Moments from South Bank

London's South Bank stretches along the Thames from Westminster Bridge past Waterloo and on toward Tate Modern, a cultural strip so dense that it functions almost like a single sprawling campus rather than a collection of separate venues, the Southbank Centre's Royal Festival Hall, the National Theatre's raw concrete bulk, and, tucked beneath Waterloo Bridge, a long-running secondhand book market that's operated in some form since the 1980s. Underneath the Queen Elizabeth Hall, a stretch of undercroft space has been an internationally significant skateboarding spot since the early 1970s, older than most of the surrounding buildings' current cultural programming, and its walls are thick with a constantly repainted layer of graffiti that skaters and street artists have defended fiercely against redevelopment threats over the decades.

Treat South Bank as a walk rather than a single destination, the riverside path connects all of it, the book market, the skate spot, the concert halls, Hayward Gallery, Tate Modern further along, without needing a plan beyond simply following the water. Go on a weekend afternoon if street performers and a genuinely lively crowd are part of what you want from the visit, or a weekday morning if you'd rather have the book stalls and the river view largely to yourself.