LONDON day 2 Saturday, Oct. 18, 2008

Saturday, October 18, 2008

To Market, to Market to buy a . . . Portabello!

So much we want to do . . . so little time. We started out with our lists of all the things each of us would love to do and a map. Paula wanted to visit a Laura Ashley store. Linda wanted to visit Westminister Abbey. Paula thought about visiting a few more exhibits at the Victoria and Albert Museum. Linda wanted to see Kenneth Branagh in Ivanov. We went online to find that it was the “Day of the Pilgrimmage—something to do with Edward the Confessor,” and Westminster was closed for the day to tourists. However, there was an evensong at 3:00, so that was a possibility. We went to the Ivanov website to find that tickets were all sold out for Ivanov, and our only chance was to stand in line and hope that some returns were possible—quite a hike for that remote chance and to find it was Tom Stoppard’s adaptation of Chekhov’s play, which usually meant betrayal, death, and suicide, and we weren’t quite up for that after Never Forget last night. While we were trying to sort all of this out, we were talking about Covent Gardens and how fun markets are. So, we googled “London markets,” and came up with one Paula had heard of called the Portabello Market. We read about how cool it was—over 2000 stalls from food to retro fashion to antiques, and we were sold on it.

We figured out the Tube route—Gloucester to Ladgrove—and it didn’t take long once we were there to figure out we had made the perfect decision.

The sun was brilliant, the crowds thick with colorful personalities and dialects and the stalls went on and on.

The food was to die for! Fruit and veggies stands,

fresh fish, pots brimming with soups and paella!

We treated ourselves to stuffed grape leaves and a feta veggie salad.

We went into what looked like the most delicious cheese shop only to find it was actually a soap shop with all the soaps shaped and decorated like cheese and desserts.

We kept thinking of how great a time our girls would have had here in the boutiques and shoe shops. Everywhere we were reminded of the latest fashions and wished we would have thought ahead to buy our girls some British fashion magazines to see since it was a bit odd to take pictures of random people to show the fashions— everywhere high, high heels or boots always with leggings/tights and leg warmers peeking out the top, scarves, short mini skirts, and long tops tried on teenage fashions in hopes that something might be right for the girls, but when we checked out our choices with some teenage Londoners who weren’t impressed, we moved on to other things.

We found shirts for the boys—an official #7 Beckham soccer jersey for Chris and a Beatles t-shirt for Robby. We got pretty good at bargaining and found that one of the best parts of the market.

Paula spotted what looked like a collection of army surplus clothing and found Tom an RAF officer’s hat for his military hat collection!

We spent quite a long time at this shop chatting with one of the sellers bedecked in full military clothing. He told us that this area, called Notting Hill just like the recent movie Notting Hill , was where they filmed a lot of the movie, and that the bookstore in the movie was right down the street.

The sun started coming down way too quickly, and the shops started closing up just as we were in the middle of the antique shops. We walked and walked and eventually ended up at the gates to the beautiful Kensington Gardens. We entered at a broad street called Palace Gardens Parkway, which was lined with enormous houses that served as embassies. My favorite was the Norwegian one!
Here is the beautiful gate that leads into Kensington Palace:

By the time we reached the pond and the swans, it was quite chilly but still lovely with all the autumnal colors. This truly is the best time to be a tourist! We have had beautiful weather, no lines anywhere, and had the opportunity to make decisions not based on crowds or anything else other than our own whim at the time . . . truly in the spirit of Carpe Diem!

We took a rather adventurous route out of Kensington Gardens—down side streets showing a most prestigious part of town obvious from all the Porsches, Jaguars, BMW’s, and SAAB’s we saw everywhere. We ended up on a small cobblestone street called Mews which was right in back of a small church. These were originally where they kept the horses and supplies for a fine manor or castle or large church now converted into condos. We loved them! If I were to live in London, this was the place to be!

Eventually we found the hotel, and it felt great to just spend the evening in dining on what we bought at the market and watching British TV, something we hadn’t done before. In fact, this is only time all week we did anything remotely like this—downtime! A few times we considered going out in search of Indian food, but staying in was much too cozy. We worked on the blog while watching Simply Come Dancing—the British equivalent to Dancing With the Stars—as well as the British Idol show, the news, and Failure to Launch. It was nearly 2:00 a.m. when we finally went to sleep, but it still felt like about 10:00. Paula says she never did get adjusted to the British time here.