The West End's bright lights draw the crowds with long-running mega musicals, top-quality drama with big names, and mainstream clubs. Dress up for ballet or great voices at the Royal Opera House in Covent Garden. Cutting-edge clubs and bars cluster in the east around Hoxton and Shoreditch and south in Brixton. For something completely different, sip cocktails at one of London's in-vogue burlesque nights.

London is a city of immigrants, so go globetrotting with your taste buds to authentic Lebanese restaurants on Edgware Road, where diners smoke rose-scented hookah pipes on pavement tables, or to good-value Vietnamese cafes around Old Street. For the classic British experience splash out on seafood and oysters at London institution J Sheekey in Covent Garden or enjoy a traditional pint of beer and reinvented British classics in gastro pubs around Clerkenwell.