Non-UK people question

[marnanel]

If someone asked you to name two cities in the UK, what would they be?

(Or to put it another way, what's the most famous city in the UK apart from the obvious one?)

I'm mostly interested about what non-UK people think, but UK people should feel free to suggest what they think the answers might show.

For the purposes of this question, ignore what the technical meaning of "city" is and just pretend it means "significant town".

Comments

[highlander_ii]

Are we talking the whole 'UK' or just the 'England' part of it?

Obviously, there's London, and I've been to Brighton (my stay in England was an entire 12 hours during a layover on my way to Italy). And 2 Gatecons were held in England, one in Cheltenham and one in Reading. Beyond that, I'm drawing a blank on cities I know or might know names of and if they are actually 'cities' or if they are 'made up places from pop culture'. =)

Throwing in Scotland, adds Edinburgh, and Wales adds Cardiff.

That's all I've got w/o a map. =)

[ilyena_sylph]

*appears from my network*

Hm. London and Manchester?

This only because I read fandoms with Brit sports...

[desh]

I'd probably say Liverpool. Yay, Beatles.

London and Birmingham

[szabgab]

just because there was a YAPC in 2006 and a QA Hackathon in 2009 I missed.

But before that I think Brighton would come in second.

[pne]

I'd say London and Birmingham.

[lnr]

My first thought was "Leeds and..." and then I read the rest of your comment and London and Cambridge came to mind in that order, but I'm not sure London would be an immediate thought with me if you hadn't said "apart from the obvious one".

[lnr]

Obviously I was answering the first phrasing of your question there, and from my own UK perspective. I'd expect people not from the UK to pick London and then I guess Manchester (football) and Edinburgh/Cardiff (capitals) would seem quite likely but I'm not entirely surprised if people don't also think of Belfast when thinking along those lines, as people often forget Northern Ireland. I'm not sure about Birmingham - it's *big* but not that famous, and I guess I wouldn't expect anyone but locals to pick Leeds.

To pick US cities instead Washington and New York were the first that came to mind. And oddly in that order, given I was watching CSI:NY last night you might have expected me to think of that first! The UK clearly doesn't have many cities on that sort of scale.

[pne]

people not from the UK [...] Edinburgh/Cardiff (capitals) would seem quite likely

Um. I doubt most people not from the UK would know that Edinburgh and Cardiff are capitals in the first place; most people, if they know any capitals at all, would only know the capital of the UK but not if its constituent nations. (Just as I wouldn't expect anyone to know the capitals of German länder -- and probably not of most US states, either, even though many of them are on the order of European countries by size.)