Covent Garden lies in the heart of London theatreland, and continues to be a supreme shopaholic heaven and foody delight, as a recent visit proved.

The place hasn’t changed much since its fruit and vegetable market days. My first time there was to visit a small English publisher, whose offices lay at the top of long, creaking flights of winding steps, lurking at the back of towering piles of stacked wooden crates belonging to Dan Woolley, fruit merchant. It was a delightfully Dickensian introduction to Covent Garden, just before the market traders moved away from the area, leaving room for today’s effervescent mixture of shops, cafes and bars to get going in earnest.

I fell in love with Covent Garden and for several years had offices opposite the ultra-smart Garrick Club, though have to add that the sight of the odd well-known media personality stumbling down the entrance steps after a long, alcoholic lunch was a not uncommon sight!

Today in Covent Garden, you’re still likely to bump into famous faces, or, as I found this time round, street performers continuing a tradition of public entertainment dating back hundreds of years.

It was here in 1662 that the diarist Samuel Pepys noted the first Punch and Judy show in the country. Music and other performances are licensed all year round, except for Christmas Day. Of course, you can book a trad performance from places like London Theatre Bookings, though I’ll leave you to judge whether the people in my pic are fact or fake – tourists or performance artists… your call!

As for shops, well, most tastes are catered for – even computer users get a look in, if they care to visit the splendid Apple Store, carved out of an elegant Georgian building. If you simply want to relax over a drink, you can’t do much better than the Crusting Pipe (below) a wine bar that’s been in the historic Market Hall since 1980.

London’s skyline is constantly changing, though perhaps evolving is a better word, as the basics stay much the same. For example, the River Thames – cleaner now than for centuries past – still winds through the middle, for a country-dweller like me providing a breather from the claustrophobic sprawl of the ‘Great Wen’ (pustule), as pamphleteer William Cobbett called it in the 1820s.

The South Bank is probably my favourite spot of all, and just the right place to get some air after the delights of, say, Covent Garden, a few minutes walk away. Just take an easy stroll over the handsome footway spanning the river from Charing Cross station, and once across you are presented with a feast of choices – the Royal Festival Hall, Queen Elizabeth Hall, National Theatre, Hayward Gallery, National Film Theatre… the list goes on. For the arts lover, few things come close to a pre- or post-concert drink with the constant movement of ‘Old Father Thames’ as a backdrop.

There is of course a new sight to see not so far away, and that’s the Shard, a glass-covered pyramid some 95 storeys tall, making it the tallest building in the EU – to be precise, 309.6m (1016ft) high. Opened on July 5, 2012, the public observation deck opened recently, and next time I’m in town, I’ll be up there to have a look at the spectacular view.

The Shard’s name is somewhat ironic, as the English Heritage organization heaped scorn on its designer, Renzo Piano, calling the structure, ‘a shard of glass through the heart of historic London.’ True enough, though I imagine the people at English Heritage gritted their teeth when they found out where the new building’s name came from!

I think there’s room for both old and new in a city the size of London. For me, the Shard seems a handsome structure that reminds me of the iconic Transamerica Pyramid in San Francisco, another tower that’s the tallest in town.

Daytime Shard image based on work by EE Paul.