Waterloo Sky Bar

You're standing 10 storeys up on Waterloo Road, watching the Thames bend past the London Eye and Big Ben, glass in hand. Waterloo Sky Bar sits atop the H10 hotel and delivers the kind of skyline views that make you remember why you love this city—particularly at golden hour when everything goes amber. It's the sort of place where locals actually go, not just tourists hunting Instagram angles, which means the cocktails are proper and the crowd feels genuinely mixed rather than aggressively polished.