My name is Sam and I'm traveling the world teaching you English.

Today we're in London in England.

We're gonna explore the city. We're gonna find loads of awesome English lessons to help you learn English, so let's go.

This is London the capital of England it's a quirky city.

If something is quirky it is unusual in an interesting way.

London has something to offer for everyone

Whoever you are and whatever your interests, London is your home

So welcome to London and let's learn English!

First of all it's a typical day in London today because the weather is overcast.

Overcast is how we describe the weather when it's really cloudy. There's like a blanket of cloud and you see no sunshine at all.

If we look at the sky, it's completely overcast.

I looked across the River Thames and I saw Big Ben unfortunately covered in scaffolding.

Scaffolding is the structure that builders use to restore and build buildings

So for the time being, Big Ben is covered in scaffolding.

For the time being, it means for now, temporarily.

So this right here is a typical English ice cream and this we call a 99er, because they used to cost 99 pence, 99p.

I don't think they cost 99p anymore.

Anyway, it's normal vanilla ice cream and the chocolate is called a flake.

It's called a flake, you put the flake in and it's really nice.

Unfortunately, it doesn't cost that much anymore.

You should definitely try a 99er ice cream when you come to London.

So guys, that behind me is the London Eye.

If you don't know, it's a huge wheel in the middle of London you can go around and around and you get awesome views of the city the Thames, Buckingham Palace, Big Ben and much more.

And yeah, it's huge but I want to teach you, you know what I want to teach you. I want to teach you some expressions with the word eye.

First one is I have an eye for something.

That means I'm very good at recognizing the fine details of something. I'm very good at recognizing the quality of something.

For example, I can say I have an eye for fine art. I can recognize when art is a very good quality.

So if you have an eye for art, there are plenty of places in London you can see some amazing art like the Tate Modern.

But now, I'm eyeing up my next destination.

To eye something up means to look at something closely that you're attracted to or you're interested in.

I've been eyeing up Westminster Abbey because I want to teach you a little bit of its history.

So Westminster Abbey is really old. 960 AD, so way over a thousand years old and it was founded by monks.

Now, monks are religious men. They usually live in groups in quite poor conditions.

You might have seen them in brown cloaks, especially in films and stuff like that

And they don't live here anymore at Westminster Abbey, so technically, it's not an Abbey anymore.

And when Westminster Abbey was built here, it was an island called Thorney Island, which was an island of the Thames.

And again, it's not an island anymore but originally it was, which is pretty cool.

A stone's throw away from the Abbey is St James's Park.

If something is a stone's throw away, it means it's extremely close.

Often when people think of London they think of pollution and very crowded places, but London is also full of amazing parks, huge parks like this one, St James's Park, which is right in the centre of London.

And we could be smack-bang in the middle of the countryside.

If you say something is a smack-bang in the middle, it means it's right in the middle, the very centre.

So you know we're smack-bang in the middle of London, but it seems like the countryside, really.

And you've got St James's Park, you've got Green Park, Hyde Park, Kensington Gardens. There are so many parks in London and I think it's one of the greenest capital cities I've ever been to.

The parks are also abundant with nature and life.

You can find many species of birds, such as ducks and swans.

Here you can see a white swan, which is technically owned by the Queen.

The Queen owns all of the swans in the United Kingdom. That means they belong to the Queen.

Talking of the Queen, our next stop is Buckingham Palace.

So that is Buckingham Palace, and on top of the Buckingham Palace, just there, you can see a flag, the British flag.

This flag we don't actually call the British flag, it's called the Union Jack.

When the Union Jack is flying, it means that the Queen is away. The Queen is not present at Buckingham Palace.

Next, I saw the Queen's Guard, the security at Buckingham Palace and I also noticed that there are a lot of police.

Around Buckingham Palace as you can imagine, there are a lot of police officers.

But in British English, we have other words for police officers, slang words.

For example, coppers. "I spoke to the coppers about the robbery."

And also the old bill.

This one's a little bit more old-fashioned. We don't use it so now.

We often call the police the old bill.

So now I'm heading to Covent Garden.

If you're heading somewhere, it means you're going to a place.

And Covent Garden is a great place to see live shows and also eat some typical food from England.

I'm eating pie. This pie that I'm getting is called steak and kidney pie and it's the most typical.

I'm eating it with gravy which is a meat sauce and mashed potatoes.

It's so delicious.

Now I really want to teach you an expression with the word pie, and that is to eat humble pie.

Now if you eat humble pie, you show and you say that you're very sorry for making a mistake.

For example, I had to eat humble pie when I made a spelling mistake in my English lesson.

I had to say sorry guys, you know teachers make mistakes too.

I ate humble pie.

So now I'm getting on the tube to our last destination.

The tube is what we call the underground metro system in London, and my final destination--Tower Bridge.

So behind me you can see Tower Bridge and I want to teach you the expression "to bridge the gap."

OK, to bridge the gap means to make the jump between two things.

So for example, imagine you are an intermediate speaker in English and you want to be advanced, you need to bridge the gap between intermediate and advanced.

You need to take that leap across to the next level which is obviously very, very different.

So what can you do to bridge the gap?

Well, I think it's always good to take an interest in the culture of the language you're learning.

So if you want to learn British English, it's good to take an interest in British culture. Come to London, and when you have an interest in something, it's always easier to learn.

So try and do that to bridge the gap.

So guys, we've come to the end of this English lesson in London.

We've seen some of the main sites and attractions, but to be honest with you, there's so much more to see, so I'm going to be doing more videos in London in the future.

We can do museums, more about food and like other parts of the city that I have to show you, and teach your English there as well.

So that's London. We've learned some English lessons. Thank you for watching and I'll see you in the next class. Bye.

So that is the amazing city of London, a dynamic city with so much to offer.

I'm traveling in the world and teaching you English.

Where do you think I should go next?