westminster Abbey and the Tower of London. I can meet you at your hotel and we can spend the morning, afternoon or a whole day together We can use public transport, walk or a combination of both. I know the short-cuts, quick routes and hot tips for get you around London to experience this fabulous city. I can also help you with your planning for the rest of your stay.

We had a fabulous time with Luke on our food tour. He is very knowledgeable and has a great sense…read moreof humor. You can tell he is enthusiastic about history, random facts, and of course the food! We had many delicious food items in borough market and at a pub. Foods ranging from sausage rolls, fish and chips, and English dessert. We also got a surprise treat at the end, which I greatly appreciated. Would definitely recommend the London food tour!

I joined the East London Indian Food Tour with Secret Food Tours tonight, and it was such a…read morefantastic experience! Our guide, Jez, made the 3.5 hours fly by -- he was knowledgeable, passionate, witty, and incredibly relatable, which made the evening both fun and memorable. Going in, I didn't have huge expectations, but the variety of food we sampled absolutely exceeded them. From Bangladeshi to Pakistani to Indian dishes (and beyond), the flavors really highlighted the diversity within the Indian subculture in East London. These were the kinds of hidden, off-the-beaten-path places that as a foreign traveler I'd never know to seek out on my own. The tour struck a perfect balance between delicious food, cultural insight, and great conversation within our small group of five travelers. I'd highly recommend this tour to anyone looking for a unique, authentic, and flavorful experience in London that goes far beyond the typical tourist stops.

My wife and I hired Keith Bates for a transfer from South Hampton Port to London and a full day…read moretour of London on April 27th. Everything about the experience was exceptional! Keith met us at the cruise terminal at the appointed time. I even believe he arrived early just in case we were able to disembark the ship sooner than expected. He collected us and managed the bags into his beautiful Mercedes van. The van was the perfect touring vehicle with large windows, lots of space, and very comfortable seats for an 8-hour adventure. The drive from South Hampton to London was quick and entertaining with the interesting commentary. Keith is an outstanding driver paying very close attention to his surrounding and our safety while keeping us engaged. On the drive Keith took the time to get to know us, asking questions about our interests, passions, and our previous visits to London. He presented itinerary options for the day to us for feedback and concurrence. Throughout the day he would use what he had learned to add color and depth to the sites and historical backstories. By the end of the day it felt like touring the city with a close friend. Keith noticed that I wasn't feeling well so (with my permission) he worked his connections during the day to arrange a doctor's visit at the end of the day, a prescription pickup, and then a drop off at the hotel - talk about going above and beyond. We did a driving tour of London to start then parked the van in a couple of location and walked to the changing of the guard and the Tower of London. Keith depth of knowledge was truly impressive. He is well educated and articulate. He provided us a list of restaurant recommendation that accommodated our dietary restrictions. We dined at Simpson's on Strand and Rules on Maiden Lane which were outstanding. We were so impressed with Keith that we contacted him to book an additional half day walking museum tour where we visited Westminster Abby and the National Gallery. Keith's passion for his city is contagious. The seemingly secret allies and gardens he showed us gave a local flavor that made the day unique, not just a check list approach to guiding. In thirty years of traveling the globe, Keith is by far the best tour guide we have ever had!

The London All in One tour with Sinead was amazing! I saw and learnt so much. Sinead is very…read moreknowledgeable about all the sites and gave great recommendations on things to do and places to eat. She also had a personal microphone so it was easy to hear her in a big group. When people got separated from the group, she sent them her location and we were able to regroup. She was very personable and we saw so much during our time together. I did the tour on a Saturday at 10:00 am. Tour began outside Green Park Station. It was easy to find the tour guide. This tour is 6 hours and I saw sites in Westminster, City of London, and additional sights. There is a lunch break halfway through the tour. The tour ends outside the Tower of London. To name a few, we saw Buckingham Palace, The Houses of Parliament, Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, 10 Downing St., Churchill War Rooms, Trafalgar Square. We didn't go inside the places, just the outside of it. Though there was no changing of the palace guards on Saturday due to preparations for the coronation and Easter, we were able to see changing of the horse guard. Sinead knew exactly where to stand to have the best view. Sinead also has YouTube videos so definitely check out her channel if you are traveling to London. Free tours by foot are pay what you like tours. I highly recommend this tour if you want to get an overview of London's history and see iconic sites.

Sinead didn't disappoint. I've watched her on YouTube for months. Finally met her in person. The…read moretours she does are amazing so much detail. Great personality great connection. I want to do every tour she does! She's amazing.

Did the Harry Potter tour and Essential London tours during my stay in London. Both our guides,…read moreJamie and Sam, were informative and entertaining. I wouldn't say that the itineraries are anything out of the ordinary (it's stops you could plan out yourself with research), but it was a good experience to go with an organized group tour. Both tours started/ended on time and booking was seamless. The tours, as others have noted, are pay-what-you-will, so it's up to you what you want to pay (I paid 10 pounds each). They do accept card payment, but cash seems to be preferred.

I'm a big fan of free walking tours whenever I travel, and Strawberry Tours was a great find. I did…read morethe East tour and the West tour, both with Adam. He was so knowledgeable about the city, both in its history and culture! I especially loved his quirky stories, like about the executions that happened at the Tower of London and the dog buried by some politician and why. Now that I'm reading the reviews, I'm seeing a lot more options than were originally advertised in the brochure I got from my hostel, and I wish I'd known about them, as they all sound interesting and thorough! However, I do think the East and West tours are a great starting point and foundation into learning about the city if you're new to it. Look up their offerings on their website! The East tour I did covered St. Paul's Cathedral, Tower of London, The Monument, Leadenhall Market, Bank of England, Lloyd Building, Royal Courts of Justice, and Temple Church. The West tour covered Houses of Parliament, Westminster Abbey, Buckingham Palace (from far away), St. James' Palace, Leicester Square (meeting point), 10 Downing Street, and the Horse Guards Parade. We were supposed to walk by the Churchill War Rooms, Trafalgar Square, and the National Gallery, but those were missed. And FYI, Big Ben is covered with scaffolding for the next year and a half for renovations, so you won't be seeing that, which was a bummer. The people on the tours themselves seemed to keep to themselves, so they weren't very social, probably because they're just quick day happenings. Regardless, look up Strawberry Tours when in London if you have a couple hours and are up to to walk around.

This is just what Londoners need…read more Some interesting information first: London has the highest number of singletons in the country - a fact that comes as no surprise given that it is also, by far, the most populated city in the country. Now tell someone it also has the highest percentage of single people than anywhere else in the country and you may raise some eyebrows. If you have lived here, as I have all my life, you wouldn't be surprised to see why this is the case. Londoners abide by certain invisible rules, amongst them are the following: "Thou shalt not speak to strangers" and "Thou shalt not make eye contact with those you do not know." With these rules in mind you can see why so many people have trouble connecting with others and why it does not have the same sense of bonding and community spirit you would find in small towns and villages. The English reservedness also proves to be highly problematic in approaching people and asking members of the opposite sex out on dates - this is where Jean Smith comes in. She teaches us to approach, talk and flirt with people everywhere we go - whether it be the supermarket, art galleries, bars and even the street where you may meet your dream partner. If you do not try, you will only miss out. On the walking tour we went to several places - an art gallery, the local supermarket in Covent Garden, a pub to name a few and she encouraged us to strike up a conversation with members of the opposite sex. In the world of dating, the most common fear people have is rejection. Now this isn't what worried me - thankfully pretty much nearly everyone I meet respond positively if I start a conversation, ask for contact details and even ask them out. What I do have difficulties with though is flirting. I don't know how to flirt and quickly feel awkward if someone flirts with me even though I don't mean to feel that way. Reading signals is another problem area - particularly when women are quite subtle. To give you an idea - my last two ex-girlfriends claim they made it blatantly clear they were flirting and were interested in me before we entered a relationship. I also often find myself wondering, "Was she flirting with me or being friendly?", telling my female friends about those situations and find they tell me those women I encountered were indeed flirting. I tend to be much too cautious! Jean told us what to do, where and how to do them. She also told us about body language and the signals to watch out for - something I found to be of super help! Just before the end of the tour, we retired to a pub and had a good discussion together. There was flirting going in amongst members of the group - every single person had a laugh and a good time! We were all encouraged to ask questions and discuss them together. Jean answered them all in a very helpful, detailed manner. One more thing I am also pleased to add is that she was not in any way patronising or condescending. She comes across very friendly, down to Earth, approachable and extremely charming through her smiles and super confident personality. All in all I think I met about 15 women - all of them total strangers and they all reacted positively. Had a great time, including a comical time when during the supermarket task I had pretended to be completely clueless about wine, simply to strike up a conversation with a woman, and it turned out she had no idea about wine either. She had a boyfriend (oops) a few metres behind who then came up to me but don't worry, he was quite friendly. I then had to spend a few minutes playing dumb, saying "Really?", "Ahhhh, I see", "I didn't know that", "Aha!" etc. a lot as he proceeded to spend a few minutes telling me all about wine. :) The evening ended on a high, and I certainly felt more confident thanks to Jean!

I decided to go on this tour or a laugh and just see what Jean had to say on the topic of flirting…read more About two hours before the tour was to start, I re-read Jean's website and realised that this was meant to be an interactive tour. Needless to say, I was more than a little terrified by the time I turned up. I needn't have been. Jean does a great job of easing people into the tasks so that while they still require you breaking out of your comfort zone in order to perform them, at the very least, they're not so mindbogglingly difficult that you'd run screaming from the tour the instant you're told about them! I think one of the great things about this tour is that everyone who comes on this is as open-minded as you are. Consequently, it makes it easy to bond with one another, and, it most definitely helps when you know there are other people out there trying to do the same tasks which you're doing. You'd think having people you know around when you're attempting to flirt would make things a little more nerve-wracking and pressurising, but it doesn't. Instead, it helps you feel more relaxed because you've got all these people there for moral support. It's definitely a fun way to spend an evening. It's a good way to open your eyes as to the different places where you can meet people, and the ways in which you can approach them. I also liked that Jean had a mini Q&A at the pub at the end of the tour so that you could ask more questions about meeting people, cultural differences and taking things further... basically anything at all to do with flirting! Highly recommended!

Marvelous place, the Tate Modern, though unfortunately my children did not see the appeal…read more I had fond memories of our first visit, back in 2010, and wanted to peek into the Tate during a family outing along South Bank last month. I love London's free museums, which make this sort of perfunctory drop-in both easy and practical. Our kids didn't like the Musée d'Orsay, so we didn't have high hopes for the Tate, especially after a long walk from the London Eye. We'd barely gotten them up the escalators and into one of the exhibit halls when they started saying they wanted to leave. We admired what we could of the heavy-hitting collection. We also talked to our children about some of the art, and maybe a trickle of it got through. There was a still life I loved, that turned out to be a Picasso, and a Mondrian painting I'm pretty sure I learned about in first or second grade. Our six-year-old volunteered that he liked a still life of a beer mug by Fernand Léger, and both kids were drawn, just a little, to Warhol's Marilyn Diptych. I hope the boys remember this quick visit, but if not, I certainly will. Maybe I'll bring them back when they're older, and we can give the Tate the time it deserves.

I visited the Tate Modern for the first time earlier this month when I visited London for a few…read moredays with my husband. The Tate opened in 2000, but a new building opened in 2016. The museum is located in the former Bankside Power Station, and the museum's Turbine Hall is an incredibly large and open space (but I did wonder why they don't utilize the space to display any large sculptures since it's such an enormous and unused space). It's a striking space, it's one of the largest museums of modern and contemporary art in the world. It's free to visit, but exhibits may have a cost unless you're a member of the museum. When we visited earlier this month, they had three exhibits: Frida: the Making of an Icon (though January 3, 2027); Ana Mendieta (through January 17, 2027); and Julio Le Parc: Light. Color. Action (through May 3, 2027). The Frida exhibit costs 25 pounds, the Mendieta 18 pounds, and the Le Parc 15 pounds. That means that if you wanted to visit all three exhibits, it would cost 58 pounds a person which is, I think, outrageous. I couldn't justify spending that much, so I picked one exhibit - the Frida exhibit - and then just explored the free galleries after our visit to the exhibit. The Frida exhibit (which was organized in collaboration was the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston) was interesting. I've been lucky enough to see much of Frida Kahlo's works before in Mexico and Texas. But the exhibit included many works I had never seen before, and it also included works by artists that were friends or contemporaries of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera and works by artists that were inspired by her. The inclusion of "Fridamania," the transformation of Kahlo into an icon, image, brand, made the exhibit different from other Frida exhibits I've seen. The exhibit was extremely crowded - but you have to expect that with an exhibit like this! I found the museum a little confusing to navigate, but we just wandered for the time that we had. Some of the works that really struck me were pieces by Gerhard Richter (the Cage paintings), Belkis Ayón, Sam Nhlengethwa, Carl-Henning Pedersen, Alberto Giacometti, David Hockney, Salman Toor, Mark Rothko, and more. The museum is definitely worth visiting, but I just didn't love it as much as I expected. Since it's free, I'm sure I'll be back to explore more of the permanent collection another time, but I did find it a little difficult to navigate and thought the exhibition admission prices were prohibitively expensive.