We posted this on our twitter feed on Friday, but it was such a fascinating video, I thought it deserved a bigger write up.

A visual tour around London’s most quirky ‘hidden’ landmarks by Youtuber ChrisCLondon, it’s full of incredible facts and quirks and features locations that even most lifelong Londoners won’t know about. My Londonphile geeky brother only got 8 out of 10, failing on his knowledge of the Victorian Pet Cemetery and the minature bronze St Paul’s Cathedral…

My personal favourite story is the one about the tank – A property developer was denied planning permission by the council to build a block of flats on the Old Kent Road. Infuriated, he reapplies, but this time with plans for a tank. Thinking he means septic tank, the council grant permission, only for the man to install a genuine T34 tank from the First World War on the patch of land. Painted bright pink. With the gun tower pointing towards the council offices.

We found this video on the VisitLondon blog. Aside from posting cool videos, VisitLondon have helped Metrotwin considerably by adding loads of great places and lists to our site. These are some of the best:

Toy Shops – There is more to London than Hamley’s y’know..

Arts and Craft Shops in London – To help you stand out from the Primarni crowd.

City Farms – Escape from the rat race and pet a pig.

Eco-Friendly London – Glorious ways to go green.

Unique Cinemas – For when you want to see something that didn’t cost billions and doesn’t feature Adam Sandler, a talking monkey and a highly implausible series of events.

Some rather nifty buildings near Tower Bridge by *ahem* anyadriscoll

If you’ve taken an interesting photo of your city, why not email it to us at editor@metrotwin, saying where it is and your flickr account/website we should link it to, and we’ll put it on the site!

If you happen to go looking for the future and wind up somewhere near Tower Bridge, you could check out these places:

Anchor Tap – a lovely, cosy traditional pub (oddly just around the corner from this futuristic utopia)

The London Dungeons – I still maintain one of the worst hours of my life was spent in this place, but if you ENJOY being scared and shouted at by actors covered in fake blood (and bearing in mind that your dear editor gets freaked out by reading horror synopses on Wikipedia), then this is probably right up your street.

HMS Belfast- you can learn all about British Naval history on this Second World War gunship. Or you can run around pretending to be a sailor, imagining you’re shooting the cruise ships that go up and down the Thames outside. Loser.

Teapod - Why not retire to this cute little cafe, where you can have a pot of tea, eat a scone, and upload hundreds of photos of yourself running around HMS Belfast like an idiot, using their free wi-fi.

The Barbican’s latest art instillation is the cutest sound art we have ever seen. Celeste Boursier-Mougenot, an artist who previously trained as a musician and composer, has set up a walk through aviary in the Curve area of the building, furnished with amplified musical instruments and other sound-making objects. The flock of African finches that currently call this space home create a bizarre, discordant soundscape of tweets, strums, clashes and the occasional Hendrix-esque riff as they go about their daily birdy business.

It’s free to enter (although you may have to queue as only a restricted number can enter the aviary at any one time) and will appeal to people of all ages. Except possibly those who have ever lived with an enthusiastic amateur guitarist. It runs from now until 23th May.

If you’re in the Barbican area, you could visit these fine Metrotwin places:

Whitecross Street Market - a weekly food market where the galloping gourmand can pick up anything from burritos and Thai cuisine to cupcakes and fine cheeses to take home (and ensure you get a wide berth on the tube)

Plastic People – a very cool basement club. It’s threatened with closure, so get your rocks off while you still can.

Cafe du Marche – a lovely French cafe, hidden away down a little alleyway. A true London secret.

City Point Club - a first class health retreat with an ozone treated pool. Nope, no idea what that means, but I guess that hole over Australia has to come from somewhere.

Video by barbicanLondon and photo by mypouss used under a Creative Commons License

It would be fair to say it’s been a bit…nippy in New York of late. Much like London in January, suddenly ski poles turned from irritating living room clutter into incredibly useful pieces of kit, thermal vests became de rigeur and the whole city looked like a beautiful Christmas card scene. A beautiful, deadly slippy, goddamn cold Christmas card scene, as anyone who foolishly attempted to  pop to the grocery shop in trainers, only to return an hour later with frostbite, wet jeans and a severely bruised posterior will tell you *ahem*. Teri Tynes of WalkingOfftheBigApple (presumably in more sensible footwear) did venture outdoors on Friday, and took these pics of her neighbourhood.

Should you be around MacDougal Street or Washington Square Park and feel like sheltering from the elements, you could try these places:

The Minetta Tavern – it has a legendary $26 burger we have drooled about previously on the blog.

Cafe Reggio – A true Greenwich Village institution, it smells like Old New York.

Kati Roll Company – What came first? The chicken or the egg? You can have them both at the same time in a tasty Indian roll from this take-away.

The Ghost of Washington Square Park – As far as I know, ghosts aren’t fussy about inclement weather conditions, so if you do feel the need to be outside, you could always wander around hoping to get spooked!

Bleecker Bob’s – What better way to kill some time than in an old school record shop. The vinyl geeks will be in heaven and you can just play around doing Sleevefaces with your cameraphone.

Photos by Teri Tynes used under a Creative Commons License

A great find by BBH-Labs, via @finnbarrw. We’ve posted some ‘toy-town’ style photography of London on this blog before. Now, here’s a little film using yhe same technique (although in this instance the filmaker Sam O’Hare also faked it a bit in post) but the effect is to bring a liliputian dimension alive in motion, and it’s very lovely.

This is a stunning piece of film, shot by Sam O’Hare (and uploaded to Vimeo).

For best results hit HD and watch in full screen. And turn it up.

There’s a really great interview with O’Hare here, on the Aero Film site. Here’s a sample, in which O’Hare talks about the equipment he used in putting this together. It involved over 35,000 stills.

The music is perfectly matched. It was specially written by Rosi Golan and Alex Wong, and composed by Human.

The film sucks you in. You look for faces – but you don’t find a single one. It’s hyper-real to the point of being surreal. We love it.