HUGE crowds appeared outside some of the City’s most iconic buildings today for the annual Open House weekend. The celebration of architecture allows the general public get a look inside some of the most well known buildings in London and yet again, the City of London proved to a popular destination.

Big queues were present at the Gherkin, the Bank of England and the Lloyds building. Elsewhere in the capital, 18,000 people apparently turned up to get inside Battersea Power Station.

Queues stretched around the block for the Gherkin at St Mary Axe.

There was a long wait for the Swiss re Tower as it’s also known

Not a run on the bank but people waiting to get into the Bank of England museum

The queue went all the way around the block for the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street

The long wait for the Bank of England

The Lloyds building was also popular but the queue along Leadenhall Street seemed to move quickly

The queue for Lloyds went back to Leadenhall Market

I like thinking. I find that it keeps me out of trouble a lot of the time and has even led to some excellent life, and career, enhancing decisions but one question that exercises my brain is where are the best places to sit and think in the City?

Flying in the face of popular opinion I don’t think that a pub or wine bar is the best place to think about, say, relationship woes because although the word thinking and drinking both end the same way the results rarely do. Now I’ve got that off my chest here is my list of favourite spots for a little summertime thinking.

1) St Alphage’s Highwalk
This out-of-the-way spot is devoid of grass and high on concrete but tucked away above London Wall it’s a quiet spot to sit and reflect in the sunshine away from the masses though if you want to imagine you’re in rolling countryside then you’d better have a very vivid imagination. There are a fair number of benches or you can sit on the low and reasonably comfy walls and if you haven’t got anything else to think about you can think about who St Alphage was.

2) Finsbury Square
Who couldn’t love the appeal of sitting out in the open with the occasional clack of bowl-on-bowl from the bowling green. Plenty of benches and lots of grass to sit on with the odd ice-cream van dotted around the area. It’s a great people-watching spot too so if that’s your thing then this should be high on your list.

3) Finsbury Circus
Between Moorgate and Liverpool Street this has to be the City’s nicest place to relax and ponder the meaning of LIFFE but it can get busy and if you can’t get there early in the lunchtime rush you’ll need to be prepared to sit on the grass or hover around to get a space on a bench. It is a prime spot though so even if you don’t make it a regular haunt you have to do it at least once to see why it’s so good.

4) New Change
The gardens and benches around New Change and St Pauls are great places to hide away. It can be a busy spot and the closer you get to St Pauls the more tourists you’ll have to contend with but it’s still worth grabbing a sandwich from a cafe in Watling Street and sitting outside for a while.

5) Postmans’ Park
A recent addition to my list of places to visit it gets its name from the heroic deeds of everyday postal workers and has numerous benches and a fair amount of grass to sit on with the added attraction of being the only place on my list with a small fountain and ornamental pond. Tucked away round the back of St Pauls it tends to be quiet and isn’t a sun trap being hemmed in by City buildings.

Let me know if you’ve got your favourite spots!