"The Flower of Cities All ?" London by Paisleypaul

So was described the English capital in poetry by a fellow Scotsman William Dunbar, albeit half a millenia before my own residency straddling the 1980s and 1990s.
I don't think anyone would describe London as pretty by any stretch nowadays - the statue of Eros at Picadilly Circus was snapped the end of May - could pass for November - but other than the Northern European blight of dodgy weather, it is more a city of omnipresent litter, graffiti found in too many citites, traffic fumes, traffic congestion and noise. Other than the regularly facelifted monuments most stone structures quickly dull and blacken. Homelessness and drugs are a problem as they are in most major European cities

Charing Cross Road

Might not be so apparent from the first part of the intro - but I assuredly love the place. I think what I really love is the shadowy echoes of the past - 'the London that's dead'. I have always loved the Sherlock Holmes stories (by another exiled Scot, Arthur Conan Doyle) and the tales, obviously, are interwoven with the area around 221B Baker Street. The character 's fame coincided nicely with the cinema at the turn of last century; the Jack the Ripper Whitechapel murders having been 'factionalized' to Holmes and Dr Jekyll cinematic reworkings. The underground with it's 'ghost stations' also echoes of long dead commuters, as a lad I had watched the horror film 'Deathline ' in the late 1970s and the Hammer film 'Quatermass and the Pit' which utilize the potential for spookiness in the Underground.

"High Street, Chinatown" - Gerrard Street

I used to live in Willesden Green up the Jubilee Line , I enjoy the liveliness of the West End, Soho, Chinatown, the art collections of the National Gallery and National Portrait Gallery, the alternative centres such as Sloane Square/ Kings Road in Chelsea, Camden, and have to confess that Trafalgar Square, the Houses of Parliament, Marble Arch, Tower Bridge,and Big Ben just go by me now. Visitors come worldwide to see the resting places of the great and the good, everyone from Karl Marx (d.1883 ~Highgate Cemetery) to Marc Bolan (d.1977 ~ Golders Green Crematorium). Cosmopolitan and closest probably to New York City of anywhere else I have visited, it is one of my favourite cities and easily the pick of English cities - in fact London aside it is really only the towns around the Lake District I visit.

Lots of memories - I am still a semi-frequent visitor to London, must try and brush up on the pages since joining VT last year. BTW, Gerrard Street on the left was in the 1980s where you would find the 'Dive Bar, in a West End Town' from the Pet Shop Boys lyrics to "West End Girls"

• Pros:Never stuck for something to do
• Cons:House prices originally drove me away in the 1990s
• In a nutshell:Either go for the obvious - or 'think outside the box'