London

London is a world city that never surrendered its village names: Soho, Chelsea, Hackney and Peckham keep their own accents, pubs and loyalties inside a metropolis that speaks three hundred languages before lunch. The Thames stitches it all together in slow bends, past a nine-hundred-year-old fortress and a Ferris wheel that became a monument by refusing to leave.

The sensible traveller mixes free and paid with London cunning: the British Museum, the Nationals and the Tate cost nothing and would be worth fortunes; Westminster and the Tower charge like theaters and deliver like them. Walk the South Bank from the Eye to Borough Market's lunch stalls, cross the wobbleless Millennium Bridge to St Paul's, and give one evening to the West End and another to a pub with a fireplace and a Sunday roast.

The Guide's honesty: stand on the right of the escalator or feel the city's full editorial disapproval; the weather forecast is a genre of fiction — carry the layer anyway —; theater tickets surrender to day lotteries and rush seats: try before you pay full; and the best free view is the Sky Garden, booked ahead, or any bridge at dusk, booked never.