940. Our favourite things to do in London 🇬🇧 (Part 2) | Luke's ENGLISH Podcast - Learn British English with Luke Thompson

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Hello, listeners. Welcome back to the podcast. Now, this is part two of a two -part episode.

The episode is called Our Favourite Things to Do in London.

And yeah, this is part two of a two -part episode.

I recommend that you listen to part one of this first. It should be the episode just before this in your episode list. Yeah, listen to part one before you listen to part two.

But anyway, here's a quick recap of what's going on here.

So this week I uploaded a video to YouTube.

It's called Walk & Talk London.

Normally, when I do these walk and talk videos, I'll use the audio track as a podcast episode.

and normally I'll make it in a way that that actually is possible.

The audio track works fine as a podcast episode on its own.

But in this particular case, the audio track doesn't really work because I just ended up talking about things I could see and if you just listen to the audio, then it just doesn't really work.

The video is available.

You can watch it. You'll find a link in the description.

You can join me as I walk around some parts of central London, starting on the south bank of the river, and then crossing Westminster Bridge, going past Big Ben, going along Whitehall past Downing Street, where the prime minister lives, and then going round into Trafalgar Square, past all the fountains and the statue of Nelson on Nelson's Column, past the galleries, the National Gallery and the National Portrait Gallery and then into Covent Garden, through Covent Garden Market and then to Piccadilly Circus via Leicester Square and then into the underground To Baker Street station where I stopped

at the statue of Sherlock Holmes So you can find a link to that video in the description but yes, because I couldn't use the audio for that track I've decided to record a Completely separate completely different audio only episode that would work as a companion open to that video, and this is part two of that.

The concept here is that I thought that I would talk about London, and talk about things that you can do in London, and describe what it's like in the city.

Maybe you've never been there, maybe you're never going to go to London, but you might be curious, and you might want to know what it's like.

You know, it might give you an idea, a sort of remote sense of what the city is like.

Or maybe you're planning to go and this could give you loads of really good inside tips and ideas of things that you could do while you're there or maybe you spent time in London in the past and this is like a little trip down memory lane for you.

So I'm going to be going through some more audio clips.

I asked friends and family to send me some recordings, I wanted them to talk for a few minutes in response to a question.

the question is what is your favorite thing to do in London and why and I received a total of 18 audio clips we've already heard seven of those in part one we heard from Amber Martin my daughter James Simpson Aaron Moz and my mum and learned some vocab as well so we're going to continue I'll play you some recordings.

After each recording, I'll briefly summarize what they said and give some comments and also point out some bits of vocabulary or maybe other features of language which are worth pointing out.

There's a PDF for this episode in which you can find a full episode transcript with every single word, plus a vocabulary list. And also, I'll give you a list, a summary, of all of the bits of advice that you can get from both of these parts.

It'll be presented to you in nice convenient list which you could use if you ever go to London, you could check items off that list or use it as inspiration for things to do.

Okay, so let's carry on then and we're going to continue.

So the last person you heard from in part one was my mum.

So I thought it would be a good idea to continue with my dad.

So you're going to hear from my dad now, what is his favorite thing to do in London and why?

So, you know, my dad, He's my dad and this recording could be an excerpt from one of his books actually.

If he wrote a book about London and then made an audio book version of it, this could be an extract from it, okay?

So let's listen to my dad, I'll summarise and give some vocab and stuff afterwards, but here we go.

Hello Luke, this is your dad.

When I think of London, I always think of the river, The River Thames which is always bustling with activity and one can stand on one of the bridges and watch things going on forever.

And of course it's history.

The history of London is very much based on the river and there are classical views of London and the houses of Parliament, of course, and the view of the iconic Tower Bridge with its cantilevered road.

There was a famous incident when a Red London bus was on the bridge when it started raising It's cantilever isn't it?

The driver decided to jump the gap which he did successfully.

There are 35 bridges on the Thames but not all of them in London, and the view from Westminster Bridge has been painted by Turner, Canaletto, Monet and London Bridge.

Well, London Bridge is falling down as a famous rime.

There have been several London bridges.

The most famous one really I suppose was built in the 13th century and had houses or shops all the way along it, and half of it was burned in the Great Fire of London, but there was a gap in the shops, and so it didn't reach the other side of the river, the fire, which is pretty fortunate.

And then London Bridge, that was replaced by another bridge in 1831, and then when that one got derelict and had to be replaced, it was bought by an American called Robert McCulloch. People have said he thought he was buying Tower Bridge, but that's not true.

He knew what he was doing and he bought it in an auction for two and a half million dollars.

So, the Thames, with its views of the bridge, Tower of London, St Paul's, the Southbank Theatre land, the Shard with its great tall spire, I mean, that's what I think of when I like to be in London along the river which is so active.

I could say that I like bobbies on bicycles two by two.

Westminster Abbey, The Tower, Big Ben, the rose red cheeks of the little children, but I won't.

OK, thank you, Dad, for that little excerpt from Dad's upcoming book, The Bridges of London Town.

That was great, and that bit at the end where he said, What did he say at the end?

He was quoting lyrics from a song.

The lyrics being, Bobby's on bicycles, two by two, Westminster Abbey, the tower of big Ben, the rosy red cheeks, of the little chilled Wren.

That's actually from a song called England's swings by an American sort of country singer from the fifties and sixties called Roger Miller.

and England Swings was a kind of popular song from the mid -60s a kind of novelty song by this American guy singing about going to going to England going to London on holiday and the things that you can see there and it sounds like this England swings like a pendulum do Barbies on bicycles to buy to Westminster to Abbey, the Tower of Big Ben, the rosy red cheeks of the little children." Right.

What about the other things my dad said?

So, he talked about the Thames, basically.

When he thinks of London, he thinks of the River Thames.

And the bridges he says, it's bustling with activity.

Bustling is a nice adjective.

It's a nice adjective, which means if something is bustling, it means it's just full of activity, full of life.

There's people moving this way and that way, things going on all the time.

You can stand on one of the bridges, like Waterloo Bridge, known for its excellent views.

You can stand on lots of the different bridges and just have a look down onto the river banks or look at the river itself.

There are all sorts of boats going up and down the river, people going over the bridge, there are things going on on the different banks.

And you can just look out to any part of the city and just see all sorts of things happening everywhere.

Big skyscrapers in the distance and so on.

So it's bustling with activity.

You mentioned Tower Bridge, which is the iconic bridge with the towers on it and it's cantilevered road.

Okay, so cantilevered it just means that, so there's a section in the middle of the bridge, because it's quite low, there's a section, there's a break in the middle of the bridge which means that the bridge can be raised up to allow boats, certain sort of boats with I guess tall masts to travel underneath the bridge without hitting it.

So it's cantilevered.

So because there's that break in the middle, the rigid body of the bridge that goes over the water, it extends horizontally, but it's only supported at one end.

That's what cantilevered means.

It's supported at one end.

It's two pieces of road supported on the two ends, but not supported in the middle, and there's a mechanism that allows the bridge to rise up.

It's quite a rare thing to see, but if you do see the bridge actually going up, then that's a special moment and you see a boat going underneath and the traffic has to stop.

He told a story of, apparently, a bus driver who once ended up driving over the bridge as it was going up, as it was rising.

He decided to go for it and he ended up going over the he jumped over the gap.

I don't know if it was that action packed like a kind of Tom Cruise movie or something.

I wonder if I can find out what happened.

Story of bus going over Tower Bridge.

Okay, right, look. I've found it.

This is from Towerbridge .org .uk.

Presumably this is the website for Tower Bridge.

This is the day a bus jumped Tower Bridge.

You might have heard of the graphic tale involving two London icons, Tower Bridge and a London Bus.

On the 30th of December, 1952, Albert Gunter was happily going about his day job driving the No. 78 bus over Tower Bridge towards Shoreditch. To his utter surprise, the road in front of him seemed to drop away.

Gunther quickly realised that the bridge was opening and his bus was on a rising bascule.

Slamming his foot down on the accelerator, Gunther managed to jump the rising bascule.

He successfully reached the north side of Tower Bridge which had not yet begun to open getting all his twenty passengers across safely.

Oh my god! As a precaution and why didn't he just stop?

I suppose if he'd stopped the bridge would have kept rising and the next thing you know your bus, which should be horizontal, is in a vertical position, which is not a very good idea, especially when you're on a bridge you don't want the bus to topple over into the water.

I don't think that's possible because the bridge supports would prevent it from happening.

But anyway, he probably had to make a quick decision and the decision was, I think I can make it over this gap rather than wait for the bus to be tipped over.

It continues, as a precaution, all the people on board were taken to hospital.

Thankfully. There was only one person injured.

It was Gunther himself.

He broke his leg. Amazingly enough, the bus, which was only going 12 miles an hour, was intact.

So the bus was not damaged at all.

But poor Gunther his leg.

Whose fault was it?

I don't know. This is actually a statement from one of the passengers called Peter Dunn who wrote this.

Before we knew it, we were going across Tower Bridge, but just as we'd gone over the first half of the section that goes up, there was a loud crashing sound, and I was thrown to the floor.

The bus came to a halt, and the driver came round to invite us to have a look at the gap that had opened on the opposite half.

The driver then told us that he'd started to drive across the opening part of the bridge.

He realised that the side that the bus was on was going up.

He said he could only think of two options as to what to do.

One was to stop the bus and hope someone would realise what was happening and stop the bridge.

But that left the possibility of the bus slipping back and perhaps toppling into the river.

the other was to continue driving and to jump the gap he said that he'd been a tank driver during the war and that a tank would have had no trouble getting onto the other side and decided to see if a double -decker bus would do the same thing so to his quick thinking, we were all delivered safe to the other side Wow extraordinary!

Why did the bridge lift?

back in the nineteen fifties a watchman was supposed to ring a warning bell and close the gates before tower bridge opened.

But on that particular day he somehow forgot to do it.

Gunther was rewarded for this act of bravery and quick thinking.

Albert was awarded a day off work and a reward of ten pounds which is about three hundred pounds in today's money.

When asked how he would spend the reward he replied, five for me and five for the missus.

That's nice isn't it?

Five for me, five for the missus.

So he shared it with his wife.

That is very nice. The bridge has been jumped in popular culture.

Spice Girls The Movie, which was called what?

Spice World? Wasn't that what it was called?

The Spice Girls Movie.

Who could forget that?

There was an exciting version of the bridge jump in Spice Girls The Movie where Posh Spice, that's Victoria Beckham, drove a double -decker bus tour, uh, decorated with the Union Jack over Tower Bridge, uh, and jumped the gap.

Although the filming for this was made slightly easier by using a model bus and a model bridge instead of the real thing.

But to be honest, I would have, I would love to see Victoria Beckham jumping the gap on Tower Bridge in a double -decker bus.

That would be great.

Maybe, you know, if Tom Cruise is going to stop doing the Mission Impossible films, maybe someone else needs to, to take his place.

And I think that Victoria Beckham is the ideal candidate.

It also happened in an episode of Peppa Pig.

Um, there's a, there's a kid's story, a children's book called the tower bridge cat as well, in which, um, a bus drives over the open bridge and I think the cat comes to the rescue somehow.

But anyway, that's, that was a nice, um, tangent there exploring the story of when a bus jumped the Tower Bridge Gap.

Brilliant. Amazing.

I mean, someone's got to make an action film about this.

You know, someone really should make a feature film about George, what was his name?

Arthur? Albert? Albert Gunther, I think that would be really good.

Sounds like a German name.

I don't know if he was German.

Anyway, right. So what else?

My dad talked about that and he talked about the fact 35 bridges, there have been paintings by famous painters, Turner was mentioned again.

London Bridge is falling down.

That is a nursery rhyme that my dad mentioned very briefly.

He said, London Bridge is falling down, London Bridge is falling down, falling down, falling down, London Bridge is falling down my fair lady.

I think that's how it goes.

It's a children's nursery rhyme and a kind of a famous phrase.

But he then talked about London Bridge and the various London bridges that we've had over the years.

There is a London bridge now.

Not to be confused with Tower Bridge, which is the iconic one, the one that you might have seen pictures of or maybe seen in real life.

But London Bridge is another one.

There is a London bridge now.

It's a modern bridge.

It's not particularly exciting except that underneath it you can find Borough Market.

But there have been various London bridges over the years.

As my dad said, He talked about one in 1831, which got derelict, derelict, if a building, or in this case, a bridge is derelict.

It means it's very, it's in very poor condition and can't be used anymore.

So you might talk about a derelict building, you know, derelict buildings on the edge of town.

What's going to happen to these derelict buildings?

They're going to be knocked down, or they're going to be refurbished and turned into apartments.

But the bridge, London Bridge, I think it was the second London Bridge, got derelict.

The first one burned in the Great Fire, but the second one was built in 1831 and got derelict, so in very poor condition, but it was bought by an American in an auction.

An auction is a form of sort of sales event, selling something, where people can bid for the thing being sold, and so there'll be bidders.

It's a bit like the way it works on eBay.

The website. So, an item will be put up for auction and sold and there's an auction master.

Is that the word for it?

And different people bidding and it's sold to the highest bidder.

And apparently the highest bidder in this case, the one who bought London Bridge, was Robert McCulloch, an American.

And it's kind of interesting to know what happened to the bridge.

McCulloch took the bridge and actually transported it all the way to Arizona in the United States, and that's where it exists now.

It's in Lake Havasu City in Arizona.

This is from Wikipedia.

When it was built in the 1830s, it spanned the River Thames in London.

In 1968, the bridge was purchased from the City of London by Robert McCulloch. However, McCulloch only had the exterior granite blocks from the original bridge cut and transported to the United States for use in the construction of a new bridge in Lake Havasu City a planned community he established in 1964 on the shore of Lake Havasu the only parts of the new London Bridge, that's the 1831 one that made it to Arizona were the exterior masonry the Arizona bridge is a reinforced concrete structure, clad in the original masonry of the 1830s.

So, he basically took the original masonry, that's the stones on the outside the surface of the bridge.

So, the actual core structure of the bridge wasn't transported to Arizona, but he took the masonry, the stones from the outside of it, and then they reconstructed another bridge in Arizona and he stuck all of the masonry stones on the surface of it voila there is London Bridge Arizona yeah that's pretty good that's pretty interesting so yes sold in an auction and then transported to Arizona my dad also mentioned a building called the Shard which is one of the more recent buildings it's a kind of skyscraper and it has a unique design it's a Shard a Normally, it would be a shard of glass.

Imagine if a window gets broken.

The pieces of glass that end up on the floor could be described as shards of glass.

Long, sharp, pointed pieces.

The shard is a skyscraper in the east part of the city near Liverpool Street.

It looks like it's made of shards of glass, is the best way to put it.

It all rises up to a point.

My dad described this as its tall spire.

Normally this spire is the pointed tower of a church. But in this case, it's the spire of the shard, which is this interesting looking building which people have commented that it looks a bit like the Tower of Barad -dur from the Lord of the Rings films. Anyway, there you go.

England swings like a pendulum do Barbies on bicycles two by two Westminster Abbey, the Tower of Big Ben Rosy red cheeks of the little children If you huff and puff and you're finally savin' I gotta know the rest of the song...

If you huff and puff and you're finally savin' How does the rest of that go?

Let me tell you where to go, go to England, oh England swings like a pendulum do, Bobby's own bicycle's two by two, Westminster Abbey, the Tower of Big Bend, The Rosy Red Cheeks are the legit children.

OK. The lyrics of that?

England swings like a pendulum do.

A pendulum is this thing that swings left to right, like the thing underneath an old clock.

Bobbies on bicycles.

This is the sort of old nickname of police officers in England.

We used to call them bobbies.

And one of the things about police, certainly in the past, in England and in London, especially, is that they would be on the beat.

That means just that police would just go around walking around the streets, okay.

they would be assigned a certain area of the city and they would just kind of like walk around as a way to prevent crime, make people feel safe, and they would ride bicycles.

And that's a sort of one of those cliched images of London that Americans have, bobbies on bicycles, police on bicycles with their iconic helmets, you know, those helmets with the sort of domed top.

Two by two, so often they would go in pairs, there'd usually be two of them at a time.

Westminster Abbey, the Tower of Big Ben, tourist attractions, the rosy red cheeks of the little children, red cheeks, rosy red cheeks.

You've got a fresh face.

Maybe if it's a bit cold, you might have slightly red cheeks.

We call those rosy red cheeks.

The rest of the lyrics in the song, in the next verse, in fact, the rest of the lyrics go, now if you huff and puff and you finally save enough money up to take your family on a trip across the sea be like, okay, take a tip before you take your trip.

Let me tell you where to go, go to England.

So if you huff and puff, huffing and puffing refers to breathing hard, like hard breathing, huffing and puffing.

And it also relates to making an effort.

Right? You can imagine huffing and puffing because you're making an effort.

Maybe you're working hard and you're saving money, right?

So if you huff and puff, I mean, if you work hard and finally save enough money up to take your family on a trip across the sea.

Take a tip before you take your trip.

Take a tip, meaning take a piece of advice before you take your trip.

Let me tell you where to go.

Go to England, yeah.

All right. Charming and funny little novelty song from the 60s.

Right, let's crack on because I've got to get going here.

We've got more recordings to hear, right?

So let's crack on. I've got other recordings to do.

But thanks to dad. Dad's been on the podcast plenty of times, if you want to hear from him again.

Of course, most long -term listeners will know episodes of the Rick Thompson Report.

Will we ever do any more of those?

We'll see. And more recently, dad was on the podcast talking about history, his books, which deal with history and nature.

The most recent one being episode 902, when he talked about his book A Year on the Fos, Dad's books are all available from all good UK bookshops and some global international ones, you know, the kind of corporate online, a certain corporate online bookstore.

You can get his books they're called Park Life and A River Avon Year and A Year on the Fosse, all by Rick Thompson.

So that was my dad.

Let's move on to the next person and you're now going to hear from Anna Brook.

Anna is an author of children's books and also a travel writer.

She is based in Paris, but she's from England and knows London really well and has been on the podcast before talking about her two children's books.

Monster you, again, of which episodes they were.

But let's listen to Anna and the specific things that she talks about enjoying in London.

Anna Brooks Hi, my name is Anna Brooks.

So what are my favourite things to do in London?

There were so many things to do in London.

I think I've got three things that I like the most. The first one is the musicals and theatre.

I just think the West End has like some of the best musicals and theatre in the world.

So I always try and go and see a show and I usually try and do it sneakily by going to the Leicester Square box office place where you can get discount tickets and then you can do a bit of serendipitous show watching.

So you don't really know what you're going to go and see until you see what tickets are on sale.

Another thing I love is going to the St Martin's in the Field Church just off Trafalgar Square there, because they have a cafe in The Crypt.

And ever since I was little, I always go to this cafe.

Just thought it was great sitting on tables, sitting at tables that are on gravestones.

So just thought it was very quirky.

And they do these brass rubbings, which is where you have a metal plate that's got a picture on it, and you put paper over the top.

And you rub a crayon over it, and you get an impression of what the brass is.

And when I was little, it always used to be knights in shining armor.

So that's another thing that I now like taking my son to do.

And the third thing is because I'm a children's author.

I love going around all the book shops and especially Waterstones.

I go between lots of different Waterstones bookshops.

Waterstones is a book chain, but it's a very nice one that has a cafe.

They're usually very big with lots of different sections.

I go and sneakily see if my books are on the shelves.

There you go. If you go to London, I hope you have a lovely time.

Thank you Anna. So let me go through some of the things that she said there.

Three things. The first thing is musicals.

Second thing is going to St. Martin in the fields, the church there, the cafe in the crypt in the church and the third thing is bookshops.

So first of all, musicals.

So yeah, when we talk about going to the theatre, normally we talk about going to see a play, right, so Shakespeare plays, for example.

These are plays. Then, musicals are another sort of performance you can see in a theatre.

Obviously they involve a lot of music and singing.

The West End of London, which is more or less around Piccadilly Circus, Shaftesbury Avenue.

That's what I think of when I think of the West End.

It's full of theatres that put on big, well known musicals.

Some of the most famous musicals are Les Miserables, The Lion King, We Will Rock You, The Queen musical, there's just so many.

There are so many of them.

And musicals. So yeah, this is definitely a big feature of nightlife in London, going to a theatre and seeing a musical in the West End.

And Anna said that she liked to do it sneakily, which is quite interesting expression.

Okay, so if you're sneaky, it means you do something.

Hmm, how do you describe this?

Well, normally if you're sneaky, you're doing something without people realizing you're doing it.

To sneak, you know, if you sneak in to a place, you do it quietly without anybody realizing, like a ninja would do to be stealthy, you would sneak in.

For example, if you're going in to, I don't know, steal a diamond from a museum, you would sneak into the museum to get the diamond, right?

And you would do it sneakily, okay?

And you would be sneaky, if you did that.

So to sneak in, to be sneaky, and to do something sneakily.

Anna doesn't mean that she's sneaking into theatres to watch musicals.

What she really means is that she's finding this clever way to get discounted tickets.

It's kind of like the smart thing to do if you want to go and see a musical in London.

There is a way that you can get discounted tickets and get into the theatre without paying the full price.

And this is a good tip.

This is a really good tip.

So in Leicester Square, there is a box office which sells tickets.

I think they're still there.

There's one in Leicester Square.

I think the bottom of Leicester Square there's a kind of a cabin and it should have posters of different musicals on it and there they sell discounted tickets.

I suppose the theatres, if they feel like they need to quickly sell tickets to fill the room, they will allow these box offices to sell the tickets at a discounted price.

The thing is, you don't know exactly which musicals will be discounted.

This is quite a fun thing to do.

If you're going to London, or if at the weekend you want to see a musical, you're not sure which one to see, because there are so many choices.

Sometimes the best thing is to turn up at this box office see which tickets are on offer and and let fate decide that's a good tip she says to do some serendipitous show -watching so serendipity is a word that means when things happen by chance right you could say it's serendipity means it's kind of like chance or luck or fate which has decided A bit like if you meet someone, let's say you just meet a friend of yours.

Let's say you're in London and you're in a cafe.

And just by total chance you meet a friend of yours and it's like good luck.

It's like fate has come in and given you good luck and put the two of you together.

So by serendipity you saw each other and it's obviously good luck has decided that you need to see each other and spend good time.

So that's an idea of what serendipity is.

Serendipitous would be the adjective.

And serendipitous show watching means, you know, letting fate or luck decide, or letting serendipity decide which show you go to see.

So that's nice, nice use of language, some serendipitous show watching.

Her second thing is to visit the church at Saint Martin in the fields.

The church at Saint Martin in the fields.

So this is a church just off Trafalgar Square.

As you go up Trafalgar Square facing the galleries, on the right there is a church and that church has a garden with a cafe.

The cafe is in the crypt.

A crypt is like an underground room under a church. It's used as a sort of underground chapel or maybe a burial place, a sort of place that important people might be buried or important people for the Church might be buried in the crypt, so it's like an underground room under a church. So there's a crypt in this church where there is a cafe.

Anna says that she finds the cafe to be quirky, right?

If something is quirky, it means it's kind of strange or unexpected or original or interesting, attractive, unique, unconventional.

So the reason that this is quirky?

Well, first of all, it's a cafe in an old church crypt.

That's already quite a quirky thing that you can sit and have a tea or coffee in a place like that.

But apparently, the tables have been made out of old headstones from graves, or old gravestones.

So these are the stone tablets that would have been put in the ground or sort of presented above graves to mark where people were buried.

Apparently, they actually use those as tables in this crip.

So this is a sort of quirky, interesting thing.

She said sitting at the tables, not sitting on the tables because obviously you shouldn't sit on the table.

As Anna pointed out, you should sit at the table.

So that's interesting.

These are these quirky cafe.

And also it's a place where you can do brass rubbings.

And brass rubbings is something that takes me back to my childhood when we would go on holiday in England to some place, some historical place.

There would be often activities for kids and brass rubbing was one of those activities.

The reason for that is that I think that it was a form of entertainment, or maybe a form of art or craft. I think it's probably in the 16th century around the time of Henry VIII, I seem to remember.

There was a lot of brass rubbing going on.

So Anna did describe it, but I'll describe it again.

So it involves taking a piece of brass which is a sort of shiny metal, and that brass will have an image sort of cut into it, right?

So if you rub your fingers over it, the image is kind of being cut into it.

You get a texture when you rub your fingers over it.

If you put a piece of paper on top of that brass and then rub with a wax crayon on the top, you will reveal a picture because of the texture of the impression on the piece of brass.

It reveals a picture.

So it's a kind of sort of, like, early form of YouTube kids you know.

Instead of watching something on YouTube you just put a piece of paper on a piece of brass and rub a bit a wax crayon on over the top of it and an image is revealed.

And as Anna said often this would be a knight on horseback, which makes you think of the medieval times.

So there you go, that's doing brass rubbings.

Nice thing to do with kids, and she said that she brings her son there as well to do that, which is nice.

Knights in shining armour.

And her third thing is to visit bookshops.

And I completely agree, this is one of the things that I love to do as well, and like Anna said there are loads of really good, really big bookshops in various parts of London.

She said that she liked to go to Waterstones.

The biggest Waterstones, as far as I know, is in Piccadilly.

And yeah, there's like how many floors in this building, something like six floors and there are so many different sections.

And again, she used that word sneakily because she likes to sneakily see if her books books are on the shelves.

So again, she's an author of children's books.

There's monster bogie and monster stink, and so she goes up to the children's section and I guess sneakily because she doesn't necessarily want people to know that she's going in to check to see if her own books are there.

But she might kind of like wander over, have a quick look at the bookshelf, are my books here?

In fact last time I was in a Waterstones in London I went into the children's book section as well and I saw her books and to be honest I did actually move them so that they were more visible because you know in bookshops they they just normally put the books in with the spines out.

So you can read the titles of the books on the spine and the spines are all pointing outwards in the normal way.

But then some books will be moved so that the face of the book, the cover of the book is showing.

And that's to promote those books, right?

They'll be more visible.

And so to be honest, I did move one of her books out so that the cover was showing, just to try and promote Anna's work a little bit there.

So there you go. There were some things that Anna said.

I need to get a move on, don't I, because I don't know how long I've been speaking now.

I feel like it's been about half an hour.

I'm not sure, actually.

I can't keep track of the time.

But I think it's been about 25 to 30 minutes and I've still got quite a lot of recordings left. But thank you very much to Anna for that recording.

You can hear Anna on this podcast in episodes 818 and 895 talking about her books and other things, including ghosts, ghost sightings and how her apartment is haunted and also farts as well.

But the ghost thing is fascinating.

I need to get Anna back on to conclude that story because she talked about her apartment being haunted and what She thought it it was and what the ghost was and stuff and I was sort of saying well I'm not sure I believe in ghosts, but this is still a fascinating story She was saying well that she didn't really believe in ghosts either But she didn't know how to explain what had been going on anyway you can listen to episode 895 in the second half of the episode to hear about her ghost story.

And yeah, I need to get Anna back on to kind of finish that story because there have been other developments since then.

Let's keep moving and we're going to move on now to Ian Moore.

I know Ian from doing stand up.

He is a professional stand up comedian, who, for many years, hosted shows at London's best comedy venue, that's the comedy store in Leicester Square.

It's the best one in my opinion, but I think it's generally agreed to be the best one and maybe the most historic one in terms of sort of modern stand up comedy.

So Ian regularly has hosted comedy shows at the Comedy Store in Leicester Square.

These days he's a writer of crime fiction based in the French countryside.

But for years he would travel into London and do his shows at the comedy store and he describes how he would actually travel to the comedy store.

So this is Ian. My favourite thing to do in London, like any great city, is to walk.

London's a great walking city, you don't have to go on public transport to see all the main things, everything is a lot closer than you actually think, which is why I always try and avoid subways and tube lines in any city because you just don't get your bearings.

London is a fantastic place to walk around in.

My favorite walk used to be that when I was hosting at the Comedy Store, which is just off Leicester Square, I used to get the train into London from family where I was staying in Crawley and I'd walk from Victoria with one of the major stations.

I'd walk down Victoria Street towards the Houses of Parliament and then I'd turn a sharp left and go back towards St James's Park past Buckingham Palace, it's slightly out of my way but it's all there and then from Buckingham Palace up through Greenpark along Piccadilly and then into the Comedy Store which like I said is just off Leicester Square.

Just, it's a lovely way to to take in a great city before I went to perform.

Thank you Ian there, an advocate for walking in the city, in fact any major city, I think it's probably the same thing in a lot of places, but certainly in London, yeah, walking is a really good idea.

The underground, the tube is of course a fantastic system.

But I guess the tube is just convenient.

It helps you travel, especially a long distance.

If you're really travelling across the city, then definitely getting down into the underground is the most efficient way of doing it.

There are buses as well, but buses get caught in traffic.

The advantage with buses is, you know, you get to look out the windows, you can see the world going by, but they get caught in traffic and everything takes a long time with buses.

But anyway, for convenience of traveling a long distance, yes, the underground.

But yeah, for relatively shorter journeys, going on foot is definitely a really good idea.

So, Ian says he likes to avoid subways and tube lines because you just don't get your bearings.

To get your bearings, okay, and that's one word, bearings, B -E -A -R -I -N -G -S, remember, if you're looking for any of the words, the spelling of any words here that I'm talking about, check the PDF, you'll find a link in the description, everything's listed there and there's a full transcript.

So if you wanted to, for example, if you couldn't quite understand every single word or you didn't understand Ian or any of the other guests as much as you want, then you could go back and check the script for that section.

You'll find it labeled with the person's name.

Anyway, so Ian said that avoiding subways, avoiding tube lines because when you travel by tube you don't get your bearings.

So to get your bearings is to get a sense of exactly where you are.

Your bearings means your specific location.

But we don't say, oh, let me give you my bearings, let me share my bearings with you.

No, we'd say, let me give you my location, let me share my location with you maybe on your phone or something.

But to get your bearings is the phrase and it just means to get a sense of where you are.

And if you walk around the city, this is a great way to get your bearings, to understand where you are in relation to other places.

Okay? So, there you go.

It's a really good way to get your bearings, to get a sense of where you are exactly.

He gave the details of a really good walk, walking from Victoria Station along Victoria Street towards the Houses of Parliament.

Turn left into St. James's Park, which is a really good thing to do, a really nice park to visit.

Lots of lovely plants and flowers, and there's water there.

There's bird life. There are nice benches.

Lots of flowers in flowerbeds.

You've got Buckingham Palace right there.

There's the mall. Anyway, into St. James.

St. James's Park, past Buckingham Palace.

Buckingham Palace is pretty good.

You've got the changing of the guards, which is a sort of a ceremony that happens every day at about eleven o 'clock.

But you should be warned that, in tourist season, it gets get to see all of the Royal Guards doing a procession, they march into the gates of Buckingham Palace and then there's this sort of like traditional changing ceremony where the guards change position and they do all these walking up and down marches and stuff.

But it's so crowded that you've got to get there really early and then wait for a long time.

Just a word of warning.

Anyway, past Buckingham Palace through Green Park, which is another part right next to Buckingham Palace.

Another great spot to go for a walk.

That will take you up to Piccadilly.

Then you can walk along Piccadilly, which is a road.

That's where you'll find Waterstones, the bookshop, into Piccadilly Circus, which is just next door to Leicester Square.

That's where the Comedy Store is.

If you want to see live, standup comedy, then the Comedy Store on a Thursday evening or a Friday evening is a really good thing to do.

Just think twice about sitting on the front row, it can be one of the best seats in the house because you're right there in front of the the stage.

But the the comedians might talk to you, they might ask you questions and they might they might make fun of you.

Which is all part of the enjoyment.

If that does happen, you really should just see it as a bit of fun.

And don't take it too seriously because is not the spirit of a comedy show.

Alright, that was Ian and his walk from Victoria to the Comedy Store.

Let's see who we've got next then.

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Save up to 40 % off today at 1 -800 -Flowers .com slash Acast. That's 1 -800 -Flowers .com slash Acast. So next up we have Michelle.

I know Michelle from Paris.

She's one of my Paris friends.

But she was born in England and has spent plenty of time there.

She also spent time in the United States growing up, which is why she has an American accent.

But she is a Brit as well.

And this is what Michelle has to say about things she likes to do in London.

Hi, my name is Michelle.

My favorite thing to do in London is to walk by the South Bank.

I love seeing the river.

I love seeing all the buildings and I love to walk right up to Tate Modern and catch whatever show is on and have a glass of wine at the bar.

Okay, that was Michelle keeping it short and sweet.

And yeah, basically walking along the South Bank, which is clearly a very popular thing as you can hear and walking all the up to the Tate Modern.

At the Tate Modern, you just have to walk around the South Bank a little bit further in an easterly direction.

It's a great spot. It's a great location.

It's actually a really good walk if you start maybe at Big Ben and go over Westminster bridge and walk along the South Bank in an easterly direction past Embankment Bridge, past Waterloo Bridge, past the National Theatre and Royal Festival Hall and all that stuff.

You keep going round past a couple of other bridges, you eventually get to the Tate Modern, which used to be a big power station on the South Bank.

And a few decades ago, it was converted and modernized and turned into this fantastic modern art gallery.

You heard Aaron mention this in part 1.

One of the great things about the Tate Modern is that it has this huge, I think it's called the pumping room or engine room or something like that.

I can't remember exactly, but it's got this huge open space, which used to be where lots of mechanical equipment was based.

These days, it's this huge open space and they always have some sort of incredible contemporary art installation in this massive open space.

So again, it's free.

You can just pop in and you can see Michelle said what kind of show they're putting on there.

That would mean whatever kind of extraordinary artistic installation is being put on.

You can also go and see other exhibitions which are being featured.

There are some really interesting works of contemporary art.

If that's your kind of thing, you can go in and stand in front of some pretty abstract looking work.

It's a good talking point.

It's a good thing to go with a friend and just talk about what you're looking at and what it means to So, there you go.

Yes, a nice tip from Michelle.

There is a bar up on one of the upper floors with a balcony that overlooks the river.

There's a really great view from that balcony.

That is one of the best sights that you can see.

One of the best views is up from the balcony of the bar of the Tate Modern.

You can see a fantastic view of St Paul's Cathedral, which is a really magnificent sight, I can tell you.

And so, yeah, a glass of wine on the balcony overlooking that view.

Yeah, you can't get much better than that in London.

Right, let's move on, then.

And, next, we're going to hear from Zdenek.

Zdenek is a fellow English teacher and podcaster, originally from the Czech Republic who used to live in London and taught English in a school there on Oxford Street.

So, let's hear what Zdenek has to say.

Thenek from the Czech Republic here.

It's really hard to pick just one thing to do in London because there are so many.

But I suppose my favourite thing to do in London would be to see a Premier League game.

The atmosphere in the stadium is just electric.

And I simply love the feeling right before the game where Everyone is so excited, everyone is buzzing, the crowd is just up for the game, and it's just this collective feeling of excitement and expectations.

Your team doesn't always win of course, but the feeling of being a football fan in London is simply one of a kind.

Thank you, Zdenek, and yeah so football.

No one else has mentioned this.

Steneck's the only one to mention this, but it's a big thing, of course, in London.

I don't know how many football clubs there are.

Obviously, there are the famous ones, Arsenal, Chelsea, Tottenham, Fulham, Queens Park Rangers, West Ham, Millwall, Brentford, I'm sure I'm missing some, Crystal Palace.

But there are more than that as well, like lower league ones, as well.

I don't think I've forgotten anyone.

Maybe I've forgotten a really major one.

I don't think so. But yes, going to see a Premier League football game, if you can get tickets, they can be difficult to get.

But wow, what an experience and what an atmosphere.

As Zdenek said, the atmosphere is just electric, which is a nice expression, nice way to describe an exciting atmosphere.

Everyone in the stadium is buzzing.

If people are buzzing, it means they're really excited they've got their inner kind of excitable positive mood lots of you know talking there's a lot of energy going on a lot of expectations before the game begins.

I mean it is an amazing experience just like going to see football in any big stadium when you go to get your seats initially and you come out into the stadium you can hear the atmosphere you can hear the people all talking getting ready there's music playing and you see the pitch and it's so green.

It's just so luminous and green.

You just think, wow, this is it.

This is like being in the Roman Coliseum or something.

What are we going to see?

Just football. No one's going to get killed by a tiger or anything, hopefully.

Everyone's buzzing.

The crowd is up for the game to be up for something.

To be up for something means really interested in it, really excited about it.

Just really expecting it and looking forward to it.

Everyone's really up for the game.

And yes, going to see Premier League football in London, the experience is one of a kind.

As Zdenek said, if something is one of a kind, it means it's unique.

It's a unique experience.

It really is one of a kind.

Okay. Now, if you want to hear more from Zdenek about football, you could listen to his podcast, which combines talking about football with English teaching.

If you're an English learner and you love football, you could listen to his show.

It's called The Footglish Podcast, and it's available wherever you get your podcasts.

Footglish, you see what he's done?

Football and English, Footglish, yes, The Footglish Podcast. It's clever, isn't it?

Zdenek is an Arsenal fan, which connects him to my next guest, who is also a lifelong fan of The Gunners.

That's the nickname for Arsenal.

So who is that, then?

Well, it's Paul Langton.

and here he is. Why, what's my favorite thing to do in London?

Well, London's a very expensive city, but it's also a very beautiful city, so one of my favorite things to do is if the weather's nice enough, or if I've got a decent enough waterproof jacket, I'll walk in the rain and I shall walk around.

Some of the best walks by the River Thames in any direction, really.

Start by one of the big bridges like Tower Bridge or London Bridge or Waterloo Bridge, which has the best view in London, in my opinion.

And just walk along the river, you'll see a bit of every part of London and every part of our culture as well in different parts, such as the very Portuguese areas in Stockwell.

If you take in from the river and go a little bit southern, if you're down the East End, you'll see our big Bangladeshi community.

If you head in a bit north from the river you see Brick Lane, you know, you see all the different parts of the history of London and the veritable smorgasbord that is London culture.

Also, walking down that river, you will see every form and walk of life and you will see restaurants, cafes, bistros, most importantly from bars, so you can always stop off for a drink on the way.

That's my answer, thank you very much. Thank you very much to you, Paul and let's see, by the way, Paul is another friend of mine from the stand up comedy world in London.

Paul is a Londoner, born and bred, and he is that rare thing.

Someone who actually grew up in Zone 1 of central London.

You can hear it in his accent.

He's got that kind of authentic London accent.

It's not exactly a cockney accent because to be specific, a cockney accent really, is the accent of someone who was born in a certain district in the east of London.

Within the sound of the bells of the church in Bow, technically speaking, although often in common speaking, when we say a Cockney accent, we mean that sort of London accent, which sounds a bit like that.

And Paul's got definitely a London accent.

And so what did he say?

He basically talked about walking along the river.

And by walking along the river, you get to see all these different things and all these different aspects of our culture.

And if you go from the river and just go to some districts off the river, if you walk away from the river in a southerly or northerly direction, then you will also find different communities.

So he just likes to walk, and there are a few walkers in this part.

We've had Ian Moore, who loves walking, there's Paul here who loves walking even on a rainy day.

He says, if you have a decent enough waterproof jacket, which is a really good point.

People do talk about the rain in London.

In the summertime it's often lovely and sunny.

But yeah, it can rain at any time.

So it's always worth having a reasonable waterproof jacket because really there's no such thing as bad weather.

There is just bad clothing.

So if you are prepared for rain, if you've got a decent enough waterproof jacket, then you're fine.

you can just carry on.

In fact, I quite like that.

I do love a walk in the rain as long as I'm nice and dry and cozy under an umbrella or inside some nice waterproof jacket, then it's fine.

There's a certain atmosphere and a kind of romance to the rainy streets of London.

There's something nice about it.

You can stop off in a pub or cafe, you know, to escape the worst of the rain or to shelter somewhere.

Anyway, a decent enough jacket.

So if something is decent, it means it's of good enough quality.

If you've got a decent waterproof jacket, then it's good enough to keep you dry.

Basically, walking along the river, you see different cultures.

Paul mentioned the different communities, the Portuguese community that you can find in Stockwell.

There's the Bangladeshi community around Brick Lane that we heard about from Amber in part one of this.

Paul mentioned the veritable smorgasbord that is London culture.

There's a nice expression, the veritable smorgasbord of something, or a smorgasbord of something.

Now, smorgasbord is actually a word that comes from Swedish.

I wonder if you used that phrase in your language as well?

Has it entered other languages from Swedish as well?

But it certainly in English, a smorgasbord of something means a variety of different things.

So, here Paul is talking about the variety of different cultures that we have in London.

It is a veritable smorgasbord of different cultures.

A smorgasbord, smorgas in Swedish, I understand, means sandwich, or something like a sandwich. And smorgasbord, bord here would be a table.

So, it's kind of like, a smorgasbord is a sandwich table or you can imagine a table with lots of different sandwiches, or lots of different types of sandwich, or toasted sandwich on the board, right?

So it means a big variety of things.

And we've taken that in English to refer to a variety of anything.

So that is a smorgasbord. And Paul also said that you will see every form of life and every walk of life, which is another nice phrase, every walk of life.

So here, we're not actually talking about walking with our feet, but every walk of life.

So when you talk about walks of life, we're talking about different people in society, okay?

So, from all walks of life means from all different types of background, or from different professions.

So, a walk of life is someone's position in society, especially the type of job they have. So, if you see people from any walk of life, it means you see people, lots of different types of people, people who do different things.

This is all walks of life, all different types of people basically.

And finally, Paul said that, you know, you can see all these different things and you can see bars as well, which is interesting for Paul because he likes to stop off for a drink.

So there's a phrasal verb, not just to stop for a drink, but stop off for a drink.

What's the difference then between stop for a drink and stop off for a drink.

Well, stop off for a drink suggests that you are perhaps taking a brief stop on a journey.

So you're on a journey, you're walking down the river.

And if you stop off for a drink, it means you stop briefly for a drink and then you can carry on on your walk or you're driving.

You might stop off to get some petrol, right?

Stop off for a rest. So it's just like kind of briefly stop while you're on a journey to stop off for something.

Yes. You can listen to Paul on the podcast if you're interested because he's been on the podcast before.

You can listen to him in a few episodes, but if, for example, the drunk episode with Moz, episode 109.

If my memory serves me well, I think that was 109, but also you could listen to Paul in a funny episode recorded during the COVID lockdown.

That is number 667 called 4 -way call with Moz, who you heard in part one, our friend Alex Love who didn't send me a recording because he is a dossa and a dwhad and that's a joke for Alan Partridge fans, which Alex is.

Anyway, now moving on to the next person and we are keeping it in the family now because you're gonna hear from my brother James and you know James, he's my brother, here he is!

Hi my name's James and my favorite thing to do in London is not just one I like to go to an area that I know and do a lot of things all in one day so I might go to Brixton have a mooch about maybe go for a cup of tea and a fry up somewhere then maybe go check out a record shop have a look around there dig through some of the vinyl boxes there then I might go onto the skate park have escape for a few hours then maybe visit a local shop and maybe see some friends and end up going to the pub.

That would be a good day for me.

That's something I like about London is some of the areas if you know them well there's lots of things to do all in a close close proximity so you can go to treat it like a little town a little village and you don't need to go on the tube you just go to one area that you like and everything's kind of in that in the area there.

So that's the good thing about London.

It's like lots of little villages all joined up.

Um, I also like going to band practice, which I can do in Brixton as well, or drumming practice or something like that.

I just practice studio there.

Um, so that's why I like to do in London.

Bye. Well, that was James Thompson.

Thank you very much. So James said that he likes to go to one particular area and then do lots of different places in that area.

Remembering that London It's not really one single city with a recognizable center that it is, in fact, a collection of towns or villages that are all connected.

And this is a thing to understand about London.

This is one of the reasons it's so big, is that, actually, historically, this is how it was.

It was a number of settlements, or a number of towns.

The main one being, I guess, the City of London, which is now a district — it's the City of London.

That's the financial heart of London.

Then next to that is the city of Westminster, which was a different settlement.

That's where, ultimately, the royal family based itself and the government, parliament -related buildings are there.

Then there are all these other districts or towns.

As those towns grew and became more and more built up, they basically all merged together to create this huge metropolis.

But James was talking about Brixton in the south of London, south of the river, doing a lot of different things.

So he said going to Brixton, to have a mooch about, to have a mooch about.

Mooch, M -O -O -C -H and about.

To have a mooch about.

To mooch about is basically, it's an informal British expression meaning to wander around to walk around in a casual way right a wander around in a not very specific way just kind of moving from one place to the next seeing where you end up which is a nice relaxing thing to do where you don't have a specific aim in mind you're just going from place to place in a kind of relaxed or casual way so go to Brixton have a mooch about as James said and what else maybe go and have a fry -up.

A fry -up means a fried breakfast. And the typical English fried breakfast would be sausage, bacon, eggs, baked beans, toast, maybe mushrooms, maybe tomato, maybe even a black pudding.

And that is a blood sausage, which sounds so awful, but it's so good.

But most fry -ups don't black pudding.

That's a bit of a specialist thing.

But yes, certainly, bacon, eggs, sausage, beans, toast, and a nice cup of tea, a nice strong cup of builder's tea.

That would be a classic fry up.

And you can go and have a fry up in a cafe somewhere, and then visit a record shop or some record shops.

He said to dig through vinyl boxes.

Dig normally is something you do in the ground, right?

You dig a hole in the ground.

I don't know if If you're planting a tree, you would dig a hole in the ground and then put the tree in and then fill it in, right?

But you can dig through, for example, boxes of records that would just be going into the boxes and looking through all of the records.

So dig through some vinyl boxes, looking for some records, and then go to the skate park.

There is a skate park in Stockwell, which is right next to Brixton, more or less the same place really.

There's a skate park, which is just a really good spot for skaters and a place to hang out.

And yeah, treat it like a little town.

Lots of little villages all joined up, which is what London really is.

And then he also mentioned going to a band practice at Practice Studios.

That's where you can go and practice music with a band or even just practice playing the drums on your own or guitar or whatever.

So there you go. That was James's things that he likes to do in London.

James has appeared many, many times on the podcast over the years.

Perhaps you could go back and listen to one of our music based conversations because James is all about music and you could maybe listen to recent ones like the conversation we had Madness that band from England actually very associated with Camden Town that was episode 884 British music madness episode 856 was called music chat with James I have to get James back on the podcast at some point for a bit of a ramble that would be good and of course you can check out his music he spends a lot of time making music he's really deeply into making his tunes and you can out his music at jimthompson .bandcamp

.com. Go ahead and check them out, listen to the tunes.

There's some sort of techno electronic stuff, some ambient stuff, jimthompson .bandcamp .com.

to listen to his music.

Next up, making her debut appearance on the podcast, it is my brother's girlfriend Ilana, who is actually Dutch. Originally, she was born in the Netherlands, but she's lived in England since she was a child and has lived in London for nearly 20 years.

To be honest, if she'd never told me she was born in the Netherlands, I would never have guessed cause she sounds like so English.

But anyway, this is Ilana, and these are the things she likes to do in London.

Here we go. My favourite thing to do in London is to go out for food.

I recently had a baby, so I'm not doing very much of this at the moment, but pre -baby me and my friends used to go out for dinner all the time uh after work at the weekends there's um so many restaurants and food markets and um you know we would see we would just try new ones all the time and I think England has not the best reputation for traditional English dishes maybe they're a bit bland compared to what you can get you know around the world these days.

But we have got restaurants in London absolutely nailed now.

Anything you want you can get and you know I love that you can go to different areas for different things.

You can get it Chinatown for Chinese food, you can go to Greenlanes in north London for amazing Turkish food, you can go to Dolston for Vietnamese food.

It goes on and on and I'd nothing better than going out with my friends for a few hours and just eating till we rolled home, and you know the weekends going to food markets and picking up delicious pastries and coffees and I just absolutely love it, yeah I'm a big foodie and I miss it a lot.

Yeah so that was my favourite thing to do really, it's just you know London is people say all the time, but London is an incredible melting pot of different cultures and therefore cuisines and yeah you'd be hard pushed to find a place that had a better selection of food and yeah when I can take the little one out with me he's hopefully gonna be my new restaurant buddy so I'm gonna take him enjoy taking him to all these places so he can discover them for himself and I can discover them the second time round.

But yeah that's it thank you bye.

Thank you, Ilana. And yeah, let me just say congratulations again to James and Ilana.

Ilana recently had a baby.

They are new parents dealing with a, I guess sort of like six month old baby boy and he's a lovely cute little guy.

You can take it from me, but of course they're a bit tired.

And as you can hear, Ilana is looking forward to being able to out and enjoy all of the food that she loves so much in this city.

So, let me just go through a few things.

Ilana said that she'd recently had a baby.

So she's not doing much of this at the moment.

She's going out to get food.

She's not doing much of it at the moment, but she'll be able to do that again before too long.

She said England doesn't have the best reputation for English food or English dishes.

Maybe they're a bit bland compared to some of the things you can get in other places.

So bland is a word that you could use to describe food.

If food is bland it means it's boring and tasteless.

It doesn't taste fantastic.

It's a bit bland. What do you think of this soup?

It's a bit bland really isn't it?

Right? Bland here would be the opposite of tasty.

So if food is bland, it's boring.

It doesn't taste of much. That's the reputation that England has.

But then Ilana said, but we have restaurants absolutely nailed now.

So if something is nailed, or if you have something nailed, or if you've nailed something, it means you've done it really well, you're doing it really well, you're really in control of it, doing it perfectly now.

For example, well done, you nailed it, means well done, you did really well, like, you nailed that presentation, means you did it really, really well.

We've got food nailed, or we've got restaurants nailed means that we are doing them really well now." And this is absolutely true.

The idea that you can't get good food in London is absolutely ridiculous.

The idea that in England, you don't get good food.

I mean, it's just nonsense, basically.

It's just a silly stereotype.

You can get all sorts of incredible food.

Now best food is from somewhere else in the world.

But you know what? I don't care.

It doesn't matter, does it really?

The main thing is that you get to eat something delicious.

And yes, different areas for different food.

She mentioned Chinatown, where you get your Chinese food.

There's Turkish food in a place called Green Lanes.

There's Vietnamese food in a part of London called Dalston and so on and so forth.

What else? Ilana described herself as being a big foodie.

If you're a foodie, it means you're somebody who loves food, right?

As you can hear, you love different types of food.

You love going out and eating and finding new places and whatever.

So she's a foodie. F -O -O -D -I -E.

Remember, check the PDF for the vocab and the spelling.

She said, you would be hard pushed to find a place that had a better selection of food.

If you are hard pushed to do something, it means it's difficult to do it.

So she's basically saying it's difficult or it would be difficult to find a place that had a better selection of food.

You would be hard pushed to do something.

You'd be hard pushed to find a place with a better selection of food Right, you'd be hard pushed to find a city with more things to do Although of course there are plenty of cities in the world with lots of things to do as well But anyway, it's just a nice expression.

You'd be hard pushed to find a podcast that provides you with more tips and vocab than Luke's English podcast So, you'd be hard -pushed to do something.

In this case to find a place with a better selection of food.

Elana refer to her baby as her little one and this is really common in English that often we refer to our children as our little ones.

So, my little one means her son.

She's hoping that her little one will become her restaurant buddy.

That would be a little, little companion who would come to restaurants with her and hopefully the little one is going to become a foodie as well, like his Mummy.

Okay, so that was Ilana.

Let's now move on to the next person.

And we're going to hear from Anthony.

This is Anthony Rotunno. Anthony is a fellow English teacher and podcaster, who's been on this life of Brian and guess what?

I've never actually met him in the real world.

Anthony and I have never actually met in the real world, but our orbits will cross each other soon, I think.

And it'll probably be in London when we're both there at the same time, it would be great to actually meet up with him.

But I mean, I've known Anthony for a few years now.

I've spoken to him lots of times.

We've done lots of podcasts together, but our paths have never actually crossed in the real world.

Anyway, this is what Anthony has to say.

Hello, this is Anthony Rotunno. I'm a teacher, podcaster, and fairly frequent Luke Thompson collaborator.

I lived in London on and off for about five years in the 2000s.

First in Labor Grove in West London and Finsbury Park in North London and Hackney in East London.

I was too scared to live in South London, just a joke.

I did a lot of the tourist sites when I first got there, such as Big Ben, Tower of London, various galleries and museums, National Gallery, Tate Modern, Science Museum and there's lots of interesting buildings and places to go.

But now, honestly my favourite thing is just walking around the city observing the people, the various cultures and just enjoying how large the city is, in fact.

I have a very busy life and every few months, maybe three or four times a year, I go and visit a friend of mine who lives in the Paddington area for a couple of hours in the morning.

And then I spend the rest of the day just walking around various places, including the areas I used to live for a bit of nostalgia.

It's quite ironic that in a big city like London, doing this actually brings a lot of peace.

I feel like these days are a day off from the world or at least a day off from my busy working life.

London of course is so huge that you never run out of places to go, even if you don't have a particular destination or perhaps especially when you don't.

I love the parks. My favourite's probably Hyde Park, the markets especially Portobello.

I still go to galleries sometimes but I don't really like queuing and I like to stay on move when I am in London.

I do stop off in coffee shops and even the occasional pubs sometimes.

I sometimes talk to people, but the great thing about London is the sense that you can be anonymous if you want to.

It feels like everyone is in their own bubble and people don't really approach each other without a particular reason.

And on these days that works fine for me, but like I say, people will talk to you if you start a conversation.

So that's my favorite thing to do in London.

In short, London's massive, and no one's very friendly.

Thank you very much, Anthony.

Anthony is a fellow Alan Partridge fan like I am, and he's one of those people, like me, where you can't help kind of quoting Partridge or going into some sort of Partridge -ism.

If you don't know who Alan Partridge is, I mean, sometimes I mention him in my episodes.

I did six, I've done six episodes about Alan Partridge in the past. Just search the episode archive for Alan.

That's probably the key word you could use to search. You know, do your command F search or control F search in my episode archive for the word Alan.

And you'll find six episodes all about Alan, including lots of listening.

Anyway, I'm going, I've gone off on an Alan tangent.

Although if we still stick if I'm talking about Alan I might as well include Alan's words here because everything that everyone has said in this episode so far has been just overwhelmingly positive but Alan, who by the way is a fictional comedy character from a television series played by actor Steve Coogan in the show Alan hates London, right, because he associates it with the fact that his His career in television has failed or is on the rocks.

And so, he associates London with all sorts of television industry people who have rejected him.

And so, he's rejected London as a result.

This is what Alan thinks of London.

Go to London. I guarantee you, you will either be mugged or not appreciated.

Catch the train to London.

stopping at Rejection, Disappointment, Backstabbing Central and Shattered Dreams Parkway.

Go to London, I guarantee you'll either be mugged or not appreciated.

If you get mugged, it means someone stops you in the street and robs you, like steals your phone or your wallet or something.

Go to London, I guarantee you'll either be mugged or not appreciated.

So Alan was not appreciated in London.

People didn't apparently see his genius as a broadcaster.

And what was it? Take the train to London, stopping it, stopping it, what?

Catch the train to London stopping at rejection, disappointment, backstabbing Central and shattered dreams Parkway.

Disappointment. These are like train stations.

Catch the train to London stopping at rejection, disappointment, backstabbing Central.

So backstabbing, that's when someone stabs you in the back, not literally, but it just when someone betrays you goes behind your back and does something that betrays you.

Okay, so backstabbing Central sounds like some sort of train station and shattered dreams parkway, which again, it sounds like another train station.

Anyway, I've ended up in an Alan Partridge tangent.

I'm sorry, everybody.

Anthony. Anthony. And Anthony Rotunno. Right.

So, um, Anthony was saying that, uh, he's, he's, uh, been to lots of different parts of London, uh, West, North East. He was too scared to live in South London.

This is just a joke.

It's kind of traditionally considered.

It's kind of South London.

It's kind of traditionally considered to be a bit rough.

Um, meaning the slightly more dangerous part of the city.

Rough is the word that we use to describe parts of a city or town or something that are perhaps slightly more dangerous.

We tend to say that they are rough areas.

That's R O U G H. Yeah.

Anthony's another walker and I understand entirely how he feels.

It is a great thing to just walk anonymously around the city, always on the move going from one place to the next, a bit like in my walk and talk video.

So he likes to stay on the move, right?

If you are on the move, it means you're always moving.

So he likes to stay on the move.

He might stop off in a cafe.

There's that phrasal verb again, but you can be anonymous.

You can kind of be in your own bubble, which can be a really great thing to do.

You just sort of stroll around from place to place and it can be, yeah, it just to float from one part of London to the other.

Yes, walking, it is a fantastic thing.

Very therapeutic as well, they say.

Right, so this episode is becoming an epic marathon of English listening for you.

But I just wanted to say, you can listen to Anthony on his podcasts.

He's got three podcasts.

The first one is Glass Onion on John Lennon, all about John Lennon.

Very fascinating in depth, almost like psychological case study of John Lennon.

Film Gold, all about films, and Life and Life Only, all about the search for truth in your life, the inner truth, and outer truth in society, all of them worth a listen.

Right, so that's Anthony.

All of those podcasts are available wherever you get your podcasts.

This is the penultimate recording and we're going back to Aaron again, who you heard from in part one.

This is the second part of his recording, and so let's hear from Aaron again.

What are the other things that he enjoys doing in London?

Here we go. Other things that I like doing, I love being in Soho, particularly on a Friday or Saturday evening, just as it's turning from that point where the shops are closing, to people coming out for drinks, and hanging out in the city, and having a wild time, probably less wild than it used to be, certainly for me.

But I really like the atmosphere that you get as that kind of transition period, before everyone gets too drunk, but just as everyone's quite merry and having a good time.

I was in Soho a couple of weekends ago, and I felt really invigorated by the energy there.

And while it has changed a lot, I think Soho is still the soul, the heart and soul of the centre of London for me.

It's a great place.

Something else I like doing, record shopping.

Another thing you can do in Soho.

I love visiting record shops.

I love spending an afternoon with friends, going around various record shops.

A lot of the best record shops or the best independent record shops have closed, but there are always new ones popping up on the outskirts of London.

And they're always interesting places to go and rifle through.

And you usually find something unexpected, something from your past, your formative teenage years when you really love music.

I still love music very much and I like to buy the old record. I don't go crazy, just maybe one or two every couple of months or so, and I just add them to my collection and listen to them when I get a moment.

Similarly, along the lines of music, I love going to gigs in London.

I went to see a band recently called Ghost Funk Orchestra in a small venue on Denmark I've forgotten the name, but it's a really good venue with a really good sound, and I saw a band called Ghost Funk Orchestra.

They were excellent.

Recommend them. Hard to explain the style of music, but there were a lot of people dancing and it was a really good time.

Sort of psychedelic soul, I guess, with eight people on stage, a lot of fun.

And I'm actually going to see a band this Sunday, whatever Sunday this is, or last Sunday or whatever a previous, what on a previous Sunday occurred before this podcast is published.

I'm going to see a band called Fishbone, who I've loved since I was a teenager, probably before that first trip to London.

They've been around since the late 70s and they're playing at Camden Underworld.

So a few of us are going to go along and see some old men in, you know, still jumping around on stage, probably with a lot of energy playing some great songs.

going to be a lot of fun.

And then away from music, I've recently moved to Chiswick.

It's a beautiful part of London.

It really is great.

It has a nice... You feel like you're in London, but it's also quite independent.

There's a lot of independent shops, really nice restaurants here.

There's a park. But what I really like about Chiswick is the markets.

They have a different market each Sunday.

I think it's the country's last cheese market is in Chizik.

And actually Chizik was named for its annual cheese market, Chiz Wick, or Cheez Wick I believe became Chizik.

There's also an antiques market which is great if you like old stuff that's expensive.

And there's a food market and also a flower market if you like plants.

They're all great. They're each Sunday.

They're down on High Street.

It's a really nice way to spend a Sunday morning, you know, buying stuff that you probably don't knee but stuff that makes you feel happy.

I've probably gone way over time here, but you know these are just some of the things I love doing in London.

There are many more and maybe one day I'll get to tell you about them.

Who knows? If not, come and visit London if you don't live here.

If you lived here before, come and visit again.

Do some of the things you used to love doing and find out some new things that you might love doing.

Highly recommend London, it's one of the greatest cities on the planet and I'm very proud to call it my home.

Nice so that was Aaron there completing his long rambling comment, completing and indeed competing with me for the champion of the Ramblin' Champion trophy although thanks to all my rambling between each recording this episode is getting super long here isn't it?

But that's alright we're nearly at the end now but you don't mind because obviously you're just loving it, aren't you?

So you're thinking, why do you talk like this being a long episode, like that's a bad thing?

That's just a fantastic thing, Luke.

And you also might be thinking, I'm going to talk about what Aaron said in a moment and explain some vocab.

Don't worry. But you might also be thinking, Luke, you sound different.

Yes, because now I'm in a different location.

My recording of this episode has gone on, it's been something like three days worth, Like I started recording these bits and recording the intro and the other bits to part one and then part two, started that something like two days ago and so here I am again.

This time it's the evening and I'm at home, very comfortably installed on the sofa.

I'm sure you're very happy to know that I'm extremely comfortable.

I might even just have a little sleep in a moment but I'm lying on the sofa it's probably noisy this the windows open right behind me you might hear the sound of some drunk French people stumbling down the street making noises like this early there always seems to be the noise that everyone makes like that I mean it's that they're probably shouting words but as far as you can tell from up here it just sounds like hmm which is noise that French men make when they've had a few drinks.

Oh, like that. There's the dishwasher in the background as well.

Sorry about the background noise.

So Aaron there talked about being in Soho, which is for him the heart and soul of the center of London, and who could disagree with him on that one, being in Soho when it's turning from the shopping period into the evening when people are going out having a few drinks and stuff like that so that period in the late afternoon early evening late early late evening early afternoon whatever that type of that time of day he mentioned people having a wild time if you have a wild time it means you're having a really good time we're having a lot of fun but yeah he talks about that transition period between when people

are sort of ending their shopping and then starting to go out he said he was in Soho and he felt really invigorated by the energy of the place if you're invigorated by something it's like you've been given energy by some sort of experience right imagine well any experience that would give you energy it could be even something like going out on a very cold windy day.

Whoa, this is invigorating, isn't it?

I mean, you might disagree.

You might think, this is horrible, I want to go home.

But you know, the air is very fresh and it really wakes you up, it's really invigorating.

Or maybe being in Soho on a Saturday late, early late evening.

And there's a real sense of energy and lots of bustling.

a lot of things happening, a lot of people, the general hustle and bustle of Soho at that time of day, yes, it can be very invigorating.

Record shopping, he mentioned.

He talks about new shops popping up on the outskirts of the city.

Popping up, so we had popping next door, we had popping in, popping out, meaning going to different places quickly or briefly.

But here we've got record shops popping up.

We do talk about pop -up restaurants, pop -up shops.

It's just when they appear quickly and maybe...

Well, in this case, record shops popping up.

It just means they open, new shops opening quickly, is what he's talking about, on the outskirts, on the edges of the city, the areas further from the center.

And my brother, James, talked about digging through boxes of records.

Aaron used the expression rifling through some records.

That means looking through things quickly.

You might, for example, rifle through your, I don't know, what would it be, what's a good example.

If you really need to get out of town for some reason, like, I don't know, maybe you've committed some terrible crime and you quickly need to leave the country.

You might rifle through your drawers to find your passport and a stash of cash, and then flee the country, you know.

You know when you have to leave the country really quickly.

Of course, you don't, that's a joke.

Unless you do, maybe you know exactly what that's like.

I don't know, but anyway, rifling through something means looking through it very quickly, right?

So, rifling through boxes of records, looking for something really good.

Rifling through, like I would rifle through my sock drawer, desperately trying to find two socks that actually match each other or you would rifle through your handbag to find your keys or something like that.

Aaron likes rifling through records and record shops.

Sometimes you would find a record that reminds you of your formative years formative years are your, I guess like your teenage years the years you spend that really make you who you are the kind of years that Aaron and spent together, you know, our formative years.

I mean it's thanks to me that he is the man he is today, really.

I formed him, you know, I've not literally formed him with my hands.

I'm talking nonsense now.

I'm really talking nonsense, but that's alright.

Yeah, so Aaron went to, he talked about going to gigs.

A gig is a concert.

In this case live music.

We also talk about comedy gigs as well so a gig is a music or comedy show and Aaron talked about going to see a band called Ghost Funk Orchestra kind of difficult to categorize in a small venue.

A venue would be a place where you would see a show like a music venue or a comedy venue so in this case it was a small venue on Denmark Street that would be probably a bar or pub that also puts on live music like a dive bar or something like that which would have a stage or maybe a small area in the back with the stage and space for an audience to dance around.

Denmark Street is a famous street in London for its music and it's music shops unfortunately there aren't as many music shops there as there used to be as the place has been has been redeveloped and you know they kind of They sort of got rid of a lot of the authentic music shops and stuff, but there's still some stuff there and clearly some venues there as well still.

Aaron talked about going to see another band called Fishbone.

If you're a fan of Fishbone leave a comment in the comment section.

Awesome band and yeah he's going to see them or he went to see them or he will have seen them on a Sunday at some point, because Aaron got a bit lost in a time loop, which is easy to do in the world of podcasting when you realize that, oh, I'm talking about the future.

But by the time this goes out, that will be the past. So it's a sort of timeless zone, podcast land, isn't it?

Anyway, in fact, he has been to the show.

He is going to the show.

And he is also at that show right now.

All of time is occurring simultaneously in podcast land.

Then he talked about moving to Chiswick, which is a lovely part of London to the west, very close to where I used to live in Hammersmith.

It's about 45 minutes away from the centre and it's not far from the river.

A lovely place really, really nice.

I'm very happy that Aaron has moved there.

He's really come up in the world, started out in Chelmsley Wood, the badlands of Chelmsley Wood, and he's ended up in the very affluent area of Chiswick.

He's done very well for himself, but you know, it's all thanks to me, I told you.

I formed him in those formative years.

Anyway, Chiswick, he was talking about the markets there, and various markets.

Did he say that it has the country's last cheese market?

What does that actually mean?

I mean, that's it? After this market, England is not allowed to have any other cheese markets, or is it just the latest cheese market?

Is what that means?

I don't know. I could understand the country's first cheese market, I'll have to ask him about this.

I understand that the country's first cheese market is a historic market.

The first of so many cheese markets in England, but the country's last cheese market suggests that that's it, no more cheese markets after this.

Maybe I've misunderstood.

Anyway, Chizik... He Aaron started talking about what Chiswick actually means Cheers That's Cheers.

Definitely Cheers being cheese Originally and wick.

Well, I asked my dad about this and this is actually written in in one of his books This is very much my dad's territory explaining what what the wick in place names means like for example Warwick Chiswick and I'm sure there's another one Warwick, Chiswick, BEREC, BEREC -A -PON -TWEED?

That's a bit of a random one.

I'm sure there are lots of place names with wic at the end.

Anyway, according to my dad, a wic is an old English word meaning a settlement.

So Chiswick, according to that logic, means a cheese settlement.

I suppose it must have been a town built on cheese.

I mean, not made out of cheese.

That And you can see that maybe my mind is not in the best condition for recording podcasts because I end up talking some silly nonsense, although maybe I should do all my podcasts at 11 .58 on a Friday evening.

Aaron also said, maybe one day I'll get to tell you all about them.

Who knows? And I was thinking, was that a subtle plea to be invited on the podcast for a longer chat?

Is that what that was, Aaron, or was that just a nice conversational tone for your comment?

If that was a subtle suggestion to be invited on the podcast for a longer chat, Aaron, then we need to talk.

Obviously, we need to talk on the podcast, but we need to talk about talking on the podcast. Just call me.

We'll have a meeting.

We'll discuss it. Maybe we'll record the discussion about you coming on the podcast, and then we'll actually record a podcast as well.

Oh my God, this is going to end very soon and then we'll all be able to go back to our normal lives.

But finally then, it is pod pal, Paul Taylor.

I said at the beginning of part one that we would begin with Amber and that we would end with Paul.

Here we are ending with Paul.

Finally, Paul is the closer for this double episode.

Frequent podcast guest, world famous stand up comedy superstar, possibly coming to a stage near you soon to perform in English, probably, but also in French, maybe Paul lived in London for years as well.

Let's hear what he has to say.

Oh, hello, Luke's English podcast and all the lepsters out there.

This is Paul Taylor.

So, Paul is back on the podcast. Luke has asked me what my favorite thing to do in London is and if I have to be honest with you now that I don't live in London anymore or the UK my favorite thing to do is to go to a pub.

I just love the atmosphere of pubs in the UK which you don't really get anywhere else outside of the country.

So yeah they're just cozy you know when it's dark and rainy you go in for a nice beer.

In London my favorite pub is a called the Porter House which is in the Covent Garden area.

So not only is it in a very nice area of London which is cute, Covent Garden, you get all the street performers, there's some cool shopping...

there's just a good vibe to Covent Garden in general.

And then the Porter House is a pub which has like five different levels to it.

It's almost like you walk into Harry Potter and then because it's like balconies looking over the main bar, it's just like a maze little bit, the Porterhouse.

It's super cool, it's got a great selection of beers from all over the place, so that would be that would probably be my favourite thing to do in London.

I haven't done it in a long time, unfortunately, but it is also the pub where me and my wife of 16 years, we first had our date, we had our first date at the Porterhouse in London, so it also has some emotional value.

So it's probably shit now, because this was 16 years ago.

It's probably not as good as it used to be, but I'm going with that.

That's my top thing to do in London.

Love you guys! Lepsters, see you soon.

Okay, that was Paul Taylor then, so let me just briefly go through some of the things he said.

So, like many others before him, Paul says his favourite thing is to go to a pub, which is totally understandable.

I mean, it is extraordinary the number of pubs there are and and there are way fewer than they used to be but you can just walk around London and the pubs are a really lovely feature I know some of you listening just it's not your cup of tea or your pint of beer let's say maybe to go to pubs you know you don't drink but they are lovely buildings they've got they they look nice they're full of character they've got interesting names they're comfortable they're inviting you know it's just like the place to go to socialise, to relax, and all that stuff.

I did an episode with my brother all about going to the pub.

It's got everything you need to know about the whole culture of pubs in the UK, and you should listen to it if you find all this talk of pubs interesting.

It's episode 100. Anyway, going to a pub is Paul's favourite thing.

He loves the atmosphere, he says it's cosy.

Cosy is that word that describes that nice, comfortable feeling when you're indoors, maybe in a nice, comfortable enclosed space.

You'd be cozy if you're sitting on a comfortable sofa in front of a nice fire, or you'd be cozy if you are wrapped up nice and warm with a hot drink.

That's a cozy feeling when it's dark and rainy outside.

His favourite pub is the Porter House in Covent Garden.

I know that pub. It's right in the centre, part of the building that makes up Covent Garden market these days.

It's this maze -like pub with all these different floors, and there are bars in different parts of the pub.

There are balconies as well that overlook Covent Garden, which is a really cool spot.

You can watch the street performers doing their things, The street performers, the buskers.

Five different levels apparently.

Oh let me just interrupt myself.

I've realised that actually I'm talking about a completely different pub.

I've got it all mixed up, so the Porter House is just round the corner from the centre of Covent Garden.

The pub I'm thinking of is called the Punch and Judy, which is the one right in the middle of Covent Garden with the views over the main square.

The Punch and Judy is an interesting spot as well, but no, the Porter House is a nicer pub than the Punch and Judy to be fair.

But that's alright because I mean you don't care really do you at this point?

So many different pubs Luke that I'm probably never gonna go to.

I mean who cares. The Port House, the Punch and Judy, the Coaching horses, the whatever, you know, the Frog and Lettuce, the Goldfish and Monkey, the Ketchup and Mustard, I dunno, whatever.

We don't care Luke, just carry on.

Okay, I will. Paul said it's like you walk into Harry Potter.

I don't really understand how How could it be if you...

I don't know how Harry Potter would feel about that if you walked into him.

I don't understand really how Harry Potter is like a pub in himself, but I think I know what Paul means.

It's like you walk into the world of Harry Potter, into some place where there are all these different levels and it's all wood -panelled and all that stuff.

He also talked about the emotional value, which is lovely that this was the place where Paul and his wife first went on a date together.

So it has that kind of emotional...

He has that emotional attachment to the place as well, which is lovely.

But then he did say that it's probably shit now because that was 16 years ago and, you know, nothing stays the same, does it?

I don't know, I haven't actually been to that pub for quite a long time.

I'd have to go back and check it out.

Anyway, so ladies and gentlemen, we have finally got to the end what has become an epic marathon of a double episode, it's quite appropriate that we ended with Paul in this marathon episode since he is now all about running marathons and stuff but here we are, right at the end then and I just want to remind you two things I'll say.

The first thing is I want to remind you to have a look at the PDF, you'll find a vocab list you'll find a transcript and also you will find a full list of all the recommendations for London that you have heard. It's all compiled in one list with all the different locations, all the different things you can do there.

Every bit of advice for visiting London has been compiled together in a list and you'll find that on the PDF.

It is an awesome list of so much great advice and would be a very useful companion, and it's totally free!

It's available for you, totally free.

That's the PDF, yes.

Full vocab list, full transcript, and also full list of recommendations.

There are PDFs for Part 1 and Part 2.

There you are. You're welcome.

The other thing I wanted to say is a big thank you to everyone who sent me recordings.

Thank you everyone for taking the time to do that and to send those things to me to think sincerely about what you love doing in London and to actually record it and send it to me.

Thanks a lot everyone, that really really helped to make this episode quite special I think.

Thanks also to you, the dear listener, for listening all the way up until this point.

Leave a comment in the comments section just to prove that you are indeed still conscious and that you haven't turned into a skeleton with a pair of headphones on somewhere in world?

Leave a comment to let us know that you are still here.

What could you possibly say?

What words could you use?

Something about cozy atmosphere.

You could write something about a cozy atmosphere.

That could be your phrase to show that you've got to the end of the episode.

But indeed you could comment on any of the things that have been mentioned here.

Have you ever been to London?

What was your experience there?

What's your favorite thing about London?

And tell us about your places.

Where do you live? What's it like there?

And what are the cool things to do?

What are your favorite things to do where you live?

Get in the comments section, I'd love to read your comments.

But that finally is the end of this episode.

Thank you so much for listening.

I will speak to you next time.

But for now it is time to say goodbye.

Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye.

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[Our Favorite Things to Do in London: Part Two]-[940. Our favourite things to do in London 🇬🇧 (Part 2)]

📋 Summary

Exploring London: A Community-Driven Guide

The River Thames and Its Iconic Bridges

Culture, Theatre, and Hidden Gems

Walking the City and Comedy Nights

Art, Sports, and Culinary Diversity

Final Reflections

🎯Key Sentences

📝Key Phrases

📖 Transcript