Roughly 40 miles from the coast, the capital of Great Britain has 33 local authorities, covers 625 square miles, has 5 main Airports, 7 mainline stations, 13 underground tube lines and is serviced by a fast and complex suburban and national network of road and rail services. If London was a country, its population and economy would make it Europe's sixth largest. It's enormous.

Divided north and south by the River Thames, London has three central areas that are bordered roughly by the Circle Line underground: the twin inner parts of the West End (the main centre including Westminster, Covent Garden, Royal London, Soho, Kensington and Knightsbridge, Chelsea). The cockney streets of the East End, and the business fortress of 'the square mile' and remnants of the ancient town, known as The City, within the East End, where the streets were once thought to be paved with gold. Today you can almost smell the green stuff and glimpse the digital money spinning through coaxial cables behind the great mirrored-glass buildings.

Beyond the Circle Line the city radiates to inner London (many districts including Islington, Hoxton, Hampstead, Highgate, Greenwich, Dulwich and Ealing) and to the sprawling hinterland of outer London, orbited by the M25 motorway.

For a spectacular view, try the top of Westminster Cathedral, the Telecom Tower, Hampstead Heath, Tower Bridge, Waterloo Bridge at sunset and the balcony of the Royal Festival Hall after dark with its view of the floodlit River Thames.

London is a green city. There are 1,700 parks, including the huge swathes of the Royal Parks commandeered in Tudor times from the church by Henry VIII. The parks, heaths and open spaces are an integral part of city life, havens of peace away from the bustle and the traffic.

Districts are famous and fabled: Chelsea, Soho, Notting Hill, Camden, Hampstead, Bethnal Green, Rotherhythe... and the streets hold a magic and a history of their own: Baker Street, Berwick Street, Abbey Road, Lavender Hill, Whitehall, Cheapside, the Old Kent Road...