10/17/2015
Walthamstow means “The Place of Welcome” and welcome us, it
did. Dating back to 1885, it’s the longest outdoor street market in Europe.
Open 8am-5pm Tuesday thru Saturday, it really can take a whole day to shop. The
pedestrian-only street sells everything from home décor to clothing (men’s and
women’s), perfume to product (cheap fruit!) to fabric. And boy did Angel load
up on fabrics. Some fabrics were as cheap as 50 pence/meter. The most expensive
one she bought was 4 pounds/meter, which, for the quality and design, would be
about $20/yard at JoAnn’s.
There’s storefronts lining the street as well as stalls in
the middle, so she really had her pick of bolts upon bolts. Our end haul ended
up collectively weighing about 18 kg. We lugged it all the way from Walthamstow
to Bond Street tube station (including the strenuous change in tube lines) to
back home. Whew. I know my back will be killing me tomorrow. Not as young as I
used to be!
One stall selling Indian food had crazy lines lining up on
both sides of the cart. The menu had a chicken tikka masala wrap that sounded
interesting and I wanted to try it, but I was still pretty full from breakfast.
So, next time!!! There’s chicken doner restaurants here too, so gotta check
those out next time as well. Breakfast, by the way, was a very delicious combo
of mini meat pies and ground pork with hard-boiled egg encased in a scrumptious
puff pastry.
Last year when we went, I wasn’t that impressed with the
selection of clothes sold here, though Angel bought a whole boatload of
fabrics. This year, they’ve upped their game. The stalls are selling current
season—current season—clothes from
Primark, Marks & Spencer’s, H&M, Zara. The blouses we saw this morning
at Primark? 10 pounds. At Walthamstow, the exact same blouse is 8 pounds. They
do sell last season name brands and those usually have a more significant discount.
Angel saw a shirt she bought from H&M back in April this year. She bought
it for $20. At Walthamstow? 3 pounds! Sure, they only had X-Small left, but
still…
Angel’s been making croissant sandwiches throughout London
for the times we need to eat on the go. I look forward to these meals because
they are the best damn sandwiches I’ve ever eaten. Waitrose and Sainsbury’s
sells these cheese & onion or cheese & chive dips that are so, so utterly
delicious. The cheese they use is Red Leicester, a cheese we tasted for the
first time in Edinburgh last year. It promptly became our new favorite cheese.
Sometimes we’ll buy more Red Leicester (cheese in the UK is cheap!), chop it up
into tiny cubes and add it into the dip. Then Angel will mix in prawns, then stuff
this whole yummy concoction into a croissant. Best. Meal. Ever.
There’s a storefront there called Femme that’s kind of like
Style in the US, but the quality’s a whole lot better. Better than Forever 21,
I’d say. There’s dresses in there for 5-10 pounds and I seriously wanted to get
everything there.
And if you like shopping supermarkets, you’ve hit the
motherload here. Every grocery store lining the street is absolutely massive.
You can find Lidl, Sainsbury’s, Iceland (specializes in frozen foods like frozen
dinners, but we found high-quality Scottish shortbread cookies here on the
cheap too). Wilko is an IKEA/Target-like store for home décor. We started
shopping around 1:30pm and didn’t realize the time passing until 6pm. Yikes! We
had to be at Bond Street before 8pm, so it started a mad(ish) dash back to the
Walthamstow Central tube station.
At Lidl, we could not believe our eyes:
A whole jamon serrano leg for 30 pounds! Cream of venison soup for 2.49! Where do you even get this stuff in the US??? Oh wait, you can't.
Angel had to go to the bathroom at this point, though since
Walthamstow’s an outdoor market, it’d be pretty tough to find one. As we walked
by an indoor complex, I realized it was a mall. I suggested going inside to see
if there’s a bathroom. Turns out, not only are there multiple bathrooms,
there’s a food court and a gigantic supermarket called Asda that Angel and I
have never heard of. They make millionaire bites and milk chocolate-enrobed
flapjacks as well. We thought it was cheaper than Sainsbury’s because of the
count per box, so we bought a dozen boxes. Only to come home and realize that
Sainsbury’s is actually cheaper when you factor in total weight. Guess we lugged
home 7.5 pounds for nothing. The taste is pretty comparable to Sainsbury’s,
except the texture of the flapjack isn’t as moist and you can’t taste each
individual kernel. The caramel for the millionaire bite is creamier and
thicker, but not as sweet. So I think we’ll stick with good ole trusty
Sainsbury’s.
We arrived at the Bond Street tube station around 7pm. The
International Currency Exchange (ICE) on Oxford Street (across from Zara, the
Disney Store and just past Thornton’s Chocolates) has very finicky business
hours for when and when they will not process VAT tax refunds—even though it’s
the same person working the booth during off-hours! We’d gone there around
12:30pm earlier today after some last-stop shopping at Primark. The guy working
the booth said they are open 8am-noon then 6-8pm every day. Argh. So it meant
we had to come back even though it’s out of the way for us to go back.
 |
| Angel's haul |
We come back at 7pm and it’s the same guy working the booth.
Now he’s processing VAT refunds. The
guy in front of us has bought so much stuff at Debenham’s, his VAT refund is in
the hundreds of pounds! We’re eligible for a 64 pound refund, but the
processing office deducts 20 pounds for “processing,” which means we end up
with a 44 pound refund. If you want it in cash, that’s another 2.70 pound fee
per refund form. So make sure you claim it all in one go. Don’t get a refund
form for every single receipt—wait until you’re done shopping, consolidate all
the receipts, then go get the refund form from the retailer. The higher the
amount, the higher the refund scale (ie. 100 pounds in purchases will net you a
9%-ish refund while 400 pound will get you 12%).
In short:
Shop til you drop. Keep your receipts.
When you’re finally all shopped out, take your receipts to
the customer service desk of whichever retailer you purchased your goods from.
Since we purchased everything from Primark, we went to the upper floor to their
customer service desk.
The cashier will ask to see your passport and credit card.
They’ll total up all your receipts, input it into the computer, and out comes a
long-ass receipt form for the VAT refund. The cashier will stamp the form to
your receipts and put this in a VAT envelope. Never, ever seal this envelope,
as doing so will invalidate your claim!
You fill out the appropriate lines on the form. The person
who paid for the purchases does not have to be the person claiming the refund,
ie. I paid for everything using my credit card, but Angel will be the one
claiming the refund.
At this point, you either go to the Customs desk at the
airport you’re flying out of to get the customs stamp, then go to another line
to get the refund, or you go to one of these ICE locations (Primark uses Global
Blue, and ICE processes Global Blue refunds. Different retailers will use
different VAT processors, but I think there’s only 2 processors) for the
refund.
If you go to ICE, you will still need to get the customs
stamp at the airport, but at least you won’t have to wait in yet another long
line for the refund. Someone online said the refund line at Heathrow took him 2
hours!
So we chose option #2. We also chose to get the refund
immediately in cash, even though there’s a 2.70 fee. This is because the
Primark customer service said that many times, if you’re off by even 1 number
while copying down your credit card number on the form, they’ll reject your
claim and you won’t get your refund. Cash is immediate. But be careful. There’s
a steep 50 pound fee if your claim is rejected. And it can be rejected for
multiple reasons: writing illegible. Failure to show your purchases at the
customs desk. Which completely sucks because it means opening your suitcase at
the airport for them to inspect when you’ve already packed it to your complete
and utter satisfaction.
Now that we have cash in hand, Angel, Mom and Dad will need
to go to the airport customs desk to get the customs stamp. Then they will need
to locate the Customs mailbox to drop off the form and receipts in that
unsealed VAT envelope I mentioned earlier.
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