Is it strange, when visiting a vibrant city, to seek out the local dead? Why do cemeteries – full of old stones and ancient history - attract so many modern travelers? Momondo asked our city bloggers to unearth an explanation and give us the low-down on the neighborhood necropolis. You'll read about the best burials in Berlin, the most entertaining interments in Prague, the graves of American heroes in New York plus tips on what JP Sartre likes on his Paris grave and about Soeren Kierkegaard's and Karl Marx's last resting places in Copenhagen and London. Are you ready to go beneath the surface?

Highgate Cemetery 

“A dreaded sunny day so I’ll meet you at the cemetery gates” as Morrissey famously sang. It wasn’t that sunny but I had arranged to meet my old friends Anna and James and head to Highgate Cemetery.

Perhaps foolishly considering that it is located at the top of the steepest hill in London, we decided to cycle. By the time we got to the top of the hill we were all bathed in sweat despite the November weather. I thought I was going to be sick with exhaustion so Anna suggested a visit to The Flask for chips and ultra strong cider.

Suitably fortified, we headed to the cemetery, paid the small entrance fee and went inside. I should not have been surprised considering how much my legs hurt but Highgate Cemetery really is very high up indeed. The views of the distant city below are breathtaking.

This view and the graves of the famous are why most people come here, the biggest names are Karl Marx and George Eliot, but it is the things that you find for yourself that really appeal: the grave that says that nothing about who resides there except that he was a lawyer, the headless angels, the pink granite mausoleums and the way the grave stones battle with the trees and seem to be losing - a wonderful metaphor for life overcoming death.

All these combine elements create a magical air; it is as if the dead are not beyond our grasp. Here religious differences are forgotten, Muslims lie alongside Christians. There is even a combined Jewish/ Christian grave with a joint headstone in English and Hebrew for an interfaith marriage. Most poignantly, the husband is yet to join his Jewish wife.

There is something about solemnity that brings out the naughty schoolboy in me, and in James and Anna too. Initially we swore and made silly remarks but Highgate is so moving and so strange that we were very quickly stunned into a contemplative silence.

HIGHGATE CEMETERY; Swain's Lane; Hampstead; London. 

Hackney Road is unsentimental place on any day of the week. It's Sunday and the alternating wholesale handbag shops, fried chicken joints and strip clubs are closed, there is no sign of life. But what's this? Is that really a palm tree rustling behind that van? And look a girl laden under a burst of bright colour and there's a man and his little daughter struggling with a Christmas tree. As with so often in London, unpromising arterial roads hide gems.

Running parallel to Hackney Road and surrounded by council estates is a quaint cobbled street of Victorian terraces called Columbia Road and on Sundays there is a flower market. I was with my ex-girlfriend, Alice. When we lived together she used to buy flowers to decorate our flat whilst i prepared lunch. My flat is now flowerless and the fern we bought together is dying but we are still firm friends.

Photo: Paul-in-London

The street is packed with people and the air alive with Cockney Market banter. It offers value for money. You can buy huge bunches of tulips for £5 and plants as big as trees for £10 (plants as big as trees are probably just trees). If you want a even more of a bargain come about 2pm when the traders want to get rid of everything and go home.

Photo: Ewan-M

The shops along the street sell household brick-a-brac, there are restaurants and people selling coffee and bacon sandwiches. Halfway down the road is The Royal Oak, once famous for scenes of astonishing early morning hedonism as local ravers used to turn up when the clubs closed, it's now of course a Gastropub.

At the end of the road (no. 80) is The Birdcage where on a Saturday night they have karaoke. Last time i went a portly moustached gentleman brought the house down with a rousing rendition of “I am what I am.” I didn't make it to the flower market the following day.

Oddly enough I first heard about this place in a novel 'What I Loved' by Norwegian-American writer, Siri Hustvedt. This novel is set entirely in New York apart from a passing mention of the Bethnal Green Museum of Childhood. I had to go.

This really is the perfect museum for the generation that never grew up. Here we can relive the toys of our youth and our forefather's. There are giant robots, 1960s meccano sets and wobbly mirrors from old-fashioned fairgrounds.The labelling of the exhibits is rudimentary but this just lets you make up things up – just like being a child again.

What children probably don't appreciate is the magnificence of the building in which all this is housed. It looks like part of an ornate railway station but was actually especially designed as a museum in Kensington and later dismantled and moved to Bethnal Green.

The inside is one enormous space with galleries on either side. The floor was laid by women from a local prison. It had a makeover a few years ago which meant that a vaguely, Moorish box was stuck on the front. I've no idea why they did this but it could have been done worse.

What interested Ms Hustvedt were the dolls and the doll's houses with their lavish attention for detail. One of the houses dates from the early 18th century and is only slightly smaller than my flat.

The dolls with their Victorian clothes and fixed grins look like mummified children. I was so frightened that there were nearly tears before bedtime but luckily i was distracted by the delicious smells emanating from the cafe on the ground floor. It's hard to throw a tantrum when you are eating a sausage roll and there is the promise of ice cream.

BETHNAL GREEN MUSEUM OF CHILDHOOD, Cambridge Heath Road, London E2 9PA

Go further: Read about Frederique and her daughter's visit to Joods Historisch Museum in Amsterdam. Click here

Boris Johnson                                                                                                    Photo: Internets_dairy 

London recently voted in a cycling Mayor in the form of Boris Johnson. There is now much hope in the cycling community (I love the idea of a cycling community as if we all live in one street and cook for each other) that more cycle lanes will be constructed. If the new lanes are as idiotically planned and badly constructed as the current ones then this will be a dangerous waste of money. I prefer to take my chances in the traffic. If you aren’t prepared to do battle with the buses and couriers then try cycling on Sundays when the roads especially in the City of London are deserted.

Cyclists in front of Bank of England

I sometimes go out with my flatmate James though he is much fitter than me and tends to go too fast. The great thing about central London is that it is flat so you don’t need to be particularly fit or have lots of gears. You can hire very sturdy three-speeders from Go Pedal.

Spitalfiels market seen from outside Christ Chuch                                                        Photo: Ed.ward

My favourite lazy Sunday route takes me down Commercial Street which is on the edge of the City past Spitalfields market on 105 Commercial Street and on the left you have the awe-inspiring Christ Church Spitalfields. Take a right here past the market and you will get to Bishopsgate. You are now in the City.

St. Botolph's Aldgate

Turn right off Bishopsgate and head down Threadneedle Street to the home of the increasingly fragile British pound, The Bank of England. From here I like to wonder aimlessly around looking for the old churchs located amongst the monstrous glass and steel towers. Gems include St. Botolph’s Aldgate.

All this exercise makes a man hungry and on my way home there is The Owl and the Pussycat on 34 Redchurch Street. They do a good roast lunch in a delightfully shabby environment.

For my 30th birthday my ex-girlfriend, Nicci, presented me with an umbrella. This was not just any umbrella but one from James Smith & Sons of New Oxford Street, London.

Anyone who has spent more than a few months in London will have noticed this shop. It looks like it hasn’t changed for about 140 years. All the surrounding shops look shoddy and temporary in comparison. It makes me long for the wondrous Victorians who put so much pride into the everyday.

But the outside is but an hors d’oeurves to the wonders that lurk within. As you would expect, there are more brollies than you can shake a stick at. Who would have thought that the humble umbrella could exist in such a multiplicity of varieties?

If you want an umbrella with a handle shaped like Sherlock Holmes they will have it. How about an umbrella with a retractable blade like Patrick McNee used in the Avengers? Not a problem, sir!

They are not cheap but you are paying for rare craftsmanship, each umbrella is hand made. The manager told me that due to two terrible summers in a row, they have far more business than they can handle.

He was slightly reluctant to let me take pictures in case this piece sent a flood of bright young things through their doors. But don’t let him put you off. Visitors to London will need an umbrella and this is the place to buy one.

James Smith & Sons, 53 New Oxford Street, London WC1A 1BL