I'm a travel editor, which means sometimes I also end up back on the road. So today we're

revisiting an episode about European cities while I'm off island hopping in the Caribbean and exploring

the Arizona Desert. We'll be back next week with a fresh new episode. Enjoy.

Hi and welcome to the second episode of our new Women Who Travels, with me, your host, Lale Aricoglu.

This episode is about European cities, and specifically getting to know them on foot and buy public transport.

I'm invested in this because I confess I don't drive.

But many people also don't feel like driving in, say, the traffic of Rome

or in the narrow streets of an ancient French city.

It simply isn't the best way to get around.

I'm chatting today to two authors, who's writing I love, about our ties to cities.

They're Rebecca Mead, who, like me, is English, and who thought she'd settled in New York,

but found herself moving to London four years ago.

London is so convoluted and, you know, all these little villages all stuck together with all these peculiar roots between them.

And I'd never really understood how London joins up.

And there's still vast swathes of it that I don't know how they connect.

And Eliv Bateman, who, like me, has close ties with Istanbul,

and who, a decade ago, swapped New York for Istanbul on an extended visit,

a city that straddles both Europe and Asia.

So there are all of these former fishing villages that go down the basphorus.

There's Suryar, and then there's Arnavukhoy, and there's Ramele Hussar and Bebek,

and there are all these kind of like posh places.

Boazuchi University is on there.

...