London

London is a city of villages stitched together. The traditional tourist core (Westminster, the Tower, Buckingham) is fine but is rarely where the city actually lives. The actual London is in the neighborhoods: South Bank's walks and theaters, East End's markets (Spitalfields, Brick Lane, Columbia Road), Notting Hill and Portobello, Marylebone's bookshops, the new King's Cross. The free national museums are absurdly good. The pub is the city's actual public square. The food is genuinely better now than the cliché says.