Euro summer looks great on Instagram and terrible on your bank balance. The good news, per a fresh guide from Suitcase Magazine, is that London in August can deliver most of the Mediterranean experience without a boarding pass — long lunches, lido swims, outdoor cinema and all.

Start with food. Set lunches under £30 are the move: Auguste in Hackney does an Abruzzo-leaning £25 menu, Bouchon Racine serves old-school French charm, and new trattoria Tiella has a Columbia Road terrace built for chicken Milanese in the sun. Camille at Borough Market nails the French provincial long-lunch feel, while Bar Crispin in Soho has been hosting rotating European guest chefs. Over by Tower Bridge, Luna has launched a Eurosummer Sunday series built on biodynamic wine, kicking off with Andalusian tapas and sherry. Aperitivo hour is covered too — Bar Etna pours £5 Negronis, and Brutto and Bar Termini remain the classics.

For something more special, grab a ticket to 926.1, a communal supper club run by Giorgio Del Buono dedicated to regional Italian cooking. It's popular with actual Italians, the next dinner lands in September, and proceeds go to an Italian foundation funding childhood leukaemia research.

Craving Greece? Taverna-style spots Andy's Greek Taverna, Attica and Nissi cover the classics, while Oma and Baraki (the outdoor bar of Pyro) go more upscale — think feta salads, grilled octopus and Aegean wine.

Then there's swimming. Hampstead Heath Ponds and London Fields Lido are the standards, but both need advance booking. The Serpentine Lido offers history and an onsite café, and the newer Sea Lanes in Canary Wharf — a pool set in an old dock with a floating sauna and a bracing 15-degree temperature — feels closer to Copenhagen than the Med.

Evenings follow the southern European playbook. Barbican's outdoor cinema runs through August, Peckham's Rooftop Cinema Club has dates still available, and Covent Garden's Garden Cinema is screening a European summer programme, with French film Swimming Pool upcoming.

Gelato gets its own chapter. The Dreamery pairs ice cream with natural wines (sister bar Goodbye Horses is across the road), Osteria Vibrato does rhubarb sorbet with fig leaf liqueur, and Three Sheets pours an affogato with Belvedere Dirty Brew. Purists should head to Bar Italia, the Soho institution serving espresso and cannoli since 1949, from dawn until late.

Finally, the games. Club Pétanque in King's Cross is free, Boulebar in Spitalfields and on the South Bank adds drinks and charcuterie to the boules, and Victoria Park Lawn Bowls offers the homegrown equivalent.

Why it matters: anyone stuck in the city while the group chat floods with Greek island photos can still eat, drink and swim their way through a convincing continental summer — often for the price of a single airport transfer.