THE TWO young Texans wandering around Covent Garden were visiting London to sample the nightlife and the pubs in the city they had been informed is still the Capital of Cool. They were also hoping to lose a group of American tourists they were chaperoning so they could "do our own thing".
Shane Linehan and Bill Kapela had just arrived in London and were anticipating a week of clubbing, culture and nights out without their compatriots. "Texas is not a multi cultural place," Bill explained. "It has its red necks, blacks, Hispanics and white trash but it's much more multi cultural here. It's quite similar to Chicago or New York."
Such attractions are drawing millions of Europeans and Americans, keen to experience what Newsweek magazine and Vanity Fair have discovered - namely, that there has been a cultural and economic explosion in the city since the beginning of the 1990s.
Nowhere is this change more apparent than in London's newfound status as the international fashion capital. Italian fashion label Gucci recently spent £3 million launching a new store and US designers Donna Earan and Calvin Klein have followed suit and opened in Bond Street. Knightsbridge's Harvey Nichols store recently fought Italian designers Prada for the White House store in Bond Street at a rental of £800,000 a year.
Plum Sykes, a fashion writer for Vogue magazine, detects a number of factors that have made London "the happening place to be". When she first arrived in 1992, London "was a terrible place to live in. There had just been a recession and everyone was depressed." Sykes points to the recovery of the economy as one of the main reasons that Europeans and Americans are swapping their cities for the flair of London.
"Some people will not have experienced London as a swinging city, just as, when people look back to the Sixties, some say: `Where was I when everyone else was smoking dope'?"
Danny Plunkett, a writer with the men's magazine Loaded, agrees that London "still feels fairly groovy" six months after Newsweek devoted its front cover to the city as the "hip compromise between the non stop newness of Los Angeles and the aspic preserved beauty of Paris".
John Major, launching the Conservative manifesto yesterday, spoke of "a booming Britain". Plunkett agrees with the sentiment but believes the election will have little effect on young people in London. "They'll probably just ignore it. People partied on under the Tories for 18 years, so I don't think anything's going to put a dampener on it," he said.
"It's not a new thing," Alex Brannen of the London Tourist Board says. "It has been getting better for years. We're predicting 26.1 million visitors this year, a million up on last year."
One factor fuelling the boom is the return of the North South house price divide. With growing business confidence and higher wages there is a fear of the property market overheating. Buyers agree a price; and then pull out when some one offers more money. Figures from the Halifax, the largest mortgage lender, show that prices rose by 15 per cent in Greater London in the last year. Overall prices across Britain were up by only 8.5 per cent.
With new money pouring into the capital, stylish restaurants are catching on to a greater willingness among Londoners to eat out. Oliver Peyton, who runs the Coast and the Atlantic Bar and Grill restaurants believes food in the capital is now equal to what is available in any other country. The Harvey Nichols restaurant in the Oxo Tower has opened recently providing stunning views of London from its position on the South Bank.
On the South Bank itself, a group of local employers has opened an "art boulevard", the first step, they say, in rejuvenating the area to make the riverside more attractive to visitors.
Vanessa Thuyns (21), a student from Amsterdam, is typical of young Europeans who take advantage of day trips to London. Many of her friends, she says, speak English so it is easy to visit London to "enjoy the atmosphere".
She has been visiting London - for seven years and has just finished an audition for a job in theatre. "It is definitely a great place to be, but it is not perfect," she says. "Some of the people are rude and not very kind. People look unhappy."
Perhaps the general election is getting to them after all.