Ed Cunningham

Looking to make a splash with your next family day out? How about some wobbly water obstacle courses, chaotically fun wave machines and slides so long you’re not sure where they end? Waterparks come in all shapes and sizes in the UK, and luckily for us, most are open all year round – offering a great day trip to keep kids entertained for hours on end while you brush up your butterfly stroke. From epic outdoor inflatables to weather-proof indoor pools with flumes galore, you’ll find excellent waterparks dotted all over the country – and many of them feature standard swimming facilities and spas, too, as well as other child-friendly activities such as adventure parks. Time to blow up the armbands and grab your towel: these are the 14 best waterparks in the UK, updated with new additions for 2025. RECOMMENDED:☀️The best outdoor swimming pools in the UK🚴The most beautiful bike trails in the UK🌴The most stunning hidden beaches in the UK🏊The best waterparks in London

Want a drink? You've come to the right place. This is Time Out’s list of best bars in London, our curated guide to London’s drinking scene, featuring the buzziest booze dens in the capital right now. If it’s on this list, it’s excellent. These are the 50 places we'd recommend to a friend, because we love drinking in them and have done many times over. From classy cocktail joints to delightful dives, hotel bars, speakeasys, bottle shops, rooftops and wine bars, London's got them all. But what makes a truly good bar? Well, our critieria for inclusion on this list is simple; a menu of genius drinks is important, but so is overall vibe – there’s no point having the perfect paloma if you have to drink it in a bar that smells of bins. To make the Top 50, a bar has to be fun, inclusive, and full of lovely folk as well as looking the part.  April 2025: A rash of great new bars have opened in London over the past year or so and many of them have made the immediate jump to our hallowed Top 50. The latest additions to our list include rowdy sports bar meets 80s horror movie set Bloodsports in Covent Garden, whisky wonderland Dram Bar on Denmark Street, the hypnotic Bar Lotus in Dalston, Below Stone Nest in Chinatown, Rasputin’s by London Fields, and Bar Lina, an Italian aperitivo spot underneath a famous Soho deli. Now go forth and drink. RECOMMENDED: Like bars? Then you'll love London's best pubs.  Leonie Cooper is Time Out London’s Food and Drink Editor, and she'll have a gibson marti

London is full of perfect pizza. The finest of fast foods, this delicious staple has been elevated far beyond its humble roots by great Italian restaurants in London, pop-ups, street food vendors and pub residencies, and we know just where to find these world-class wonders, because we’ve been eating our way across London in order to discover the best. Whether it’s delivered in a cardboard box or served in a swish restaurant, excellent pizza is hard to beat. Browse our list of the best pizza places in town and try not to drool on your screen. Recent additions to the Top 20 include some nifty kitchen residencies; Dough Hands at the Spurstowe Arms and Old Nun’s Head, Bing Bong Pizza at You Call The Shots in Hackney and Little Earthquakes at the Railway Tavern in Dalston.  RECOMMENDED: The finest fish and chips in London.  Leonie Cooper is Time Out London’s Food and Drink Editor. For more about how we curate, see our editorial guidelines.

If you’re dreaming of finding sand in your shoes after a long day out and queuing too long for ice cream, then you could do a lot worse than venturing out of the city and planning a trip to one of the UK’s seemingly endless coastal towns. This is an island nation, after all, which means it’s packed with rugged cliffs and windswept headlands as well as quaint fishing villages and shoreline surf spots. We might not have the sunkissed weather of our European neighbours, but when it comes to costal charm, the UK ticks a hell of a lot of boxes. Planning a trip to the seaside? Check out our list of the best coastal towns in the country, from Scotland to Cornwall.   Which UK seaside towns get the best weather?  If you’re chasing sunshine, you’re probably going to want to go south. Brighton, Margate, St Ives, Salcombe and Falmouth can clock some serious sun hours in the right season – but we can’t make any promises, so be sure to pack a raincoat to be on the safe side.  Where are the best beaches in the UK? If beach walks and swimming in the sea is what you’re after, look no further than our list of the best beaches in the UK. From the list below, we’d recommend Brighton if you’re more of a pebble person. Head to Nefyn for natural beauty and extreme quiet. Try North Berwick if you want sand between your toes and can stomach chillier waters. And for higher temperatures, head to East Portlemouth beach and stay in Salcombe.  RECOMMENDED:🌊The best outdoor swimmming pools in the UK🏖️T

Every week, a frankly silly amount of brilliant new restaurants, cafés and street food joints arrive in London. Which makes whittling down a shortlist of the best newbies a serious challenge. But here it is. The 20 very best new restaurants in the capital, ranked in order of greatness and deliciousness. All of them have opened in the past year and been visited by our hungry critics. So go forth and take inspo from this list, which features everything from modern Korean cookery at Miga in Hackney, bistro-pub delights at The Brave in Islington, deft dosas at Tamila in King’s Cross, bawdy British fare at Rake in Highbury, Brit/Thai mashups at AngloThai in Marylebone, vegan Michelin star goodness at Shoreditch’s Plates, hip fish bar Tollington’s in Finsbury Park, and Iberian inventiveness at Tasca in Bethnal Green. This list is updated regularly, so check in often to find out what we really rate on the London restaurant scene.  Leonie Cooper is Time Out London’s Food and Drink Editor. For more about how we curate, see our editorial guidelines. RECOMMENDED: The 50 best restaurants in London. The hottest new openings, the tastiest tips, the spiciest reviews: we’re serving it all on our London restaurants WhatsApp channel. Follow us now to tuck in.

The humble brunch is perhaps one of the greatest inventions of the modern age. Breakfast is too early to really get stuck into, while eating eggs and downing buckets of coffee at lunchtime seems odd. Brunch, then, is the one true morning-ish meal, especially if it incorporates pancakes, bacon and those aforementioned eggs. Or you can enjoy a totally vegan take on proceedings at LD's at The Black Heart. London is particularly well stocked with places to indulge in the famous breakfast/lunch hybrid – one of the latest additions to this list is FKA Black Axe Mangal in Highbury, (don’t forgot to order a pig cheek and prune donut). Let us guide you to the best restaurants for a fabulous brunch, from a traditional full English to innovative twists on the majestic meal, such as a bacon bao brunch.  RECOMMENDED: Like unlimited fizz with your fry-up? Here are the best bottomless brunches in London.  Leonie Cooper is Time Out London’s Food and Drink Editor. For more about how we curate, see our editorial guidelines. April 2025: We've had fresh fiddle of this list, removing some of the staler options and giving you only the finest brunches in London for spring and into summer. We've included a few places that prove brunch isn't just a weekend treat, with some of these spots serving brunch every single day. Make the most of the warmer weather by bagging a terrace table somewhere like The Laundry in Brixton. Hate the heat and would rather sulk in the dark? Then it's off to LD's at The Bla

Television has been around for 70 years, but only in the last two decades has it earned true respect as an artistic medium. Up to that point, elitists referred to TV as ‘the idiot box’ or ‘the boob tube,’ and if you worked in it, you were either a hack or an upstart hoping to make the leap into the more dignified world of movies. Was its poor reputation deserved? Sure, there were blips of brilliance between The Ed Sullivan Show and The Sopranos, but by and large, the garbage outweighed the gold. Maybe it’s unfair, but the fact that it was all being beamed directly into our living rooms made the dreck more noticeable.  That’s all changed. Television has nudged film out from the center of popular culture, to the point that some of cinema’s truest believers – Martin Scorsese, David Fincher, Steven Soderbergh – are making movies specifically for the small screen. The shift may have started with HBO and The Sopranos, but the advent of streaming has made it so that hundreds of new shows are now continually flipping the script every few years, if not months. But that doesn’t mean everything before 1999 is pure dross. While this list is dominated by 21st century programs, there are hundreds of shows that deserve credit for pushing TV forward into its current golden age, and chiseling them down to a neat top 100 is difficult. So we elected to leave off talk shows, variety shows and sketch comedy, focusing on scripted, episodic dramas, comedies and miniseries. Even then, it proved to b

There’s a lot of talk about the state of London nightlife right now. Naysayers lament the fact that venues are closing at an alarming rate, blame Gen Zs for not going out and claim that it’s impossible to get a drink in central after 1am (it’s really not). With all that negativity and uncertainty, it’s tempting to just stick to what you know – or worse, stay in – rather than get out there and experience what this vast city has to offer after dark.  There are new nights popping up all the time. Heart of Soul, Jungyals and Gays, Club Stamina and Joyride are all relatively new (and totally brilliant) additions to London’s club scene. There’s also the nights that have remained classics for good reason – Rowans, the Palm Tree fridays, K-Hole – as well as more wholesome late-evening activities like life drawing, spoken word nights and supper clubs.  There’s nights out for everyone in this city. Nights for foodies, film buffs, audiophiles. Nights for marathon ravers, old-school movers and for when you need a proper good singalong. Even nights out for when you just want a nice sit down.  We curated this list by asking Time Out staff members for their favourite nights out in the city – and trust us, we know our stuff. Our list features nights in central London, east London, west London, north London and in south London. They all take place frequently, or semi-frequently, throughout the year and each offers something unique. So what are you waiting for? Start planning your next night o

Ahh, NYC. Street-style mecca. Home of Broadway. All hustle and bustle (hence the coffee). Truth is, there’s never a dull moment here, and that’s why we love it. Even some of the bodegas are in on the nightlife. Travel upstate and it’s a completely different vibe (a bit like NYC’s introverted cousin) – we’re talking no neon lights, only the amber glow of a wood-burning stove. And when it’s time to escape the inner-city chaos, there’s no place quite like Hudson Valley. While New Yorkers can always catch their breath in one of NYC’s many (admittedly excellent) spas, a temporary escape from the traffic doesn’t always cut it. Sometimes what you really need – read: the only remedy – is a long weekend in a cozy cabin to help you fully decompress. Without further ado, we’ve rounded up the best places the stay in Hudson Valley, many of which boast breathtaking views, cracking amenities, and scenic hiking trails – all within a few hours’ drive of Manhattan. Time to embrace the calm. RECOMMENDED:🏔See our list of the best Airbnbs in the Catskills🏨Check out the top hotels and B&Bs in Hudson, NY🌲Pay a visit to the best upstate New York resorts Who makes the cut? While we might not stay in and review every Airbnb featured, we've based our list on our expert knowledge of the destination covered, editorial reviews, user reviews, hotel amenities and in-depth research to find you the best stays. This article includes affiliate links. These links have no influence on our editorial content.

Europe is incredible for festivals, make no mistake about it. And what could be better? Travelling to festivals abroad means getting to explore somewhere new and see a bunch of cracking artists, as well as maybe – just maybe – enjoy better weather and cheaper beer. Europe is certainly not in short supply of some really brilliant places to party, from tiny, lesser-known spots in the Azores to your classic, mega, headliner-packed fests in France and Netherlands and Alpine jazz weekends. So, here’s a roundup of our top picks for 2025.  What is the largest festival in Europe? Glastonbury festival in the UK is normally thought of as the biggest festival in Europe (if not the world). But though it’s certainly the most well known, in terms of numbers, it’s not even the the biggest in the UK! The biggest in Europe is actually Donauinselfest in Vienna, Austria, which sees upwards of two million visitors a year. After that, it’s probably joint between Glasto and Tomorrowland in Belgium.  RECOMMENDED: 🎪 The best UK music festivals🎤 The best music festivals in the world🌃 The most underrated destinations in Europe🌤️ The best European city breaks At Time Out, all of our travel guides are written by local writers who know their cities inside out. For more about how we curate, see our editorial guidelines. This guide includes affiliate links, which have no influence on our editorial content. For more information, see our affiliate guidelines. 

Has movie music ever been better? With legends like John Williams and Howard Shore still at work, Hans Zimmer at the peaks of his powers, and the likes of Jonny Greenwood, AR Rahman, Mica Levi, and Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross knocking it out of the park, the modern film score is a Dolby Atmos-enhancing feast of modernist compositions, lush orchestral classicism and atmospheric soundscapes.What better time, then, to celebrate this art form within an art form – with a few iconic soundtracks thrown in – and pay tribute to the musicians who’ve given our favourite movies (and, to be fair, some stinkers) earworm-laden accompaniment? Of course, narrowing it all down to a mere 100 is tough. We’ve prioritised music written for the screen, but worthy contenders still missed out, including Dimitri Tiomkin’s era-defining score for It’s a Wonderful Life and Elton John’s hummable tunes for The Lion King.To help do the narrowing down, we’ve recruited iconic movie composers, directors and broadcasters like Philip Glass, Carter Burwell, Max Richter, Anne Dudley, AR Rahman, Emilie Levienaise-Farrouch, Edgar Wright and Mark Kermode to pick their favourites. Happy listening!Recommended: 🔥 The 100 best movies of all time.🪩 The 50 best uses of songs in movies.💃 The greatest musical movies ever made.

It’s official: London is experiencing a fast-mushrooming plant-based restaurant boom. Across the city, creative chefs are showing off their prowess with plants, creating pitch-perfect imitations of meaty comfort food classics, or dreaming up new vegetable-based delights. Whether you’re after a lavish night of culinary theatre, a delicate Middle Eastern spread, a Michelin-star winning tasting menu, or brisket at a vegan smokehouse, you’ll find it in our list of London’s best vegan restaurants. Read on to plan your next plant-free feast. RECOMMENDED: London’s best restaurants for vegetarian food. Leonie Cooper is Time Out London’s Food and Drink Editor. For more about how we curate, see our editorial guidelines.

Prince Durairaj and Glen Leeson are good at this by now. Excellent, in fact. The pair have put together a small chain of top Indian eateries; Islington’s Tamil Prince and Tamil Crown, and the first Tamila in Clapham. Fourth time around with Tamila King’s Cross, the experience is more refined than ever. London’s second Tamila is at the other end of Caledonian Road from the Tamil Prince, and, like the Clapham edition, isn’t a ‘desi pub’ but a curry house for fast, casual dining and with an all-day menu. Without the loveable musk of an ex-pub, the space is much airier and restaurant-y, while the service is sharper and more attentive. Food-over-booze indicators don’t get much more obvious than Tamila’s massive interior window directly into the kitchen.  The dhal flashed all sorts of vegetables across your tongue, while paneer butter masala was creamy and mightily generous Our drinks flew out at an impressive pace. A bold harbinger of the strong, spiced flavours to come, the gunpowder margarita, boasting masala dust for salt and earthy smokiness, was sumptuous. The paloma had grapefruity sweetness but a proper, heaped dash of ginger that lingered powerfully.  Tamila’s dishes verge on the more generous side of ‘small plates’. On platters so spotless and shiny they’re genuinely mirrors, come miraculously un-greasy onion bhajis, each one just more than a mouthful of prickly, salty crackle. Retaining integral crispiness beneath dollops of mint chutney, one gets the impression that th

If you’re a history buff (particularly a pottery history buff), the surroundings of this DoubleTree alone will be enough to have you in awe. The hotel is attached to Etruria Hall, a neo-classical Grade II-listed structure once home to Josiah Wedgwood – renowned industrialist and the founder of Wedgwood, one of the world’s most famous pottery companies.  Etruria Hall is no longer a stately home but an events venue, and since the 1980s it’s been attached to a hotel. In 2020 that hotel opened as a Hilton, specifically of the DoubleTree brand – yet despite being part of an all-conquering global chain, it’s maintained plenty of character. Beyond the obvious (the in-house restaurant is called Josiah), the corridors and rooms come lined with nods to local heritage; bottle oven skylines, Stoke dialect phrases, that sort of stuff.  Stoke-on-Trent’s DoubleTree, therefore, not only occupies a special historical site but makes sure you fully aware just how special it is. But it’s also a comfortable, well-kitted-out place to stay. I stayed in a king guest room that was extraordinarily spacious and flawlessly clean, with a sprawling, comfortable bed, fast wi-fi, effective blackout curtains and a practical bathroom.  The staff couldn’t have been friendlier or more helpful, the common areas were bright and welcoming, and there was a very sleek indoor pool and leisure centre. There’s on-site parking, too.  Given the building’s age, some of Stoke’s DoubleTree is understandably rough around the

When Stoke’s Hilton Garden Inn opened in 2020 it was the city’s first and only Hilton. Admittedly it didn’t hold that title for long (the DoubleTree in Etruria was rebranded a month or so later) but you get the sense that this was a statement opening. A terracotta titan towering over Hanley, this Hilton Garden Inn cost £20 million and is part of the wider redevelopment of Smithfield – a mixed-use quarter named after the area’s old bottle works. Given it’s getting on for half a decade old, Stoke’s Hilton Garden Inn still looks and feels shimmeringly new. Sure, stepping into the lobby feels very much like stepping into any new-ish Hilton, anywhere, but this one is exceptionally well-kempt, making it very much a slick, shiny beacon of modern comfort.  I stayed in a ‘king room’ up on the sixth floor, a tidy and well-proportioned space with plenty of light and a bunch of amenities tidily packed in. The décor was pared back, minimalist(ish) and very much of-this-decade, and the room’s simplicity made it feel bigger. Stoke touches on the walls (images of pottery ovens and so on) reminded you where you were – as did my view, stretching out westwards towards Etruria, Burslem and Shelton. The rest was very much as one might expect of a somewhat new Hilton. The mattress was supple, the pillows and duvet ideally sink-in-able; the shower worked as required, accompanied by fragrant Crabtree & Evelyn toiletries and the flashy touch of an anti-steam mirror. The room was well insulated for so

Down the cavernous halls of Whitehall’s Old War Offices, surrounded by opulent Michelin-starred restaurants and the supremely swish Raffles hotel, lies Kioku Sake Bar – less blindingly flashy, sure, but just as high-calibre. The street-level accompaniment to Kioku’s top-floor, five-star sushi restaurant has the effortless style and homely hideaway calm of a Japanese listening bar, prim décor and lines of hundreds of sake bottles sitting beneath immaculately balanced light. And Kioku’s substance more than matches its style. There are over 140 sakes on offer, each affectionately described, plus a trim list of sake cocktails and a refined menu of innovative, Japanese-infused small plates. The drinks and food are entirely different to those of the upstairs restaurant Kioku By Endo, making the bar very much worth a separate visit.  Order this The Daikon Gibson suspends itself entirely on the front of your tongue, with silky and potent Ginjo sake ‘vermouth’ and tangy pickled daikon combining with clean Roku gin and yuzu tang. Kioku’s cocktails all exude a sense of craft – and this does even more so. Time Out tip Make the most of Kioku’s formidable sake collection and the bar’s in-house sake sommelier to explore the tipple. Discover how the vessel material affects each sake, get a taste of the many, many different styles and regional varieties – and find a new favourite.

Stepping into the atrium of The Conservatorium, it’s immediately obvious that this is a very special hotel indeed. Rich red brickwork meets sharp glass angles, heritage details fit snugly among silky modern luxury; from the fittings and furniture to the architecture, wherever you look something catches your eye. The Conservatorium’s sense of occasion is tied to the building’s history. Many of its cavernous halls date back to 1897, when it was built as a bank. In the 1980s it became a conservatoire, then it was reconfigured into a hotel by starchitect Piero Lissoni in the 2000s. It opened as a founding member of the luxurious Set Collection in 2011. The Conservatorium’s rooms, appropriately for a hotel inhabiting a building of many previous lives, vary massively – yet they share plenty of common ground. Whether one is in the basic ‘deluxe room’ or the three-floor, roof terrace-boasting ‘I Love Amsterdam’ suite, well-proportioned rooms boast plush beds, spacious bathrooms, bountiful storage and thoughtful, refined décor. My room was a ‘royal duplex suite’, with elegant double-height windows looking out onto the humming trams and cafés of Van Baerlestraat. The essentials – bed, space, storage, bathroom, toiletries – were all faultless. Little touches of Dutch-ness (decorative clogs, a Van Gogh coffee table book, Delftware ceramic plates) were unsubtle but still tasteful, restrained. Beyond the room, breakfast (served in the Lounge) was high-calibre and the staff were as helpful

What comes to mind when you think of a treehouse? Woodlice, splinters, cold – yes, probably all those things. But treehouses are also secluded and peaceful, dwellings a few feet up in the air that feel that bit away from the rabble below and closer to nature. And a treehouse, crucially, is all yours.  The treehouses of TreeDwellers in Cornbury, northeast Cotswolds, are treehouses in a spiritual sense. No, they aren’t up trees (nor do they even touch them), but they’re surrounded by them, sitting an impressive height above the forest floor. TreeDwellers takes the idea of a treehouse – as something special, private, embedded in nature – and turns it into a luxurious experience genuinely unlike anything, anywhere else. Pulling up to a TreeDwellers dwelling (a TreeDwelling?) has a supreme sense of occasion. This is the sort of architectural magnificence you thumb through in glossy mags, lustfully dreaming of one day giving it all up for. Handsomely curved tubes are perched atop stilts; inside is all sleek, clean wood and floor-to-ceiling windows, each and every convenience slotted in with impossible neatness. It’s all so stunning that you could easily be satisfied with the design and that alone, left gawping at it for days on end. But these treehouses aren’t just flashy façades: they’re comfortable and practical, too. You check-in with slick door-code entry, the heating is underfloor and toasty on your toes, everything you could possibly need is on a tablet (or on hand from delig

On the face of it, Portobello’s neat, proper Holy Carrot and Dalston’s fire-worshipping feast ACME Fire Cult share little common ground. ACME is roaring and showy, as much a swaggering religion as a restaurant; Carrot is prim as a perfume shop, soft clay surroundings fronting a menu that is plant-forward, ‘root to peel’ and sustainable.  But there’s a clear link between the two – namely Daniel Watkins. The ex-ACME founder is now executive chef at the first permanent home of Holy Carrot (previously known for its supper clubs and Knightsbridge residency), and brings his ‘fire and ferment’ ethos across the capital from one neighbourhood of cool to another.  More than just Holy Carrot’s first proper restaurant, it’s also a Watkins-helmed reboot – and it has plenty of his signature punch. From the off, the pre-starter ‘snacks’ offer a studied but unshowy sort of tastiness. Pillowy insides dramatically burst out of crisp ‘honey’ drenched Jerusalem artichokes; one couldn’t help but mop up the warming chilli ragu with ultralight koji bread. Two cold ‘smalls’ followed suit, both intricately flavoured: each mouthful of the smoked beetroot breathing freshness, each spoonful of the stracciatella with persimmon and bitter leaves with deftly measured amount of creamy tang and gentle crunch. This is innovation of a dependable, not reckless, sort Imprinted upon my memory the most, however, was one of Holy Carrot’s ‘larges’: the crispy celeriac with pickle butter. I know what you’re thinking

The Nobu brand, in a word? Dependable. Nobu Matsuhisa’s Japan-via-USA restaurant empire both draws celebrities and is a celebrity itself, but it’s best regarded for its high-quality dining: nearly 30 years after it opened, Nobu’s Park Lane spot remains one of London’s best places for sushi. These days Nobu isn’t just a restaurant chain but a hotel brand too, with two outposts in London. The Shoreditch one, which opened in 2017, was the first of these – not just London’s first Nobu hotel (since followed by Nobu Portman Square in Marylebone) but the first in all of Europe. The greatest compliment one can pay to this place is that the dependability of the Nobu name transfers seamlessly from restaurant to hotel. This is a sleek and comfortable choice, a beacon of minimalist taste in the midst of Shoreditch’s gaudy pick-me bars and tech-bro co-working spaces. Nobu as a chain is Nippon-by-’Murica, and its hotels are too – Japanese style meets American comfort and convenience. From the front Nobu Shoreditch resembles a Pacific battleship, from the side it’s a hillside Kyoto villa. And inside the hotel offers plenty of that same cultural middle ground: polished black wood, sleek furniture and a tea set in every room, but also huge plasma TVs, delightful staff and an in-house spa.  All aided, of course, by housing a Nobu restaurant, the chain’s third in London. You know exactly the deal here: a spoiled-rich clientele, sure, but also generous portions, attentive service (I did exceptio

If you plonked a point on a map denoting Stuttgart’s absolute centre, I’m fairly certain it’d be directly right on top of the EmiLu. Or it may as well be. Dead opposite the city’s Rathaus (town hall) and a few steps from Königstrasse (Stuttgart’s main shopping street), EmiLu is within easy walking distance of most city-centre sights. Just a couple of years old (it opened in 2022), EmiLu occupies an old mid-century city government building and gets its name by combining the names of its co-owner (Petra Luise Bräutigam) and her daughter (Emilia). A self-professed ‘design hotel’, it boasts 90 ‘unique and special’ rooms that range reasonably in price per night from €85 to €200 (£72 to £170). So, the good: EmiLu, with its focus on individual, tasteful design, is a handsome and neat establishment. The chic reception is kitted out with dark wooden furnishings, while the rooms are airy and uncluttered. Cuboid furniture and crisply-shaped décor work well with bare-material walls; an open shower-room (with a curtain) and a mini-bar cut into the corner wall fit the minimal, trendy vibe. In another positive, my room looked out over the atmospheric street below (with floor-to-ceiling windows and a balcony) but also boasted exceptional sound insulation – an entire crowd of football fans in the space outside were reduced to noiseless silhouettes. Elsewhere, EmiLu’s staff are delightful, the rooftop space is great for taking in Stuttgart’s skyline and the ‘fitness area’ is remarkably well-eq

Over the years, London has done a fabulous job of finding new uses for its many, many historically fascinating buildings. The Bankside Power Station is now the Tate Modern. Churchill’s Old War Office is a hotel and apartments. County Hall houses restaurants, an aquarium and That Shrek Thing. Another of those retrofits is the Great Scotland Yard Hotel, a Grade II-listed building which dates back to the 1820s and was once the Ministry of Defence’s old library. Sitting at an address best known for also housing the original headquarters of the Metropolitan Police, the building has been a hotel for a while – though was spruced up a few years ago with a £75 million revamp.  Admittedly, the words ‘Scotland Yard’ do not exactly scream ‘mega-luxe five-star hotel stay’, but… maybe they could? This 151-room Hyatt is as deeply, thoroughly refined as hotels in this city get.  Each step of a stay at Great Scotland Yard is virtually faultless. The neat rooms are full of light, with floor-to-ceiling windows and balconies looking out over the turrets, towers and courtyards of the Palace of Whitehall. Full of modestly luxurious conveniences (like Chromecast TVs and fancy Japanese Toto loos), the rooms are also of a satisfyingly comfortable size: neither small and cluttered nor massive and awkwardly empty.  Beyond the rooms, Great Scotland Yard is far from a copy-paste Hyatt. Playing into the history of the building and address, the doors are slathered in a deep and polished police blue. The fo

If you’ve ever spent time in Leeds, you’ll know the Queens Hotel. Quite literally on top of (part of) the Yorkshire city’s train station, it’s an art deco concrete titan and inarguably the city’s most famous hotel. Dating back to the 1930s, the Queens was the first British hotel to have air con and ensuite bathrooms in every room, and over the years it’s welcomed the likes of Cary Grant and Nelson Mandela. While the Queens could easily rest on its historical prestige, in recent years it’s attempted to keep with the times and undergone a vast refurb. A whopping £16 million has been pumped into bringing the place back up to snuff, glamming it up with communal areas, a huge new dining venue and more rooms. How does all that sprucing up actually feel? In short, pretty damn good. The moment you step into the Queens’ lobby, with its endearingly gauche décor and genially raucous ambiance, you get a proper sense of occasion that feels appropriate for somewhere so stacked with history. The Queens might have been hauled into the 21st century, but it embraces its historical glamour – and the refurb certainly hasn’t sucked out any of its soul. The Queens is entirely decked out in stuff that harks back to the art deco 1930s – and what isn’t from the Queens’ original period (or directly linked to it, like the hallways’ historic photographs) is tastefully matched. The Queens balances modern polish and historical character in a caring, detailed sort of way, ensuring all additions – everythin

Few London hotels so boldly take inspiration from their surroundings as the Ampersand. Steps from Kensington’s Museums Quarter, this boutique riffs off the studies and research of nearby world-leading institutions like the Science Museum and Natural History Museum, combining it all with many of the bells and whistles of a luxury hotel. From ornithological wallpapers and artworks to complimentary galactically-themed macarons, everything at the Ampersand plays heavily into the hotel’s neighbours. Its ‘science’ afternoon tea spectacularly involves making your own lemonade (with wacky test tubes and all) plus dry-ice and space-themed treats. Sure, this sort of stuff will no doubt be naff to anyone wanting a frilly, snooty sort of posh hotel; but it also makes everything a bit more fun, much less stuffy, and a lot more memorable. Beyond that, lots of the rest is solid, occasionally a bit more. Rooms are decked out with nice stuff: vast, comfy beds, sizeable TVs, Malin + Goetz toiletries, a standalone bath (with full view of the telly), nifty, sleek desk and huge, glitzy headboard. You’d be hard-pressed to criticise the style or function of any individual pieces within the Ampersand’s rooms, while the first three floors of Victorian ceilings are spacious and fresh.  The staff are as helpful as you’d want them to be, everything is delightfully clean, there’s a gym and two restos (one, Apero, is Mediterranean-themed). There’s also a general sense of calm. Compared to the shoulder-to-

London has no shortage of excellent hotels. Here at Time Out our list of the city’s best places to stay stretches to 100 options, while the capital also has countless hotels catering to different tastes or needs, from the cheap and budget to the romantic and luxurious.  It’s no wonder, therefore, that one London hotel was recognised for its quality in the 2025 edition of TripAdvisor’s Travellers’ Choice Awards. In its Best of the Best Hotels guide, TripAdvisor named a London establishment one of the world’s top 10 hotels right now. Congrats is in order for St. Ermin’s Hotel in Westminster! St Ermin’s was named the sixth-best hotel on the planet this year by TripAdvisor. TripAdvisor’s Travellers’ Choice Awards are based on customer reviews, recognising hotels that received a high quantity of high-scoring reviews over the past 12 months. St Ermin’s Hotel boasts a rating of 4.7 (out of five) across nearly 8,500 reviews. Photograph: TripAdvisor TripAdvisor described St Ermin’s as ‘a charming stately hotel full of history and intrigue’, adding that it is well-located for London attractions, boasts ‘beautifully designed and maintained’ rooms, and has ‘friendly and warm staff’. St Ermin’s Hotel is near St James’ Park station and occupies part of an 1880s Victorian mansion block. It was converted into a hotel in 1899, and these days it is part of Marriott’s Autograph Collection of hotels. Photograph: TripAdvisor A grand total of 11 UK hotels featured among TripAdvisor’s world’s b

In the months since Euston was branded ‘the worst station in London’, the situation at the rail hub has undeniably improved – if only slightly. After a plan was unveiled to fix the station’s chaos, these days London’s 10th-busiest station allows passengers to board trains earlier and doesn’t have those infamous massive advertising boards. And, as of last weekend, it even boasts flashy new loos. While Euston’s general passenger experience has changed, the station remains hampered by closures. Following reduced services and closures over Easter, regular users of Euston will need to watch out for closures again this coming early May Bank Holiday weekend. This weekend Euston will close for two days and be unusually busy on one day. Here’s everything you need to know about navigating the station during the closures.  What dates will Euston be closed over the May Bank Holiday weekend? London Euston will be shut on Sunday May 4 and Monday May 5.  Fewer services will be running on Saturday May 3, so expect the trains that do run to be much busier than usual.  What routes will be affected? The route that’ll be most impacted is Euston to Milton Keynes Central. There will be no trains on this route on Sunday or Monday, and all southbound trains will terminate at Milton Keynes.  Any passengers using the West Coast Main Line are being advised to check before they travel. The Caledonian Sleeper will also instead depart from and arrive at King’s Cross. What is official travel advice? Networ

Every Londoner knows the feeling. The clouds part, the sun starts to beam down, the city streets bask in warmth – and you’ve got a sudden urge to sink an alfresco pint in the sunshine.  Pints in the sun are one of life’s simple pleasures, but in a city like London – with its many narrow lanes and ever-growing skyline – finding a pub where you can soak up some rays without being interrupted by shadows is often easier said than done. Well, until now, that is. A new map has been created, showing which London pubs are in the sunshine at any given time of day. Better yet, not only does the map consider the position of the sun in the sky, but it also takes into account the height of surrounding buildings – thereby telling you which pubs are in a shadow and which ones aren’t.  Named Sunseekr, the web app was made by Mo Dawod – an architect by trade – and it was initially made to reveal sunny cafés (now, it has the option to show boozers too). Dawod first unveiled the map on Reddit, explaining that it uses real-time shadow simulation, Mapbox navigation software and data from OpenStreetMap. ‘It’s a design experiment, a side project, and a bit of summer fun,’ Dawod said. Sunseekr is interactive, letting users explore the city’s pubs and cafés in real time, but also helping Londoners to plan ahead: you can set the time you’ll be having a pint/coffee, and see where the best spots will be to get some vitamin D. And if you’re not feeling the sun? The map also serves to show which establish

Just days after all-conquering American pop trio HAIM revealed details of their fourth studio album, they’ve announced a massive tour of the UK’s biggest arenas. HAIM will play London, Manchester, Glasgow and more as part of their I Quit tour.  Danielle, Alana and Este Haim’s new album I Quit will be the group’s first studio full-length in five years. Their last work, 2020’s Women in Music Pt. III, was certified silver for UK sales and was nominated for Album of the Year at the Grammy Awards. I Quit will be released on June 20 2025. These upcoming tour dates will be HAIM’s first UK shows since the trio played London’s All Points East festival back in August 2023. Here’s everything you need to know about getting tickets.  HAIM UK arena tour dates in 2025  So far the group have confirmed seven I Quit Tour dates, mostly in October. Here are the dates in full.  June 27 – Margate, Dreamland Summer Series October 24 – Nottingham, Motorpoint Arena October 25 – Cardiff, Utilita Arena October 26 – Brighton, Brighton Centre October 28 – London, The O2 Arena October 30 – Manchester, Co-op Live October 31 – Glasgow, OVO Hydro When do tickets go on sale? General sale goes live at 10am BST this Friday May 2. Get tickets on Ticketmaster here. Mastercard customers will get access to a ‘preferred tickets’ queue at the same time.  Presale There are a range of presales taking place, here’s the lowdown. Venue presale – Wednesday April 30 at 10am. Available to OVO customers at the Glasgow sho

It’s a tough time to be working in the aviation industry. Faced with staff shortages and huge levels of disruption, many workers at airlines and airports are facing long, stressful hours and poor working conditions. And, thanks to the cost of living crisis and the resounding impact of pandemic-era pay cuts, loads of them are doing it all for lower wages, too. Needless to say, it’s no wonder that so many staff at airports and airlines have been going on strike. From Italy and Belgium to Greece and France, airports across Europe have seen thousands of flights delayed and cancelled by industrial action. Strikes can, of course, have a serious impact on your holiday, so it’s best to be as informed about them as possible. Read on for our guide to who’s going on strike in Europe right now, where and when those strikes will happen – and whether you need to worry about them.   General strike in Belgium According to the Belga News Agency, both Brussels and Charleroi airports have cancelled all departing passenger flights today, Tuesday April 29, as a result of general strike against government budget cuts.  ‘Brussels Airport has just received information from the external security provider G4S that, contrary to previous communication, they cannot guarantee any staffing for the security check on Tuesday,’ said the airport, ‘This means that no departing flights can take place.’ Passengers arriving should experience less disruption, but check directly with your travel provider for all the

Today (April 28) London marked the opening of the city’s 93rd step-free tube stop. The latest London Underground station to get accessibility upgrades was Knightsbridge on the Piccadilly line, which now boasts street-to-platform access for the first time. Knightsbridge’s improvements are the result of a new station entrance on Hopper’s Court, which was the result of TfL working with Knightsbridge Estate and developer Chelsfield. The new entrance features three new lifts, each with capacity for 17 people. And that isn’t all. The new entrance also increases capacity at the station and makes use of parts of the station that haven’t been open to the public in 100 years. The building above the station has been redeveloped, with architectural features of the façade being restored. Now anyone can get to Knightsbridge and all its attractions – Harrods, Harvey Nicks, fancy schmancy Kensington shops, Hyde Park – step-free. TfL says Knightsbridge has nearly 13 million passenger journeys a year. Photograph: TfL Mayor of London Sadiq Khan described the Knightsbridge upgrade as ‘important’, while TfL’s chief capital officer Stuart Harvey says it ‘will benefit millions of our customers every year’.  There is still, of course, a long way to go before London is a truly accessible city. Mayor Sadiq has a goal of making 50 percent of tube stations accessible, and with Knightsbridge’s upgrade just over a third (34 percent) of London’s 272 tube stations are now step-free. You can read more abou

At the tail end of 2024, Transport for London (TfL) revealed that the capital’s cycleway network had just hit an impressive landmark. London’s map of routes dedicated to those on two wheels had been extended to cover a whopping 400 kilometres, making it officially one of the world’s most bicycle-friendly cities. All of which is very impressive, but TfL isn’t stopping there. The transport body has announced that it will be pumping a further £87.6 million into a road safety programme delivering new cycle routes and more pedestrian crossings, and supporting more School Streets schemes. TfL’s investment will be spread across all 32 of London’s boroughs and the City of London, and the £88-odd million number will be spent in the first year alone. The government body will partner with boroughs to deliver the improvements.   Over three years, London could get up to 95 kilometres of new cycle routes, 222 new School Streets schemes and 265 new pedestrian crossings. During the same period, TfL is hoping to boost bus travel with 20km more bus lanes. Photograph: TfL Commenting on the investment, walking and cycling commissioner Will Norman said: ‘Creating greener and safer streets in London will enable more people to choose active travel to get around, and this is vital to achieving the Mayor’s environmental targets. ‘This funding for boroughs, a significant increase on last year, shows the Mayor’s commitment to improving walking and cycling in London, and we look forward to continuing

Lidl’s expansion across London continues apace. Not content with already operating more than 120 stores within the M25, the budget supermarket chain has unveiled massive plans to spend millions on new outposts in the capital.  Today (April 28), Lidl has revealed that it will spend half a billion pounds – yep, billion with a ‘b’ – expanding in the UK. The brand also published its site requirements brochure for 2025, which includes a full list of target locations across the UK. Over 200 of those desired locations are here in the capital.  That’s right, if Lidl gets its way the supermarket could nearly triple its London footprint. In three maps – ‘London South’, ‘London Northeast’ and ‘London Northwest’ – Lidl has revealed that it has a whopping 235 London neighbourhoods in its sights for new stores, and that it wants to relocate a further five of its outposts.  It should be noted that these are target locations and not confirmed openings, meaning that the brand is actively looking to open a new supermarket but nothing is set in stone. The list of targets is also similar to the one Lidl published around this time last year.  Could your local area be getting a new Lidl supermarket? Here’s what you need to know.  London neighbourhoods that could get a new Lidl supermarket  Full list of London locations that Lidl has in its sights for new stores.  Addiscombe Addlestone Aldgate Angel Archway Ashtead Aveley / Purfleet Balham Banstead Barnes Barnet - East Barnet Barnet - Friern Barne

London’s commuter towns have really been in the spotlight in recent weeks, with the Telegraph crowning its top commuter village for the capital for 2025 and the Times naming 11 towns and cities near London among its top places to live right now. And now a very special property has hit the market that is within commuting distance of London. The property is Osea Island in Essex, which is about 40 miles from central London. While we say Osea is ‘within commuting distance’ of the capital, that’s hardly its main selling point. Spread over 380 acres (1.5 square kilometres), it’s an entire private island with a rich, storied history and buckets of luxurious amenities. Osea Island sits in the estuary of the River Blackwater (near Maldon) and it’s been put on the market by estate agents Knight Frank and Fine & Country. Accessible via an ancient Roman causeway, it bears traces of Norman and Viking civilisations and throughout history it’s been used as a naval base, rehabilitation centre, filming location and, most recently, a recording studio. Stormzy and Rihanna have both rented out facilities on Osea, which since 2004 has been owned by record producer Nigel Frieda. The island’s 38 properties boast a total of 90 bedrooms and 61 bathrooms, with the homes ranging from an Edwardian manor to an orphanage which has been converted into luxury flats. Among its many, many amenities, Osea Island also has its own ‘village pub’. Intrigued? Here are some more pictures of the place.   Photograph:

Airports are stressful places. The only thing worse than (typically) being forced to wake up at an ungodly hour, (typically) stressing out about all the security and boarding rules and (typically) spending loads of time queuing is when your flight is delayed or cancelled.  If you were wondering which UK airports have recently been, statistically speaking, worst for delays, here’s just the thing. The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) has released its data for 2024 showing which British airports had the longest average flight delays. Top (or bottom) of the pile was London Gatwick, with an average flight delay of 23.6 minutes in 2024. While the West Sussex airport improved on its 2023 showing (in which it saw an average delay of 27 mins), Gatwick was most-delayed by quite some margin. Gatwick blamed air traffic control (ATC) staff shortages across continental Europe for last year’s disruption. Concerning how it would reduce delays, a spokesperson told BBC News: ‘Together with our airlines, we’ve put in place a robust plan... to improve on-time performance further in 2025.’ You can read more about Gatwick being named the UK’s worst airport for delays on Time Out London here. Second-worst for delays was another London airport, Stansted. The Essex hub had an average delay of 20 minutes. In third was Manchester, also with delays of 20 minutes.  Down the other end of the table, coming up least delayed was Belfast, with average set-backs of just 12 mins. This marks the second year in a r

Already getting in the mood to don a bucket hat and drink warm pints in flimsy cups? We’ve got exciting news: the 2025 Glastonbury resale goes live this weekend. After confirming exactly when resale tickets will go on sale earlier this month, the first of those dates has already been and gone. Coach and ticket resale packages went live on Thursday April 24 and they sold out in just 32 minutes.  But there’s still hope. The second and final resale for Glastonbury 2025 will take place in the morning of Sunday April 27. Up for grabs this time will be general sale tickets.  If you nab a ticket, there’s a heck of a lot to look forward to. The 2025 Glasto lineup will see the 1975, Olivia Rodrigo, Neil Young and Rod Stewart headlining the Pyramid Stage, with plenty of other huge names on other stages like Charli XCX, Raye, Doechii, Ezra Collective, Rod Stewart, Snow Patrol and Loyle Carner.  It sounds like 2025 will be as big a Glasto as any – which is all the more reason, if you didn’t get a ticket back in October or on Thursday, to try and get one now.   Bagging entry to Glasto is notoriously tricky. There’s dozens of tips and tricks which long-time festival-goers swear by (including, apparently, being from Liverpool), but when it comes down to it, it’s mostly a game of luck. If the odds weren’t in your favour back in November, they might be now, as ticket resale looms closer. Here’s everything you need to know to make sure you successfully get resale tickets for Glastonbury 2025.

One of the biggest weekends in English football is just around the corner. It’s FA Cup semi-finals time, and in 2025 the competition is as exciting as ever.  Of the four teams heading to Wembley, three are on the bring of ending long waits for silverware. Aston Villa haven’t won a major trophy since 1996, Nottingham Forest since 1990 and Crystal Palace have never won major silverware. The other team, Manchester City, are all too used to winning – and last lifted the FA Cup in 2023.  As with the earlier rounds of the 2025 FA Cup, the two semi-finals will both be broadcast on free-to-air channels by BBC and ITV. Here’s everything to know about the games, from channels to kick-off times.  In London? Here are Time Out’s top football pubs in the capital. Kick off times  Here are the two kick-off times: Crystal Palace v Aston Villa, Saturday April 26, 5.15pm Nottingham Forest v Manchester City, Sunday April 27, 4.30pm What channel is the Crystal Palace v Aston Villa FA Cup semi-final on? The Eagles’ game against Villa will be shown on BBC One. What channel is the Nottingham Forest v Manchester City FA Cup semi-final on? Forest will face City on ITV1. What time does coverage start for Crystal Palace v Aston Villa? BBC One’s coverage of Palace v Villa will start at 4.45pm. Gary Lineker leads the coverage, with Glenn Murray, Micah Richards and Wayne Rooney in the studio, and commentary from Steve Wilson and Alan Shearer. What time does coverage start for Nottingham Forest v Manchest