{"id":4033,"date":"2012-11-07T23:31:37","date_gmt":"2012-11-07T22:31:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.traveleurope.com\/en\/?p=4033"},"modified":"2013-09-26T10:16:16","modified_gmt":"2013-09-26T09:16:16","slug":"unseen-tours-london","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.traveleurope.com\/en\/unseen-tours-london\/","title":{"rendered":"Unseen Tours: London from the homeless perspective"},"content":{"rendered":"

Needless to say, you can visit London<\/a> once in a lifetime or a thousand times, and it will never stop offering new perspectives from which to admire a building, new places to watch the sunset or new corners of history and tradition. However, London hides a face that few people know, which can be revealed though, for example, by experiencing an unusual tour of the city: we\u2019re talking about Unseen Tours, guided by\u2026 homeless people<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

London is huge, it\u2019s immense. Perhaps the best way to get the most of your stay is to visit the city through thematic tours. You can choose among museum tours, history tours, Sports venue tours, cruises on the Thames<\/a>\u2026 Or, why not, choose one of the 5 \u201cUnseen Tours\u201d with homeless people giving an alternative view of London\u2019s landmarks.<\/p>\n

The idea was developed by Sock Mob<\/a>, a volunteer network which meets once a week to offer help to the homeless. The initiative invites tourists and Londoners alike to see the city from a different perspective,<\/strong> as a group of homeless will be your tour guide for one day, through five different routes<\/strong> that show you London like you\u2019ve never seen it before.<\/p>\n

Rain or shine, they will be there to accompany visitors on their tours that depart on Fridays at 7pm, or Saturdays and Sundays at 3pm. For those who decide to take part in the London Bridge<\/em> route, the meeting point is Tooley Street. A fascinating journey through Southbank along the Thames and in the streets near the bridge. If you\u2019re intrigued by street art or love Shakespeare, the Shoredicht<\/em> route is the perfect choice, between London Borough of Hackney, while for Charles Dickens\u2019 fans, there\u2019s a tour around his beloved district: Covent Garden<\/em>. Exclusive atmospheres and wealthy middle class neighborhoods await participants in the tour of Mayfair<\/em>. A Brick Lane<\/a> tour rounds up the offer, with a pleasant journey from Hoxton Square, to the less crowded streets towards the Spitalfield Market.<\/p>\n

In addition to the usual tourist attractions, these homeless guides share with their audience glimpses of their street life<\/strong>. Uniquely, the tours interweave with their own stories and experiences, thus introducing a new social consciousness into commercial walking tours.<\/p>\n

The guides work for themselves, keeping the 60% of the \u00a35 to \u00a38 per person cost of the tour (participants, including tourists, students, Londoners and even corporate groups, choose for themselves what they pay,) with some cash being reinvested in the enterprise in the form of a monthly travel card or mobile phone top-up.<\/p>\n

The point of the tours, says co-organiser Lidija Mavra, is to, \u201cpresent [homeless people] in a very different light so that people can see them as having something to offer<\/em>.\u201d The long-term goal, is to make Unseen Tours \u201ca replicable model in other cities<\/em>\u201c, she says. It would be nice, so good luck!<\/p>\n

Photo by Anirudh Koul<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Needless to say, you can visit London once in a lifetime or a thousand times, and it will never stop offering new perspectives from which to admire a building, new places to watch the sunset or new corners of history and tradition. However, London hides a face that few people know, which can be revealed [&hellip<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":4444,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[499],"tags":[225,397],"class_list":["post-4033","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-united-kingdom","tag-london","tag-tours"],"yoast_head":"\nUnseen Tours: London from the homeless perspective<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"A new way to enjoy a tour of London: Unseen Tours! 5 different routes that show you London from a different perspective, that of homeless people\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blog.traveleurope.com\/en\/unseen-tours-london\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Unseen Tours: London from the homeless perspective\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"A new way to enjoy a tour of London: Unseen Tours! 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