Expensive Cities

Jamie made her first trip to London last week. She visited Big Ben and Westminster, had dinner in Mayfair, enjoyed Regents and Hyde parks and visited the London Business School! In doing so, she figured out why everyone tells us London is such an expensive place to live. After living in NYC and San Francisco, surely we're accustom to the "expensive" city lifestyle, right? Wrong.

Items in London cost the same as in San Francisco. A venti Starbucks coffee: 1.75, a cab ride from the City to the airport: 40, lunch at a Thai restaurant: 10. However, instead of having a "$" symbol in front of the number it's a "£". Ah, the exchange rate. Today, $1 will fetch about £0.50. That means, in London, a venti Starbucks coffee costs $3.50, a cab ride to the airport runs $80 and that simple Thai lunch is $20! Now I'm beginning to see why so many people warned us about the cost of living in such a great city!

In case you're wondering, only one city beats London in this year's list of the world's most expensive cities (as compiled by Mercer). Surprisingly, San Francisco didn't even break the top 20!

1. Moscow
2. London
3. Seoul
4. Tokyo
5. Hong Kong
6. Copenhagen
7. Geneva
8. Osaka
9. Zurich
10. Oslo
11. Milan
12. St. Petersburg (Russia)
13. Paris
14. Singapore
15. New York City
16. Dublin
17. Tel Aviv
18. Rome
19. Vienna
20. Beijing