I stay in covent garden 1-2 x per year and whilst I love being the tourist, I do find the natives very ignorant! Sorry!
We avoid the tube etc at peak times as I understand it must be stressful for those who work in London to have tourists milling around when they are trying to get to work or home. However, going out at night to theatre, pubs or restaurants in inner city or outskirts can be so difficult with pushy and ignorant people. Edinburgh is probably the Scottish equivalent though - I find Glasgow a very friendly city (as long as you aren't wearing football colours)
Nice of you to say so Annie, I'm a Glaswegian living in Glasgow. Most people in general are quite considerate of elderly/ pregnant women/disabled etc. but as you as you say be careful what colour you wear the day there is a Celtic v rangers match on lol!
When I was 19 I moved to London for my job and was quite disappointed by how it was 'every man for themselves' especially on public transport but after travelling around the world with my job I've found most big cities have an element of this attitude to be honest. Some are worse than London and over the years I have come across a lot of kind and helpful Londoners too. I just remembered something that happened to me at Gatwick airport years ago before I had children. My boyfriend (now husband) and I had come off a long flight and had been awake for over 24 hours. We had a bit of time to kill before our connecting flight to Glasgow and I could barely keep my eyes open and felt really sick. There were lots of spare seats in the departure loungs and lots of people sleeping across 4 and 5 seats. My oh told me to lie down too and go to sleep but I was worried the place would get busy and I would then be taking up a lot of the seats so we went to a row of 3 seats and my oh sat on one, I sat next to him and had my shoes off and feet tucked up at the side of me on the other seat. I put my head against my oh and fell into a deep sleep. A while later I was woken up with someone hitting the bottom of my feet and swiping them right off the seat. I sat up in shock and saw this man sit himself on the seat and say 'I need this seat' I looked around and there were empty seats everywhere! As I got over the shock I became absolutely livid that this man had dared touch me and my oh said to him he only needed to ask for the seat and we would have gave him it but as there were loads of seats all over the place what was his problem? He just sat there staring straight ahead. I felt totally violated even though it just my feet but he really struck them with quite a bit of force. My oh started to get angry then and stood up and told him how rude he was and what right did he have to hit someone to get a seat? He actually starting smirking at my oh and I could see it was going to turn into a fight as my oh was getting really angry. I pulled him away and said its not worth it and we walked away to other seats but I felt so angry I burst into tears. It was horrible. The man was European, possible German accent but I couldn't be sure. So it just shows you that rude people in London don't always need to be Londoners :-/
General chatter while we wait (and commentary on the "pull out method") (4 Viewers)
