At UIC we know that one of the most popular pastimes of our students is shopping – in fact one of the reasons people want to visit London is to shop, and with the exchange rates the way they are at the moment it can make more and more sense to buy things in London.  The pound is at a very low rate to the Euro and to many other currencies which offer great opportunities for bargain hunting. This is a small guide to where you should look!

One of the criticisms you’ll hear of English towns and cities is that they are all the same  – the same shops appearing again and again. You’ll certainly find chain shops like Boots, WHSmith, Ryman, Marks & Spencer, Next,  in most  high streets in England which can make them all appear the same! In London however, you tend not to get the same mix of shops – even thoughyou can find all these shops they are spread out more and so There are several areas of London where you can find specialist shops all together – for example New Bond Street is home to pretty much all the designer shops (Armani, Versace etc), Tottenham Court Road has dozens of shops selling electrical goods and computers at one end and many furniture shops at the other end; Denmark Street has 10 or so guitar shops! There are markets in all different areas of London – check out the UIC 10 best - and department Stores in 2 main areas – Oxford Street (Selfridges, John Lewis, House of Fraser) and Knightsbridge (Harrods, Harvey Nichols). You might also find areas like Covent Garden interesting – where you can find a huge range of shops and market stalls. London is also home to the biggest urban mall in Europe in Westfield (at Shepherds Bush) which has hundreds of shops ranging form the ordinary high street shops to very up-market fashion shops and everything else in between. If you head to the West End you’ll find Oxford Street (with shops like Primark, HMV, Disney Shop and 2 huge Marks & Spencer along with the department stores) and Regent Street with more famous shops – Hamleys (for toys) which runs from Oxford  Circus to Piccadilly Circus. You might also like to visit some of the ‘villages’ around the centre of London – Marylebone, Highgate, Islington, Richmond, Greenwich where you can find more local shops and get a taste of life outside the centre!

Like most other things, if you want any advice then just come into the school office and let us know what you’d like to do – we have many years of shopping experience between us and whether its a bicycle, a book, or some particular fashion item I’m sure we can help you.

And don’t forget shopping can also be a great way to practise your English – reading, speaking, arguing over prices … just another opportunity to make the most of your stay in London.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 13th, 2010 at 3:38 pm and is filed under Learning English, Life in London. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.