10 (and a half) fun things to do in London when it rains!
- Visit a museum, obviously! There are about 30, including the various temporary exhibitions you can find looking around. Among these, the British Museum, the Natural History museum, the Science museum (a yours truly fave), the National Army Museum and the British Library, the London mithraeum and the Roman amphitheatre, for a taste of ancient Rome in London, or the National Maritime museum of you like ships and maps!
See how a power station has been transformed into London’s centre for modern and contemporary art at Tate Modern, but if you’d rather see older art, pop in to the Tate Britain to submerge in paintings and artworks from the 1500!
Not to be forgotten, the Imperial War Museum (IWM) to discover the world through its conflicts, starting from WWI. - What about an escape room? Depending on how good you are, you might be entertained for a couple of hours… Or quite a few. Either way, it’s a win win situation, innit? There are plenty, each with its peculiarities, choose the one for you!
- It seems almost too obvious to suggest but: go the theater! London is full of those, from the small indie ones (and that’s a scavenger hunt for maybe a sunnier day, but hint – there’s one in Camden Town) to the Royal Opera House and the London Coliseum, or if you like the style, the unique experience of traditional pub theaters! If you’d like to have a face-to-face, heart-to-heart, with a passionate actor acting passionately, pick up a copy of Time Out from the Tube and check out the listings. Here’s a few:
– The Excetera; one of the very best according to the Guardian
– Above the Stag; award-winning theater, UK’s only professional LGBTQ+ theater
– The Finborough; if you like the cerebral, nichey niche writings and plays, old and new, this one’s for you.
– The Hen&Chickens; here you can find The Comedy, strap in for a good laugh at this Victorian pub
The list of pub theaters is long, as well as the indie theaters one. As said, scavenger hunt for a sunnier day. - Harrods for almost too many hours? Why not use this rainy weather to buy a new sweater? A shopping spree on Oxford Street, or take your kids (or yourself) to Hamleys for several floors of toys. Or pay a visit to a traditional Victorian covered market like Greenwich Market, Leadenhall Market or Covent Garden Market to do some shopping while basking in that beautiful architecture we all love.
- Look at London from a high point, from a low point, from a high point, from a low point… Ride the London eye, it doesn’t rain inside the pods!
- Travel over the rain and through the stars at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich. In the planetarium, visitors can experience the wonders of space with the commentary from expert astronomers, AND you can stand on the Prime Meridian Line at the home of Greenwich Mean Time.
- If the weather is not too bad, a covered boat that will take you for a cruise on the river Thames, and be ready to take loads of pictures from the point of view of London’s oldest citizen.
- Watch a film at one of the many, many theaters in London. Check out Prince Charles Cinema for old and new films they might be screening, and if you’re lucky you may even catch an event night! We all want to sing the songs out loud instead of muttering them, right? Well, perhaps it’s your lucky day! For the cheap(ish) and good, grab a ticket at the renovated venue Genesis Cinema Whitechapel: there is a bar, the seats are comfy, it’s nice.
8.1 If you’re more for the indie and quirky, check out the Electric Cinema, its beds and electric blankets could be just perfect for our case (there are also chairs, yes, and it’s very good leather armchairs, at that), or you can look up the oldest cinemas in London, dating back to the early 1900, like the Ritzy Cinema, showing new films, old films, documentaries, and has an upstairs space for music and stand-up comedy! Check out Rio Cinema (age: 112) for one of their numerous film festivals, or if you really want to do something odd, why not go to Cine Lumiére and watch a French film in London? I’d be down for that. - Hop on… don’t hop off. Just that. Join a hop-on-hop-off bus, and just let it carry you around town until you’re tired of it, and can move to the next rainy day activity in London.
- Just enjoy it. Be one with nature at the Barbican Conservatory, one of London’s hidden gems – a giant botanical garden clashing with the surrounding brutalist architecture: imagine this series of big sharp buildings, but from the top of one of them, part of the 2000 plants cascade down its wall. It’s big, it’s beautiful, it’s weird. Go. (Also it’s free, so you really should).