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When in London my usual goal is to stay off the beaten path and avoid the overly touristy areas. When you do this you start to experience "real" London and what it's like to be a local. I believe most areas south of the Thames are underrated and deserve a visit. The Clapham area in zone 2 is nice and I stumbled upon a great little theatre pub near the Clapham North tube station, it's called the Landor Theatre. http://www.geocities.com/pubtheatre/landor.html

In addition to the South of the city I enjoy Greenwich. Yes, to some this is still a tourist area, but I think you get away from the American tourists and people who are trying to see London frantically in a short time, those folks won't leave zone 1. Greenwich is absolutely beautiful, has some lovely markets and wonderful places to eat. It's also easily accessible by the Docklands Light Rail.

As for cheap food, I would recommend J.D. Wetherspoon's pubs. They all serve authentic English pub food, so you're eating like a local, but they are very cheap and offer many meal deals and specials. The pubs are all over the city so you can find some out of the city center that won't have tourists. Visit their website for specific locations. http://www.jdwetherspoon.co.uk/ From my experience, unless you are at a wetherspoons pub that is in the center of a tourist zone (like the one in Leicester Square), most of the people there will be locals or at least British people familiar with the chain. I recommend the Pendrel's Oak Wetherspoons pub across from the Chancery Lane tube stop on the central line. This one has an authentic pub-like atmosphere, is near the center, but off the beaten path enough that tourists don't usually check it out.

once you get away from the centre of London you tend to lose most (but not all) of the international tourists ... have you looked at a map of the tube ... you'll find it on the Transport for London website www.tfl.gov.uk ... on there you'll also find details of the Oyster card which I'd recommend for using to get around

some places I'd suggest-

Highgate, ancient village with a little village green, where Dick Whittington heard the bells ring "turn again Whittington", Karl Marx used to live there and he's buried in Highgate cemetery, rather up-market area so I'd avoid the cafes there and come back down to Archway to eat - take tube to Archway and a bus up to the top of Highgate Hill

yes, Greenwich is lovely, there's the Cutty Sark and you can walk up the hill to the Greenwich Observatory where the Greenwich Meridian is and where time is measured from (Greenwich Mean Time), it's also an ancient port and the Maritime Museum is there

Hampstead Heath is so big you could get lost on it, it's ancient common land and although it's managed by the Corporation of London, legally it belongs to the people who live around it, there's open air swimming ponds (lidos) where you can swim in natural water, and in the north of the Heath there's Kenwood House which has great gardens and a lovely art museum, as well as a cafe which is extremely popular, sometimes they have open air concerts by the lake in the summer - take the tube to Archway and the 210 bus to get to Kenwood

there's an "alternative" shopping area stretching from Camden Town tube station up to Camden Lock on the canal - stalls selling stuff from all over the world, including some lovely food - it's always packed full on a Saturday and Sunday but mostly with locals and UK tourists, not so much foreign tourists

There truly is, 2 weeks in the past for instance, Scotland replaced into the centre of the country and of the global, because it voted in its independence referendum. Liverpool and Manchester also get their honest percentage of the limelight too. yet London is the biggest city via quite some way, with global classification each and every thing. this is likewise the position the information and media merchants have the headquarters, so information has a tendency to be very London-centric, and when you consider that of this it form of feels that London is the truly position contained in the country.

There are thousands of tourists allover London.What is the point of coming here when there are millions of different places to see .I would suggest buying a tube ticket and then make your mind up .Remember from a safety point of view you are safest in crowds

visit Notting hill - protobello market - but not on a weekend or you cant walk around.

It has everything, antuiques, food, clothes (by new student disigners & retro)

great place to find really unique items for yourslf & friends - that they will appreciate much more than a t-shirt

London is always touristy: http://www.visitlondon.com/

http://www.londonlettingagency.com/guide.html

http://www.planetlondon.tv/

All the best