John,
I have done busines in London and visited family there, frankly all these cities with their malls centres or what you may call them make me feel like an Ant and just want to get as far away as I can. I live near Manchester [the UKs third city] and we always head away from it when we go out, we are only a few miles from some of our national parks and they are our refuge from the melee. Unfortunately too many others [tourists] are getting the same idea and now things are getting frought. Being retired, we leave the weekends to the pleb's and venture midweek when most of them are at their work.