London walks: pretty parks and hidden pleasures

    Medium UK
    People shopping in Burlington Arcade
    © Franz-Marc Frei
    Von Lorraine Mallinder

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    Transcript: London walks – pretty parks and hidden pleasures

    The west of London is full of fascinating districts, green spaces and cultural attractions. In the current travel feature, Spotlight author Lorraine Mallinder explores this upmarketexklusiv, vornehmupmarket area. As you listen, try to answer these questions. Which street has housed London’s finest tailorSchneider(in)tailors since the 19th century? What are members of Burlington Arcade’s private police force known as?

    3 p.m. — A detour through Mayfair
    One of the most expensive locations on the Monopoly board, Park Lane, is mostly home to the madly rich. For a few million, you can buy a small flat here and live side by side with sheikhScheichsheikhs and sultans, oligarchs and overseas royals. Recently, though, some homelessobdachloshomeless migrants set up camp on the grass outside Hyde Park.

    I walk on to Upper Brook Street, its shiny black doors decorated with plaqueTafel, Namensschildplaques of law firms and asset managerAnlagenverwalter(in)asset managers, and follow it all the way down to Grosvenor Square, with its statue of American President Franklin D. Roosevelt. From there, I make my way towards Savile Row, a small street that has housed London’s finest tailors since the 19th cen­tury. You’ll find lots of styles here, from Henry Poole & Co (the gold standard for black-tie dressingfestliche Abendgarderobe (mit Smoking)black-tie dressing since it arrived on the street in 1846) to Ozwald Boateng (the first black tailor to open a shop here), who has brought traditional bespokemaßgeschneidertbespoke tailoring kicking and screaming into the 21st century.

    After Savile Row, I stop a moment at 6 Burlington Gardens to enjoy the Royal Academy of Arts building and its many outside statues of famous thinkers, such as Aristotle, Goethe and Newton. A few doors away is the opulent Burlington Arcade, with its glass ceiling, a 19th-century version of the modern shopping mallEinkaufzentrumshopping mall and one of the loveliest buildings in London. The arcade opened in 1819 for the sale of jewellery and fashionable articles, and its boutiques now sell a wider range of luxury goods, including fine watches, perfumes, art and antiques. The arcade (179 metres long) still has its own small, private police force — known as “beadles” — who patrol the interior in traditional top hatZylindertop hats and frock coatGehrockfrock coats. John, the on-duty beadle, tells me he once told off Arnold Schwarzenegger for smoking a cigar there!

    Passing Berkeley Square, I walk back to Hyde Park, this time, to the south-east corner.

    Savile Row has housed London’s finest tailors since the 19th century. Members of Burlington Arcade’s private police force are known as beadles.
     

     

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    Unsere ersten drei Spaziergänge durch London können Sie hier herunterladen:

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