Real Life ENGLISH Around the City

Welcome to my town here in the U.S., this small town, Asheville, North Carolina, where I live. Today, I'm inviting you to walk around downtown with me. I don't know what's going to happen. We're going to pass a lot of stuff, see a lot of people, and I'm going to teach you English along the way. I'm going to talk about whatever we see, and hopefully you'll be able to learn a lot of useful vocabulary and see something interesting along the way. If you're new here, hi, I'm Vanessa from SpeakEnglishWithVanessa.com, I'm teaching real life English here on my YouTube channel for over the past 10 years to now more than 7 million of you. Thank you so much for learning English with me. And like always, I have created a free worksheet where you can learn all of the expressions that you're about to hear today. Plus, I have been doing this a lot lately, I am going to add a free speaking practice So that you can practice all of these words, all of the sentences and really be able to use this when you go out into the real world. So, how can you get the worksheet plus the bonus speaking practice? All you need to do is click the link in the description and enter your name and email address and voila, it will land in your email inbox. This is my gift to you. Okay, are you ready to get started? My husband Dan is going to try to walk backwards throughout The town, as I walk around, we'll see how it goes. All right, let's jaywalk and cross the street. In the US, there are crosswalks, but it's not required to use them. You won't get in trouble if you don't use them. I know in some countries it is pretty serious if you use a crosswalk or not, but I didn't. Don't tell anyone, but nobody really cares. So here we are just on a side street and I want to show you something. Do you know what this is called? This is a parking meter and you need to pay the parking meter if you're going to park on the street but we did not park on the side of the street, We parked instead in a parking garage. This one actually has a really cool art on the outside of it. We parked in a parking garage because it's cheaper and we are going to go see a play. Hi. We're downtown, we're walking to the theater right now. So I didn't want to pay a lot of money to park on the side of the road. So we parked in a parking garage and you can do that pretty much in any city that you go to. It's pretty useful thing. All right, let's keep going. I'm going to show you a staple of Asheville. Life, one of the staple coffee shops in Asheville is one that actually my husband used to work at and it has a unique feature that seems not very American, but at the same time, it is uniquely American. Let's go and see. Come on. Do you see what I mean? This is not an American bus. This is a British double-decker bus but it has been transformed into a coffee shop and it's pretty cool. Cool place to get a drink. There's not much seating as you can imagine because inside is the coffee shop but let's go walk Walk into the courtyard and see what it looks like. Come on. You remember these good old days? Working here? I do. It's been a while though. It's been a while. All right. Let's keep going on the street and see what there is to see. so asheville is known for a lot of handmade crafts and art and a lot of little shops will have handmade mugs or paintings and these types of things that it's really cool you can see who made them you can even go visit their studios in a lot of places and downtown there's not as many studios for making those things but they sell them in a lot of shops so let's keep looking what i appreciate I appreciate about Here, downtown Asheville compared to other small towns in the US, a lot of small towns in the US, their downtown area is just dead. There's not much going on. There's hardly any restaurants or shops and no people are going there. I've lived in a lot of different small towns where that's the case. But Asheville's busy. You can see a lot of people are walking around. A lot of these people live here or they're tourists visiting from the local area, maybe one hour away or 50 minutes away, something like this. And it's a place that people actually enjoy being as opposed to a lot of downtowns in the US that are kind of non-existent anymore. All right, let's keep going. I want to show you one of the most popular stores downtown Asheville and it is Mass General store. Inside is everything including, if you like candy, the biggest candy selection you will ever see in your life. So I want to walk around and I'm just going to walk around the store and show you what there is to see. It is very cool. I think it's quite fun. Let's go. Now this is a very Asheville outfit right here. Their kid stuff is so cute. Jackets. Yes. All right, you know you're just here for the candy. Let's go see. So let me tell you about what some of these things are called in English. First of all, this is a stuffed animal. When I was a kid we called them stuffed animals, but now kids call them stuffies. Like this is a stuffy. Call it what you want. But here there's a lot of different types of chocolates. Caramels, because in the U.S. we call this caramel, not caramel. Caramel. Caramels. This is a classic kids candy, especially around Easter time because they like to hide jelly beans inside Easter eggs and it's like a common Easter activity. This is also a very popular one, Hershey's Kisses. This is what my kids like to have in their stockings for Christmas. Of course, classics, Reese's Cups, one of my favorites. Do you know what this is? It's called a Tootsie Pop and inside of it is a Tootsie Roll which is kind of chocolate, kind of not. It's kind of gooey. I used to love these as a kid. And we call this a lollipop or a sucker. Either one. Oh, do they have these in your country? It's a necklace, candy necklace, and these are Smarties. It's like little tart powdery kind of candies and you can wear it as a necklace and then eat it. I used to love this too as a kid. Oh this is something very American. Have you ever seen this saltwater taffy? Saltwater taffy is kind of like the texture of caramel but it's different flavors and sweet and it's always associated with the beach. I guess because it's made with salt water somehow. I have no idea how it's made but they are very good. They're all the super old school ones over here. Yeah you want to see some old school candies? I don't know what to say. These. I don't know who chooses these anymore over the the less old things but a bit of honey. Or these very old type of hard candies. We call these hard candies. These are the ones that you would find in my grandma's house and they're probably still like 40 years old at her house. Oh my gosh. Oh these are these are the thing that I would always try to get. I'm going to get, um... At Halloween these are called a bullseye or it's a cow tail if it's long it's called a cow tail if it's small like this it's called a bullseye and it's not caramel but it's it's so good. If you come to the US try it. Look at this one gummy brains. I've never seen that before. They have gummy everything. Gummy eyeballs, gummy brains, gummy snakes. It's pretty good. Gummy building blocks. It's like Legos that are gummies Wow Wow. What do you know what this is? Oh, I got that one. This is a jaw breaker. So usually usually they're this size and You can't chew it. It breaks your jaw. You have to suck on it for a really long time, but this It's so big. You know what these sour straws They're sour sugar gummy straws. Let me show you. These, when I was a kid, we used to sneak out of our neighborhood and find any kind of change that we could, like quarters and dimes, with our friends. We would sneak to the grocery store, and we maybe had like $1.25. We hardly had any money, but we would buy these. and eat them and it was always before dinner so we would come home if my mom's watching this she don't tell her we would we would go home we'd eat them and then when it came time for dinner we would pretend that we were so hungry oh i'm so hungry this dinner is so good because we didn't want to give away that we had already eaten a whole pack of sour straws Hmm. my secret safe with you right oh yeah do you know what these are called Wind chimes, wind chimes. We have one of these on our deck and it's so peaceful and nice. There are t-shirts of every type, postcards, Asheville postcards, oh these are some Asheville postcards I've never seen. Sometimes when my students send me postcards I try to send them a postcard back if I have their address and I try to buy cool Asheville postcards to send to them. So now I know where to go, ha! I've been sending the same Asheville postcards for years. This is the place to get them. Oh, we got to see something. What is in the Asheville popcorn mix? It is popcorn with a purpose. OK, white cheddar and salted caramel. So that is what makes Asheville white cheddar popcorn and salted caramel. A little salty, a little sweet. It's probably about true. All right, let's go out of the store and keep walking down the street. Oh yeah this is a famous restaurant. The chef had lots of awards. It's Spanish pork and Spanish inspired dishes, tapas stuff. We've been there a couple times and it's pretty good. All right let's keep going. This is a classic Asheville shop called Hippie Shop. Everything, lots of tie-dye, lots of stained glass, lots of beads, lots of feathers, lots of everything. Everything hippie. Everything hippie. This is what some people say is the best Indian restaurant in Asheville. Mayfield. I've been there once and it was pretty good but it was a while ago so I can't say speak to it but it was yeah good enough. Wow they did win a lot of awards. Best of Asheville 2023, 24. Diner's Choice 25, 26. Okay maybe you should go there if you like Indian food and if you're Indian and you go there let us know let us know if it is actually authentic. authentic. And if you're Japanese, you can try the ramen and tell us if it is actually authentic too. I have never been to this Ramen place, but I've been to another one in Asheville that I thought was really good, but I'm not the ramen expert But as you can see, there's a lot of international food and international Cuisine options. I think it's really typical in the US and Especially Asheville is known for food So oftentimes restaurants here will use local ingredients and then they'll say that too So if they don't say they're using local ingredients, they probably aren't but a lot of restaurants will say farm to table and that means that they know the farm that it came from and now it's on your table so it is locally produced locally made all right let's keep going we are now gonna go up here to the center this is kind of the little center square there's often festivals or music going on i don't think there is anything going on tonight but let's just go over there and then we're gonna go see some chocolate let's go all right we got the walk sign let's go all right All right, so here we have The best place in Asheville? Oh, the sun. It's very bright. Right. Okay, this is the Asheville Art Museum. I have to say, I've never been there. I don't know why I've never been there. Maybe it's because I have too many kids. I can't go in art museums, but a lot of people really like it. But over here is the crowning glory of cool places in Asheville. So this is the place. I love chocolate. I know not everyone's a chocolate fan, but it's obviously popular because French Broad Chocolates is killing it. They have a great business now and they have a whole other location in Asheville too. So I'm very happy for them that their business is working out and it has been for a really long time. So French Broad Chocolates is a place Dan also used to work. He knows a lot of the coffee shops and Places like that around here from working here and They go to all the farms, the cacao farms, and they know the farmers, and this is really what I was telling you about before, that term farm-to-table, you'll see that at a lot of restaurants and here, because they know the farmers, and then they process the cacao themselves in their own factory here in Asheville, and they make a lot of tasty things. Thanks. Um. Lots of, they have ice cream, they have little truffles, they have hot chocolate, they have So many different chocolate things, and I think it's not too busy right now, so I guess we should go. Alright, let's go in! Thank you! So the one thing is, when you get farm-to-table food, it is expensive, so you have to be willing to shell out some money. For example, let's take a look. This is a box of, they call it truffles or bonbons, and it's these. In here you can get six and this costs $20 for six of these but you know what I always buy these for people as a gift because everyone at least everyone in Asheville knows this is really special chocolate so it feels worthwhile to spend a lot of money on something that's Asheville Crafted, very special and yeah it's a really good gift so I just bought these actually earlier today at their other location as a gift for some people but I'm not going to buy anything to go let's go to their front and order something good when Dan used to work here I used to come here and plan videos for you I would sit in the corner with my laptop and it was the best not job ever for me because all of the staff knew that I was Dan's wife. I wasn't just like a regular customer, so if something broke, like a piece of cake broke and they couldn't sell it, they'd say, Vanessa, do you want this? Or if they had something new that they wanted to test out on someone, I would get to try it. It was the best. This is the best job that Dan has ever had for me. Yeah. What was the most popular thing that people bought when you were working here? Or the most common thing? Probably a chocolate chip cookie. Yeah? Yeah, that and there's liquid chocolate. Oh, yeah. Hot chocolate. Yeah. It's not just hot chocolate. Like, it doesn't have water or milk at it. It's literally just like a melted chocolate bar that you can drink. It's so good. So decadent and dangerous, you can't have that too much. When you worked here, did you eat that a lot? Like did you try little things a lot? Oh yeah, ice cream actually is mainly what got me. Oh yeah? Yeah, I'm gonna get the chocolate crème brûlée please, and that's all. That's all. For here please. All right so I'm going to buy this with my card and there's a little touch pad here and that's basically all I have to do. It's so simple just touch it and the creme brulee is mine and yours. You can also tip but you also have the option to tip with your card at the same time. You don't have to tip with cash but if you have cash they say cash is king. It's It's very appreciated to give a cash tip, but you can... Tip with your card, too, which is what I'm going to do because I don't have any cash. Oh my gosh. Here it comes. Thank you so much. Thank you. Let's go sit in the window. I know. Okay, so here we have our chocolate creme brulee. If you're French, you might not have ever had chocolate creme brulee before, but it is beautiful, and you get to crack the top. And inside, this is beautiful chocolate, very rich, but tastes like smooth chocolate icing. I've seen it. All right, we're going to pause this for a moment, eat our creme brulee together, and then we'll get back to our little tour on the way to the theater. Okay let's go jaywalk again. We're crossing to the downtown city square and not getting run over. Is that over? And this is one thing that I find slightly disappointing about American downtowns. Is that this is not a hangout zone like this square has a lot of potential and I feel like the European cities I've been to the downtown square. There's like teenagers hanging out There's little markets going on and sometimes they have events here, but this isn't the hangout zone You know, there's a nice fountain That's cool. But it's not the vibe of European downtown city centers that I like a lot. But there is a nice view. Let's walk down this way and you can see some of the classic buildings. So this type of architecture, it's called Art Deco. A lot of the buildings around here, if you know anything about architecture, which I don't really, They are like classic Art Deco, so you can see here. This style here is considered Art Deco, it's like a 1920s thing. I'm not the person to ask about architecture but Asheville is kind of known for that style of building. Let's walk on down here. So you can see here some more classic Art Deco buildings and And... Uh, some covered by trees, but this is, um, I want to talk about the ground for a moment. In the US we call this the sidewalk, but the, this sidewalk is made of bricks and I think that's really nice. I know a lot of European cities, all the sidewalks are made of bricks, but here It's not completely common that that's the case. I think some people are taking pictures, so let's go over this way and not get in their way. Yeah, I think we should walk down the street. We still have about 15 minutes before we need to be at our play, and the play is just going to be right over here. So are you willing to walk down this way with me? And we'll go around the block. Okay. I love these sycamore trees. The bark looks so cool. Actually, let's stop for a second. I gotta show you. Look at this. It looks like a giraffe. It looks like someone peeled it off, but that's how it's supposed to be. Our neighbor has one of these trees and they're just... So beautiful. All right, let's keep going. If I can complain one more time about American downtowns, this building is Biltmore Corporate Offices. Biltmore is the biggest house in the US and it's in Asheville. It's the biggest tourist attraction in Asheville. But I think American downtowns could use a little bit more storefront or like, yeah, storefront space. And this is completely unused for offices. You know, this isn't like there could be nice little shops. There could be nice little restaurants or I don't know, something. You wanna build more of me? Yeah. So this is prime territory, right? Prime land to be able to do something with. And the whole half of the downtown square is that kind of a bummer but you know i guess you can only get what you can get right some people might call this a skyscraper um asheville isn't not known for its skyscrapers there's not many skyscrapers here but um i guess this is the tallest or one of the tallest buildings here most buildings are What would you say this is? Let's take a look. One, two, three, four, five stories tall. That's pretty common, but I guess there's also a few skyscrapers. Classic American fire truck. Yeah! There's some very nice music being played across the street there. I don't know if you can hear it past all the other noise. It's fun. It's always nice whenever you see people playing on the side of the street like that. It is called busking. I am busking, he is busking, and it means you're playing music on the side of the street with like a little cup trying to get some money, and Asheville's known for buskers. There's a lot of buskers, and if you stop and listen to a busker for like a couple minutes, it's nice to drop a dollar in, you know, supporting some musicians along the side of the street. They usually have to get a permit. It's like an official thing. You can't just sit down on the side of the road and start playing music. So before you cross the street in a city center, especially a busy place like this, You should push the button if nobody else has, and it will beep, and then it will light up the crosswalk sign. This is the one place, I know we talked about jaywalking, but this is the one place when you probably shouldn't. Not that you'll get in trouble, but it's just not safe, because there's actually a lot of cars, and a lot of people, and I don't want to get hit. Hit. Yeah, I know, I've heard some people say that Asheville is the Paris of the South, like the South of the U.S., I don't believe it, but it is nice for a little city center in the south of the US. Maybe I'm throwing too much shade on Asheville as in, it's not Paris, but a place to walk around. You can see local shops and hear some buskers, you know, a little bit of culture going on. Ah, this coffee shop used to be on the other side of the street and now they're here and they have pastries that are very nice. Dan and I used to go on a date to Old Europe and it is one of the only coffee shops downtown that Dan has not worked for. So I want to take a little pause for a moment right here. I want to show you the trash cans. This is a lovely moment guys. So this is becoming more popular in the U.S. but you will see recycling and landfill. Landfill is just trash. You can see it even says on the side landfill recycling. In the U.S. recycling is anything that you could possibly ever recycle. You put in there you don't separate it you just throw all your plastic and glass and paper in the same bin does it actually get recycled really efficiently i don't know but there is an option so as you're walking along the side of the street you can throw your trash in the recycling or the landfill all right let's keep going because it is almost time to go to our play and i don't want to be late So this place, the Mellow Mushroom, is a really popular pizza, pizza restaurant in Asheville, excuse me, a popular pizza restaurant in Asheville, and this is the original location. You'll see them in a couple different towns too, but they have an interesting vibe. It's not necessarily like the world's greatest pizza, but it's a popular spot and they have a fun Asheville vibe, I would say. Bowling balls stuck in the wall. All right. You know lots of colors, fun statues. And let's continue and finish our tour in just a minute. We're about to get to the theater. One thing that I like that is becoming more popular in downtown areas is this kind of outdoor seating idea. In a lot of countries it's so common. to just you know sit at a little table in a cafe on the corner but in the US it is not very common especially in a busy downtown area like this to have any kind of outdoor seating. I love this though I think it is great especially in Asheville we have awesome weather most of the year it's really pleasant outside like right now so to be able to have outdoor seating is my go-to thing whenever I go to a restaurant if there's an option to sit outside that's usually what I choose. So it's nice to see more restaurants opting to have seats outside. Wow, look at this tree. Its roots are bulging through the sidewalk. Ha ha ha! It's going to take over the sidewalk. Wow, I really like that they kept some big old trees downtown. A lot of downtowns just cut down trees or they just have these little tiny trees. But I appreciate that there's greenness even in downtown. Oh, this is a nice little view. We can see the building that we saw earlier, the tall Art Deco classic building, and our theater is right over here. It is about time for us to go. To see the play and I want to thank you so much for joining me on this walking tour. I hope you learned a lot of interesting vocabulary, English phrases. The best way to really remember these is to use them right away. So I recommend downloading the free PDF worksheet for all of these expressions and inside the worksheet is a bonus speaking practice where you're going to be able to practice speaking with me and using those phrases out loud. That way they will stick in your memory and when you go. Go out into the real world, you'll be able to describe your downtown area and describe where you live. So the only way to get that worksheet is to click the link in the description, enter your name and email address, and it will land in your email inbox. That is my gift to you. So thank you so much for learning English with me, and I hope that you will join me next Friday for a new lesson here on my YouTube channel. Bye! But wait! Do you want more? I recommend watching this video next where you will go into a real English American coffee shop and you will learn how to order coffee in English plus some little tips and tricks if you're not quite a coffee person like I am. I hope to see you there!