Nothing wrong with a mug of builder's brew and a biscuit. But when you need a little extra, this city has you covered

Loading up on scones, cholesterol-heavy clotted cream and liters of tea is an English tradition that dates back to the days of Dickensian urchins and Queen Victoria.

But your average London tea experience can be a stuffy event, all ancient china and tedious rituals.
FULL POST

When the first toilet-themed restaurant, Modern Toilet, opened in Taipei in 2004, public reaction was mixed.

Was it weird, funny or just plain unsavory?

Whatever the answer, the concept’s popularity quickly became obvious - the chain now has successful franchises across Asia.

London, however, has put a new spin on the business.

Read the full story - London's dash to 'toilet restaurants' – on CNN Travel.

So, you’ve arrived in the Sceptered Isles and you’re thirsty for some local culture. No use looking in the Tower, the Globe or the British Museum.

Forget about Piccadilly Circus and the London Eye, too: they’re all full of tourists.

To rub shoulders with the folks who actually live there, head for a pub.

For centuries, the pub (short for “public house,” as opposed to a members’ club) has been the heart of the United Kingdom’s social life. People gather for gossip and banter, chatting and flirting or just to drink, whether solo or in groups.

You’re free to sit or stand, talk or contemplate, people watch (careful with that, though) or just mind your own business. All for the price of a beer.

That, however, is where it gets a bit complicated: it’s hard to order when you don’t know the terminology or how things work.
FULL POST

London's abandoned rail and tube lines have been put to many novel uses down the years functioning as bomb shelters, impromptu party venues and film sets for Hollywood movies.

But a new idea to create a mushroom garden in a tunnel beneath Oxford Street is perhaps one of the more unconventional attempts to breathe new life into the UK capital's forgotten subterranean murk.

"Pop Down" imagines a section of the defunct "Mail Rail" tunnel - a narrow gauge railway used for transporting mail around London which closed in 2003 - being repurposed as a mushroom farm and pedestrian walkway lit at street level by glass-fiber, mushroom-shaped sculptures.

Read the full story: "Mushroom garden" offers tunnel vision for a greener London

More on Otarian