Wandering around London's street markets has become a favourite activity that also helps us to learn our new city and also provide us with a sense of neighbourhood culture.Our preference was for the food markets where toasted cheese sandwiches, Monmouth coffee, fresh produce and deli foods gave us good excuses to seek out an urban picnic on the weekends. However London offers a range of other interesting markets - including second-hand clothes, antiques, paintings and of fresh flowers on Columbia Road.
Portobello Road Market
Portobello markets are one of the most famous in London - selling a mix of souvenirs, fresh produce and jewellery. We spent an afternoon walking around the shops, checking out artwork to see if there was anything that caught our eye to decorate our new place. Portobello markets are easy to navigate as they stretch along one big road - although when it rains there is little shelter and you soon have to make a desperate dash to the nearest roofed cafe or McDonalds.
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| Everything second hand being labelled as 'vintage' |
In London's East-end, Brick Lane has more to offer than just the curry houses that it is known internationally for. On the weekends, there is an international food village with stands serving a range of cuisines. On the day we visited, the sun was out and visitors were enjoying a fruit salad snack and watching locals playing board-games in the laneways.
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| A lane-way surrounded by bricks |
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| Fruit salad - healthy street food |
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| Deep in concentration playing chess |
In the City of London, Petticoat Lane market offers a range of discount clothing and casual handbags. We found this market to be useful for accessories shopping - however like most markets around the world - they stall holders start early and if you come late you tend to get the scraps.
One of the markets that is best to hang-out at during the working week is Spitafields - surrounded by pubs, restaurants - it has a great vibe with the afterwork crowd. We visited on a weekend and the racks of trench-coats and bags soon captured Mei's attention. Olie's bargaining skills were put to use as we shaved £10's off a black leather handbag and work-wear friendly coat.
We had been told by friends that if there is an occasion when you want to spruce up your house with a bit of Spring colour or if you feel the need to buy flowers - head to Columbia Road Market. The range of flora on offer was amazing and if it wasn't for us feeling lazy and not wanting to carry our purchases around town for the rest of the day, we would have bought enough blooms to decorate all the table space at our place.
Borough market is part of the area around London Bridge that was once known as London's Larder when ships from British colonies sailed up the Thames and stored foods and spices along the wharves that sit around Shad Thames and the Docklands. These days, Borough Market is best known for its tourist-oriented food stalls that are busiest during Saturdays where there is an option to cook breakfast or instead catch the tube to the market and enjoy one of life's greatest pleasures - a roast pork roll with apple sauce from Roast restaurant's take-away shop.
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| Purchases from a Borough Market shopping trip |
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| The Rose Window - Winchester Palace |
Close by is the reconstruction of Sir Francis Drake's Golden Hind - the English galleon he captained during his circumnavigation of the globe between 1577 and 1580. The replica is open to the public and itself circumnavigated the globe after it was launched in 1973.
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| Replica of the Golden Hind |
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| The markets near Camden Lock |
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| Street food where the stall holders always offer free samples |
Behind the towering buildings of London's financial hub - Canary Wharf, is the wholesale fish market - Billingsgate. Visiting these markets require a bit of forward planning as they are only open on specific days of the week and the best action occurs very early in the morning - and you may even catch a glimpse of the seal that regularly visits the canals next to the market.
One day before we had started working, we boarded the Jubilee Line Tube around 6am to buy some of London's freshest seafood. We were not disappointed. Our shopping bags were filled with half a kilo of Scottish smoked salmon (a bargain at only £6), 1kg of frozen tiger prawns (£3.50) and a very large freshly caught rainbow trout for £8.
The fish was not gutted and a quick You Tube search revealed a number of expert videos that taught us how to gut, bone and fillet a trout. Olie did injure himself with a cut on the finger from the dead trout's teeth after Mei mistakenly told him to grab the mouth during the gutting process.
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| Fresh whole rainbow trout with very sharp teeth |
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| Olie gutting the fish |
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| De-boning the trout fillet |
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| Baked trout |
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| Butter soft trout with lemon |
London has loads of supermarkets - the biggest chains being Tesco, Sainsbury, Waitrose (for the more exotic items), Co-operative, Iceland (a frozen food paradise) and Morrisons. Our rental property is closely located to many of them, but we still find the local off-license to be a good source of fresh food and milk at the earliest of hours, as many are open 24-hours a day.
We did learn that Sunday afternoon supermarket shopping can be quite an experience in London. Some stores close at 5pm and there is an awfully big rush for the cash-tills in order to make this deadline. Other stores seem to happily ignore this rule and you can buy ingredients for a Sunday roast quite late in the evening.
And when you are on a budget - sometimes the end of day shelf offers some handy bargains like this Tesco whole roast chicken for just £2.80.
And you can even recreate the Nandos experience by buying bottled sauce and branded peri peri chicken chips.
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