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Hi, everyone. I'm Jade.
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In today's video, we're going for a walk around Covent Garden in London.
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It's one of London's famous areas, and it's known for entertainment and performers.
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So, as we walk around, I'm going to tell you some of the things that I know about this area.
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Are you ready? Let's go.
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(That's a cool shop!)
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So, here we are in Covent Garden.
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This area's really famous for theaters and street performers.
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And even though there are modern shops all around us and cafes, whenever I come here, I really get a sense of the old London, the London of 100 years ago or 150 years ago.
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At that time, too, there would've been street performers.
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And they would've sold roses and sung songs, sung songs like this, "Who will buy my sweet red roses? Such a sight you never did see."
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That song is from a musical called "Oliver".
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And that was written by Charles Dickens.
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So yeah, when I come to Covent Garden, I get a sense of all the history of London.
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Let's take a look at some of the performers.
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I don't know about you, but I think I've seen enough street performers now to last me a while.
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So I've taken you to a different part of Covent Garden because right behind me is the house where the great author Charles Dickens used to live.
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And do you know anything about Charles Dickens?
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Because he's one of our most famous writers.
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And he wrote at a time where London was pretty much poverty, disease, and misery for most Londoners.
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So we're really lucky to have a very different London that you see today.
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But I want to show you a part of Covent Garden so you can really imagine that time of Charles Dickens.
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Shoe distraction!
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Here we are at Seven Dials.
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It's a part of Covent Garden where there's a roundabout and seven streets coming off the roundabout.
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This place, in Victorian London, was a very different place.
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It was London's poorest slum.
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So, it was one of London's worst areas.
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At that time, in a single house, as many as seven families lived, there was no electricity.
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There was no running water.
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So you can imagine it was a very dirty place.
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Also, there would have been a lot of crime around here because the families were very poor.
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These days, we see something really different.
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We see expensive boutiques.
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We see nice cafes.
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But at that time, the shops were called "rag and bone shops", and that means they didn't sell new things.
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They sold really, really old clothing that was almost falling apart.
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Very, very old boots.
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So there was nothing new because this was a really poor area then.
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Because London is so old, we have secret alleyways like this.
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This is called "Neal's Yard".
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And it's actually one of my favorite places in Covent Garden because just down there, there are some cafes and really nice juice bars and things like that.
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But can you imagine how scary it would have been in Victorian times when all the people around here were a bit poor and a bit dodgy?
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But we're quite safe now.
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What I'm going to do now is get warm in one of those nice cafes there.
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And what you can do now is go and do the quiz for today's video on the EngVid website.
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If you enjoyed this tour around Covent Garden, thumbs up.
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And don't forget to subscribe.
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And I'd just like to say thanks for watching.
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See you later.