hello everybody i hope you are doing well and yes i am here at the famous picket dilly circus here in central london we are still in uh the city of westminster which is like the borough that it's in but we are on the edge of soho and this is pretty much where the theater district is also there is a woman screaming in the background preaching so apologies if you've already hit me but i will move along in a due course now for those of you who want to know a little bit history um yeah piccadilly circus has been around essentially hundreds of years but it wasn't until like the 1800s that it became kind of like this junction and like early 1900s is when the station was installed for the bakerloo line and the very very famous electrical adverts this woman disagreement she's going for it so as i was saying maybe you can hear me a bit better now um yeah this is kind of what it's famous for the video display advertising kind of like times square um yeah and i was really surprised i did google this this first went up in uh 1910 obviously not this version it was redone probably about three years ago now to be this kind of digital display um but yeah it had originally like specific brands like electrical brands in like the 70s and 80s and mcdonald's and coca-cola are all of the uh two of the main ones that are always there but as you can see it can change within a few seconds these days why is it called pikitili saka so down there is literally piccadilly that is the name of the road you've then got reading street down there with the banners which we will visit on another day and as we pan around you've got char spring avenue in the background which is like theater land it's kind of nicknamed and then we have another road down there i don't know the name of that but it's not as well known and then down towards the river along there which is regent streets and james where i'm stood obviously you can see there are some shops down at regent street and then you have got kind of barclays bank boots and gap which have been there for honestly years and years and years um i was just waiting to see where the coca-cola was gonna go up but usually it's like coca-cola mcdonald's as i mentioned and then electrical brands like samsung oh yeah hyundai is one that's always up there uh jd sports is quite interesting to see don't usually see too many clothing brands on there but yeah it's quite a busy busy junction it's kind of like a one-way roundabout is the best way to describe it and it's actually okay to drive around i've done it quite a few times now we do have obviously quite a lot of the tourist spots which are currently closed like body worlds and then as you go across you've got the hard rock cafe which is probably open but not very busy at all and then you have got quite a few of the theaters as well and then the famous lily whites which is like a sports department store and then in the middle here we have got piccadilly memorial which is where a lot of people kind of sit you can see obviously a few people waiting there and people will congregate there definitely for new year as well it's crazy to think that this tube station not necessarily this entrance because there's literally entrances on each section of the uh oh i'll call it around a while i'll call it roundabout the circus um yeah since 1910 those are the days when they have like wooden um escalators very scary and as a londoner i must admit this isn't really a place that i would pick to go i did used to work around here when i was at uni which was as i say very long time ago um but yeah it's definitely a very heavy tourist place and you would only really come here if you need to go to work so it's quite interesting to go around when there's not really that many people i mean there's more people here than there were yesterday around hyde park but um yeah and as i've said in a couple of videos now there are these information places everywhere so we are slap bang in the middle of piccadilly circus to our right you can see we have got st james's market above it hay market which is a very kind of like uh busy uh office area as well as entertainment to our left this whole area here is soho and i'm going to be honest with you i was actually going to film a bit in there but i do think i'm getting demonetised because the imagery and kind of theme of everything in soho probably isn't very appropriate for me to be showing so we're going to skip that but essentially what we're going to do today is we're gonna pop along here and we're gonna go to leicester square which is kind of like the cinema hub and yesterday we were literally here so everything is quite small around here it's definitely um easy to kind of like have a whole afternoon here if you are visiting and then we're going to go along sharpsbury avenue which is the theater area and then we're also going to go around the back into chinatown so another kind of gray day today you'll probably notice i've got a jacket on it's about 19 degrees today so if you are coming in the summer do take like a hoodie with you different layers i've got shorts on but um it's not that warm really but we're gonna get through it i'm gonna go for a walk i do love the older buildings around here region street is actually beautiful and the surrounding areas into mayfair are also stunning and generally it's just a lot noisier here a little bit more going on traffic wise and this is quite a busy area where you would drive maybe from like common garden over to green park but what we're gonna do now is we're gonna just scoot along it's not far at all over to leicester square i must say that lady preaching over there she's got some lungs on her i'd have a sore throat by the end of the day if i were her so as you can see um these souvenir shops are currently closed we have got the hard rock cafe at leicester square that is open but as i said i can't imagine that they can have too many people visiting and then this is one of the other i think it's cast as a monument and it's currently fenced up that fencing usually isn't there i would say so um it looks like it can be a permanent fixture but interesting to see oh that's not very pretty for me to show you as a vandalized telephone box then we've got cafe concerto that's a chain of uh cafes that do amazing amazing cakes but generally yeah super super quiet so let's cross the road and try not to get run over yeah everything just seems a little bit abandoned obviously it isn't it's just all all boarded up where there are no tourists around here and if you are coming to london please don't ever go to an angus steakhouse it's like the place that as a londoner or even just someone in the uk you know not to go you're better than that guys don't do it a few years ago it was voted as like the worst place for tourists to go for food so angus steakhouse scottish steakhouse anything that sounds a bit like that um just don't do it maybe don't eat around here go into soho there's way better places to eat so we do have a bubble gum shrimp and co restaurant and uh shop but i must say the one at universal it's universal isn't it city walk looks a lot nicer than that one that looks funky but yeah we've got oh gosh i didn't think they're going to be selling much a gift shop opened there one of the tour buses here which aren't running maybe they're doing i don't know training not sure but a few places open now even like 50 years ago this whole area here was pretty funky i'm gonna be honest it was definitely somewhere where certain women would um would work if you know what i mean and it was only until like the 70s into the 80s that things got like a lot better they've redone this whole area quite a few times and um leicester square where we're popping to now they actually got redone for the 2012 olympics which obviously wasn't that long ago and um yeah it's a little bit better it's still a little bit iffy around the edges obviously not with people working in that way um but yeah a bit more touristy but they've got some much better shops now speaking of which the m m world which is always somewhere that you see like if you're on the tube at any point you will see tourists with eminem world bags and then above it is a w hotel which is very very fancy they've definitely tried to upscale um this area i'm not gonna go into the m m store just because i don't really feel the need to but interesting uh to know that as of last night they are asking people to wear masks in stores now which i think is great and that's certainly something i'm going to be doing you then have got the lego store on the right hand side again a little bit of a queuing system there but super super quiet but i'm sure that's usually very very busy and the next we have mcdonald's so no doubt that is a popular spot again this isn't the best place to get food i mean if you need food you might as well grab something but i probably would be more inclined to go to mcdonald's over a lot of the restaurants in this area yeah so the w hotel definitely has brought a little bit of glam to the area and it's obviously a very expensive hotel to stay at personally if i was going to spend that amount of money on a hotel probably wouldn't stay on leicester square i think they were much prettier and nicer and with all to respect safer places to be staying so as we go into leicester square we can see a little statue here on the right hand side of mary poppins which is very interesting i didn't know that was there this must have been part of the refurb for the olympics nice and touristy but we've got these big gates with some social distancing reminders and here's the little park so leicester square has changed a lot over the last say 100 years and she used to be residential um back in the day but then it's changed to obviously more commercial as you can see there's a burger king in the background and some other shops that are being redone but we have an imax empire and casino here which is being refurbed there's also a number of well actually on the right hand side there in the corner you can see another casino and i've seen a few shows there as well and then the odion which we'll go around in a second that is what it's most famous for for film premieres and then we have this big william shakespeare statue monument fountain combo in the middle which is pretty cool and then you've got tickets on the right hand side i know that's kind of a global company now i think it's american and then a new hotel being built we do love a statue monument fountain in london we really do this is quite a nice one isn't it you can see lots of people are out just having their lunch it's just coming up to one o'clock um and when i was at uni there was a club that we went to down there all the time but probably like i say not somewhere that i would care to go to ever again so as you see it's kind of an okay place to go um i think i personally don't get the appeal of people rushing to go to leicester square um because that's literally it there's the odeon yeah the imax i think there's other places you can go odian cinema here is kind of like their flagship one and is used a lot for film premiere so this will all be like a red carpet they will like corner all this off and you will see the kind of film stars celebs arrive along here um it's quite a nice little view i've been to this alien cinema a few times is quite a lot more money than a normal cinema even in london um so i personally would rather go to like an everyman cinema where you get like a nice big sofa or an imax then you have the view cinema which is also kind of like their flagship cinema to go to again used for premieres but we're just going to pop along here i'm going to show you a bit of sharpsbury avenue in the theater district now we're just coming up to charing cross road and you've got one of the theaters there i can't say i know that play but we are outside one of the entrances to leicester square station if you're a harry potter fan and you've been to universal you'll probably recognize in the distance the other station actually let me go across and show you he has an anger steakhouse that is one to avoid um this entrance is actually closed as you can see but leicester square station and you might recognize that uh from the copy in universal orlando actually i'm guessing that the one at california california yeah is the same with the entrance but um yeah it's not as clean and it's not as warm now we are gonna head into chinatown so this chinatown actually hasn't been around for that long it's like 50 years or so the original one was actually in east london um yeah and then a lot of businesses moved over here and it's just become the main chinatown now for london absolutely love all the lanterns they look awesome and they are here all year round it would be super fun to come here for chinese new year but as mentioned quite a lot of places are closed but if you are here and you need food i probably would suggest coming to chinatown for food over those other places that i mentioned around leicester square unless you just want a mcdonald's then just get a mcdonald's nothing wrong with that but there's some good food around here um i've eaten here so many times and you can just ask them like what should i get i need to get enough food for two people and they'll help you out oh this bakery smells amazing so let's just have a quick peek of what they've got so obviously these are all chinese run places food restaurants and also supermarkets which we'll get to this smells amazing wow what is that we can get a little bit of a sneak of the food they look cute look at this little machine have fun and as we pan around the corner this is the main strip that we have which is gerard street and i've eaten there i've eaten i've eaten quite a few places along here and it's all really really good food so don't be scared to come and eat here i promise you it's good you're not gonna get like food poisoning you're not gonna feel iffy it's gonna be really good chinese food oh i'm loving all these bakeries i wouldn't usually put kind of chinese food down to my personal taste for bakery food or sweets or desserts but it's always good to try different things so we can see there are little supermarkets restaurants obviously not bars and things like that that's not really where you would go to you're right next to soho so if you want a drink drink just go across the road and some outdoor seating areas as well very nice now i personally as i say prefer places like this rather than like across the way at leicester square even piccadilly circus soho has got amazing restaurants which is literally just across charleston avenue but uh chinatown is open until so late at night i've been here at three maybe even four o'clock in the morning many many years ago and i've had a full chinese sit-down restaurant another one of the entrances here and you can just peek through and see the bt tower telecoms tower in the background but yeah we've got loads of little shops which are pretty busy but i always love seeing all the different food and i like it when they have windows like this makes me want to go in and buy stuff but i don't even know what half of that is whoa i'm not crazy and watching i don't think i like it i like most food i'm not fussy i will pretty much try anything um but yeah we've got some great treats there and even outside we have got some hand sanitizer which is great and it's branded chinatown london yeah it looks pretty nice it's the first one i've seen and there are some floor markings although i think it must have rained a lot it's come off quite quickly [Music] [Applause] [Music] so oh dear we have a breakage oh dear did we have a storm not sure right let me take you along at shaftsbury avenue to theater district so yes charles street avenue is known as the place to go if you want to go and see anything in theater you can see les mis which has been there for a very very long time and then we've got the upstart crow oh yes i saw that advertised before that came out but it's a bit sad at the moment because obviously everything is shut jamie's been there for quite a long time and so has thriller and then there are down a lot of the back streets loads of loads of theaters but i'm not going to be able to film too much like i said earlier because some of the content might not be quite right uh some of it's quite adult when you go in the back streets of soho now a few weeks ago on my instagram i did actually post that i was maybe gonna replace my camera and upgrade my iphone i've actually decided i'm going to keep this canon i mean it's mine this canon camera as my main vlogging camera just because i think i would prefer the kind of stabilization on the video the only thing obviously there's not that many people around here one of the main reasons why i was thinking of like changing it over was just how safe you feel in london with a camera i personally wouldn't ever vlog with a bigger camera than this g7x mark ii so just for consideration if you're coming to london you have a big camera i probably wouldn't recommend it so if you are looking to go for a drink and you want to get like a beer nothing too fancy you want to go to like a traditional pub that looks like this this is the perfect example um and we are just on brewer street brew street's a very good place to go and get food and drinks but yeah very authentic old school pub on another vlog when hopefully things are open i really want to do like the best places to eat because there's so many good places to eat and so i hope i can't show you at the moment and there's always a pratt and this prat is just a vegetarian one which is quite rare i don't know if anyone else has that near them there's a few veggie prats in london i think now just another example of a traditional pub jon snow here you know you've got the wood the kind of etched glass um i can't really go in but maybe i could give you a sneak peek yeah just a traditional part very frozen crown epcot but obviously epcot frozen crown is inspired by you know the uk so we had it first but yeah it's just nice to kind of go somewhere that isn't kind of fancy fancy just go in your trainers grab a beer and chill there we go there's another kind of traditional pub not currently open i'm surprised like how much still is shut but i guess there aren't as many people working in the area so it was usually so so busy like i would be jumping on and off the pathway to even walk like this um but yeah there's so much good food around here as well and before you know it that was actually only maybe five minute walk we are on oxford street another day i will show you carnaby street and probably my favorite department store liberties with that view in the background i'm going to love and leave you guys and i will see you tomorrow i'm probably gonna go maybe common garden i'm not sure maybe big ben or i might just go to notting hill i'm not sure i might need a bit more greenery after this concrete vlog today um but yeah take care guys and i'll see you tomorrow bye [Music] foreign [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] you