11/1/2014
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| Walthamstow Market |
Angel read online that Walthamstow Market has a lot of fabric shops, so of course this would be a definite stop in our itinerary. What we didn't realize is just how enormous the market was--it spans 1 kilometer on Walthamstow's High Street and is the longest outdoor street market in Europe (I found this out after we got back to the hotel tonight). The market first started in 1885, so you can imagine what a success it is that it's still going on today. There's stalls selling fresh fruit, vegetables, meat, and there's the fabric booths, purse, shoes booths, clothing, jewelry... basically everything, really. There's also quite a few "Poundlands," which is the UK equivalent of a Dollar Store.
We also passed by this store:
Didn't know Andre Agassi was hawking his own health food store now. Angel got a kick out of it. She's been whining about going to Wimbledon for some time now. With more insistence recently, as who knows when Roger Federer will be retiring. I keep telling her she won't survive London in July--it's just too damn hot. But Baby won't listen, and swears she'll be coming next year. Ha Have fun by yourself, toots.
Angel kept an eye out for the Sainsbury's, as a blogger said the fabric booth across from Sainsbury's sells quality fabric for low prices. The girl had brought a pushcart along so she could comfortably store the 30kg+ of fabric she bought. Angel laughed at this, and said there's no way we'd buy that much.
How wrong she was.
My arms are still hurting from lugging all the fabrics home. Well, that and all the Sainsbury's goodies we bought. This Sainsbury's is huge. Like triple the size of our local Sainsbury's.
One fabric shop called Saeem's sells gorgeous damask fabrics for 10 pounds/meter, which ain't bad, considering the US sells damask for a whole lot more. I've been dreaming about silver damask for the new room, and in my mind, there's a very specific sheen I'm going for. Saeem's had this sheen, which got me really excited. Unfortunately, it wasn't the print I was going for ;(
Angel's haul for the day:
Plus some clothes. There's a shop that sells top clothing store brands for cut-rate prices (overstock, I think?). They had Marks & Spencer, Sainsbury's, Primark and a bunch of other brands, choose any 3 pieces for 5 pounds or 2 pounds each. Baby found a few cardigans she liked. There was an Atmosphere 100% cashmere sweater there--2 pounds! TWO pounds! But it was too big and the cut wasn't very flattering for us ;(
There weren't that many places near Walthamstow that interested us food-wise. There were a couple of kebab places but we couldn't see the meat, so we weren't tempted. Show us the meat!
As we were walking back toward the Walthamstow Central tube station, we noticed a booth selling raspberries. 2 boxes for 1 pound. Holy crap, that's cheaper than Cali! So we bought 2 and plan to have it for breakfast tomorrow.
After lugging all our stuff home, we went out to Portobello Road. As we walked down the street, Angel spotted this plaque:
Turns out, George Orwell of 1984 fame lived here at one time.
The weather has been absolutely perfect today. Perfect fall weather--the sun is hazy, the leaves are golden, not too hot and not too cold. Dude, California's colder than London now. The only thing is that London's sunset happens around 4:30pm. The picture below was taken at 3:30pm, you can see it's already turning rather dark:
Genius use of Nutella cans! It's a crepe booth, and boy, the line was loooong. There were a lot of crepe booths on Portobello Road. No doner durum though. Boo.
I had wanted to go to Portobello because Saturday's antique day. I had my heart set on purchasing a pair of door handles for the new sewing room. I guess door handles aren't a very popular antique item because out of the hundreds of booths, only 2 stores sold them. Really?! Angel says she thinks it's because people don't tend to take door handles, so they probably all end up in landfills. >.<
We'll probably go to Jubilee Market in Covent Garden on Monday to see their antique selection.
Baby was really hungry by now (shopping's hard!), so we went to one of the crepe booths because they also sell potatoes Breton:
Which is sliced potatoes sauteed with a vat of butter, toss in some bacon, cheese, spices:
We then went to Marks & Spencer, where Baby went coo-coo crazy. She loves the store and was oohing and aahing about every little thing M&S sells. Like these lady bug and strawberry vine paper towels:
Even I got excited by the sparkly gold Christmas tree toilet paper:
Angel has had her eye on this tea biscuit tin since she saw it in M&S Prague. I relented today and said she could buy it, but she knew she wouldn't eat any of the cookies inside.
Angel: I showed remarkable restraint!
I took the picture and said whenever she gets mad, I'll show her the picture of the tin:
I'd signed up for Groupon UK and Groupon France a while back, knowing we'd be coming here sometime in the near future. A month ago, Groupon UK sent a promo email about buy 5 pounds, get 10 pounds at M&S. Of course I jumped on the deal. So we were able to use the gift voucher toward our purchases today. Next time, Angel's gotta sign up. I'm kicking myself I didn't push her to sign up and get the M&S voucher.
We walked on Oxford Street back to our hotel. There's a big ass Disney store on the street with a very cute Olaf display:
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| It's like a baby unicorn! Muahaha |
We'd bought our dinner from Sainsbury's at Walthamstow earlier today. So we got back to the hotel, took a nice hot shower, and had dinner in bed. Dinner was butter chicken:
With naan! It was soooo freakin yummmmmy. I loved the texture of the naan, and the butter chicken was oh-so-buttery-goodness. The chicken was meltingly tender.
At M&S, we noticed a lot of people crowding around one aisle, so we went over to see what it was. Turns out, it's the Reduced for sale aisle. I'm still dreaming of the sandwich we had on Lufthansa, so we got this sandwich (it has arugula in it, Mom! We're eating veges!) for 75 pence:
The bread was very soft and I liked the basil mayo spread:
Look how tender the chicken is!
Angel bought a whole shopping cart full of M&S Viennese jam and cream sandwich biscuits. Primarily because Mom, Dad and Angel all love eating them, and last time, Dad and Angel ended up fighting for them because we didn't buy enough. So Angel wanted to make sure she bought enough so that she could have a stash of her own (she eats really slooooowwww) and our parents could enjoy them too.
Baby also saw this:
She says it tastes much like the jam sandwiches she likes but the cookie's softer, so not quite as enjoyable:
Oh yeah, we also went to Primark today. Again. They stock new things every day, so thought we'd drop by to see the newest selection. Ended up buying something. Again.
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