Speaking Part 2 · PlacesIn the Sep–Dec 2026 reported set
Describe a City You Have Been to and Would Like to Visit Again
In short
“Describe a City You Have Been to and Would Like to Visit Again” is a common IELTS Speaking Part 2 cue card. You get 1 minute to prepare and should speak for 1–2 minutes, covering all four points below. This page gives you a Band 9 model answer, an idea map so you can make it your own, the Part 3 follow-up questions with answers, and the vocabulary examiners reward.
The task card
Describe a City You Have Been to and Would Like to Visit Again. You should say:
- •Which city it is
- •When you went there
- •What you did there
- •And explain why you would like to go back
Band 9 model answer
The city I'd go back to tomorrow if I could is Istanbul. I spent five days there about three years ago, on a trip that was originally only meant to be a long stopover, and I've been slightly obsessed with the place ever since.
I went in late October, which turned out to be perfect timing — warm enough to walk everywhere, cool enough that you weren't queueing in forty degrees, and well outside the peak tourist season. I was travelling with a friend and we'd budgeted for two nights, then extended it twice because we simply weren't finished.
In terms of what we did, we did the obvious things and they genuinely deserved it — the Hagia Sophia, the Blue Mosque, an afternoon getting comprehensively lost in the Grand Bazaar. But the parts that stayed with me were smaller. We took the ferry across the Bosphorus to the Asian side for about the price of a coffee, and I remember standing on deck realising I was crossing between two continents on what is, for people who live there, just the commute. We ate an enormous amount of street food, mostly on the strength of pointing at whatever the person in front had ordered. And one evening we ended up in a tiny place in Kadıköy where a man played saz and nobody spoke any English and we stayed until it closed.
The reason I want to go back is that I left with the distinct feeling of having seen the trailer rather than the film. Istanbul is genuinely enormous — sixteen million people, spread over two continents — and five days in the historic centre barely scratches it. There are whole neighbourhoods I never reached.
But it's more than unfinished business. What I loved about it was the layering. You'll be walking down an ordinary street and there's a Roman wall, then an Ottoman fountain, then a shop selling phone cases, all in the same fifty metres, and none of it presented as a museum — it's just where people live. I've been to cities that are older and cities that are livelier, but I've never been anywhere where that many centuries are so casually stacked on top of each other.
And honestly, there's a selfish reason too. I was twenty-three and fairly clueless when I went, and I took a lot of it at face value. I'd like to go back now that I'd actually know what I was looking at, and see how much of what I remember was really there and how much I invented afterwards.
Make it your own: three angles
A city you saw too little of
The cleanest structure — it gives the fourth bullet a concrete answer ("there are whole districts I never reached") instead of a vague "I loved it".
A city tied to a specific person or occasion
Lets you bring in a relationship and a memory, which makes the answer personal and harder to sound rehearsed.
A city in your own country
Perfectly acceptable and often stronger, because you can be far more specific about the food, the dialect and what locals actually do there.
What the examiner is listening for
Everyone can name a city; the marks are in the fourth bullet. 'Because it's beautiful' is a band 5 answer. A specific, honest reason — unfinished business, a changed perspective, one particular thing you want to go back for — is what lifts it. Mix your past narrative ('we ended up in…') with conditionals for the return ('I'd go back tomorrow', 'if I went again I'd…') to show range across time.
Part 1 warm-up questions
- Do you prefer cities or the countryside?
- Which city in your country would you recommend to a visitor?
- Have you travelled much within your own country?
- Do you like visiting the same place twice?
Part 3 follow-up questions & answers
Why do people enjoy visiting cities rather than rural areas?
Density, mostly — a city packs museums, food, architecture and nightlife into walking distance, so a short trip feels full in a way a rural one rarely does. Cities are also far easier to reach and navigate without a car. That said, the things people say they want from a holiday, like quiet and space, are exactly what cities don't have, so there's a bit of a contradiction in how we actually choose.
How has tourism changed cities?
Substantially, and not all of it well. Tourism brings money and pushes cities to preserve buildings that might otherwise have gone. But it also drives up rents, turns residential districts into short-term lets and pushes locals out of the centre, which hollows out the very thing visitors came for. Several European cities are now actively trying to limit visitor numbers, which would have seemed unthinkable twenty years ago.
Is it better to visit somewhere new or return to a place you love?
They give you different things. A new place gives you novelty and the slight discomfort that makes a trip memorable. Returning gives you depth — you skip the obligatory sights and actually get to know somewhere, which is how you end up with a favourite café rather than a photograph of a monument. I'd argue most people visit too many places too briefly.
Do you think cities are becoming too similar to each other?
In the commercial centres, undeniably — the same chains, the same glass towers, the same coffee shops, to the point where you could be almost anywhere. What resists it is everything the developers haven't reached: the food, the language, the way people use public space, the residential neighbourhoods. So the sameness is real but it's quite shallow, and you usually only have to walk twenty minutes to escape it.
Should governments limit the number of tourists in popular cities?
Where the pressure is genuinely damaging, I think they have to — Venice is the obvious case, where the resident population has collapsed. The difficulty is that limits are usually implemented through price, which just means wealthy tourists rather than fewer ones. Timed entry to specific sites seems fairer than pricing people out of a whole city.
What makes a city a good place to live rather than to visit?
Almost entirely different things. As a visitor you want density, sights and atmosphere. As a resident you want affordable housing, transport that works, green space, decent schools and a job. Plenty of the world's most visited cities score badly on all of those, which is why the most enjoyable cities to visit and the best-ranked cities to live in are almost never the same list.
Will people travel less in the future?
I doubt it overall, though the pattern may change. Rising costs and climate concern are already pushing some people towards fewer, longer trips closer to home, and remote work has made slower travel possible for a minority. But travel remains one of the first things people spend money on when they have it, and that hasn't shown much sign of shifting.
Useful vocabulary
| Word / phrase | Meaning |
|---|---|
| to scratch the surface | to deal with only a small part of something |
| unfinished business | something you did not complete |
| off the beaten track | away from where tourists usually go |
| to soak up the atmosphere | to enjoy the feeling of a place |
| a stopover | a short stay between parts of a journey |
| peak season | the busiest time of year for travel |
| to take something at face value | to accept it without looking deeper |
| sprawling | spread out over a large area |
| a stone’s throw from | very close to |
| to stay with you | to remain memorable |
More cue cards
Describe a Memorable Journey You Took
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