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Talking about cities

Episode 260731 / 31 Jul 2026

(Photo: Getty)

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Introduction

Neil and Georgie have a real conversation in easy English about cities – large urban areas where lots of people live close together. Learn to talk about what is convenient, and what is not, when you live in a bustling place, and find out which cities Neil and Georgie would like to visit in the future.

Vocabulary

bustling
busy with lots of people and activity

convenient
easy to do or use, saving time or effort

would like to
used to talk about possible plans for the future

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Transcript

Neil
Hello, I'm Neil.
 
Georgie
And I'm Georgie. Welcome to Real Easy English.
 
Neil
You can find a worksheet and transcript for this episode on our website, bbclearningenglish.com
 
Georgie
Hello Neil. How are you doing?
 
Neil
I'm very well, thank you, Georgie. How are you?
 
Georgie
Yes, I'm very well, thank you. Neil, today we're talking about cities. We both live and work in London, which is a very big city.
 
Neil
It is. It's a huge city – very busy and bustling. Bustling means there's lots of activity, lots of things going on, busy.
 
Georgie
Speaking of, what do you like about living in a big, bustling city?
 
Neil
Well, there are lots of good things about living in a big city. It's convenient. It's very convenient. So, there is lots of public transport, which is sometimes good. And you can get things that you need quite easily.
 
Georgie
That's very true.
 
Neil
Yeah.
 
Georgie
Yeah. There's also a lot of things to do. We are lucky in London to have lots of theatres where you can see plays. There's a really good music scene, so you can watch and listen to a lot of live music. If you have no plans on a day, you can always find plans, spontaneous plans, so we are really lucky in that sense.
 
Neil
Yeah, and if you like art, there's all kinds of exhibitions and galleries and museums.
 
Georgie
Lots of good things. But there are obviously some bad things about living in a city, aren't there?
 
Neil
Yes.
 
Georgie
Do you want to tell us some?
 
Neil
Yeah. Well, it's very noisy and dirty...
 
Georgie
Yeah.
 
Neil
...and busy and expensive.
 
Georgie
Yeah.
 
Neil
It's always more expensive in a big city, especially the capital city. So, you can do all of the things that we just talked about...
 
Georgie
Yeah.
 
Neil
...but you have to pay for them.
 
Georgie
Yeah!
 
Neil
And things like eating out, especially going for a drink, is a really expensive thing to do in the capital city.
 
Georgie
I feel like every time I leave the house I just spend loads of money and that is quite frustrating, but you have to pay for good... for good times, I guess.
 
Neil
Yeah. Have you ever lived in another city apart from London?
 
Georgie
Yes, I have. I used to live in Barcelona, which is quite different to London because, well, it has a beach and the sea on one side and on the other side it has mountains, so it's contained by nature and you can get to the nature quite quickly, which is really nice. What about you? Have you lived anywhere different?
 
Neil
Yeah, I've lived in a few big cities – a few capital cities, actually. I've also lived in Spain, but in Madrid. I lived and worked in Prague and that is a really pretty... it's a beautiful city.
 
Georgie
Yeah.
 
Neil
The architecture looks fantastic.
 
Georgie
Nice buildings. Talking about nice buildings, I lived in Edinburgh because I did my master's degree there and that has beautiful buildings. I loved that city. It has a castle on a big rock in the middle and it's just amazing to look at. So, we've talked about cities we've been to. What about the future? Are there any cities you really want to visit or maybe even live in?
 
Neil
Oh, that's an interesting question! I've never been to Georgia or Armenia or that part of the world, so I'm going to say I'd like to go to Tbilisi in Georgia.
 
Georgie
That's a good answer. I'd love to go there as well. For me, I'm desperate to go to Latin America. I really want to go to Rio de Janeiro, and at the time when the carnival is there, because that sounds really fun and I like to party! Let's recap the vocabulary we heard during the conversation, starting with bustling, which means busy with lots of people and activity.
 
Neil
We also heard convenient. If something is convenient, it means it's very easy to do it. For example, there's lots of public transport in London, so it's convenient for travel.
 
Georgie
And we talked about possible plans for the future, using would like to.
 
Neil
For example, I'd like to visit Tbilisi in Georgia.
 
Georgie
That's it for this episode of Real Easy English, but we'll be back next week with another conversation in easy English.
 
Neil
And you should check out our series The London to Edinburgh Challenge. We've been talking about Edinburgh today. It's a beautiful place and you can see it in this series. It's on our website, bbclearningenglish.com.
 
Georgie
Goodbye for now.
 
Neil
Goodbye!

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