Covent Garden

The weather here has just been gorgeous lately.  What was a temperate, but very soggy winter, has dried up nicely with warmer days, lots of breezy days, and occasionally, a giant orb of fire in the sky visible between the dense layers of fog, smog, and clouds.



I recently spent a day wandering around a neighborhood that I haven't really explored too much before, despite it being very central- Covent Garden.



It's kind of tourist central there.





There's tons of trendy upscale shops, and a really beautiful covered market with lace-like ironwork and a nice warming greenhouse effect inside.  The Market was packed, and filled with a few gems.  Like a Shake Shack.



Seriously.  I knew they were popping up all over NYC, but I had no idea they had made the leap across the pond.  There was limited seating, but if you could elbow your way to table, it was a good people-watch.









Just North of the market there are loads of antiques and vintage clothing stores, along with trendy places to be seen eating.







I took a meandering route up to the British Museum.  One of the things I'm loving is the free museums, since I don't feel obligated to get my money's worth and stay all day, but I can duck in and out as I please.



I'm finding that an hour is about right for me.  Any more and my eyes get glazed, I get yawny and blurred, and I stop appreciating art and I can only think about how nice fresh air might be.



The British museum is enormous, and filled with so many treasures.  You just have to pick a section you want to see, and then stick with the plan.  It's easy to get pleasantly lost.







A new discovery, from the Japan wing:



A print by Makino Yoshio, a Japanese artist who lived in London early last century.  I loved the combination of the delicate, sparse Japanese style combined with the 1920's European scene.  I've been looking for a print for my still-sparse walls, but he's apparently too obscure of an artist to have a lot of prints commercially available.

Ah well.  The search for decorative bits for my blandly white-and-beige flat continues.

Finding France

I hate to whine, but the food here just isn't as fantastic as it was in France.

I'm talking mostly about fresh fruits and vegetables.  True, it's February, the most dismal month for good fresh food.  If you aren't sick of root vegetables already, you will be in the next couple weeks.  I'm hoping with the looming springtime, things will improve.  The grocery store produce is just icky and sad, and the Saturday street markets that pop up in every neighborhood is only slightly better.

No need for Kale Ladies here, they have already embraced Hipster Lettuce as their own!

The curries are fantastic though.  I've had several that were amazingly good, and some craveable Thai and Japanese as well.  It's much easier to find good ethnic food here than it is in Paris.  I guess that's the effect that happens when your local cuisine isn't always the most appetizing?  Boiled meat, anyone?

Everyone kept telling me, "Borough Market is overpriced; it's for tourist".  I'll agree that it is a bit more expensive to shop there and mobbed on Saturdays, but the quality is miles better than anyplace else.  So stop saying "it's for tourist" because you are basically saying, "only tourist have good taste, we all traditionally eat rubbish".  Not only do they have really great produce, they have some French cheese importers that make it all better, and some prepared foods that are worth the trip to huddle around in a forlorn corner to balance in hand, including some of the best cornish pasties I've ever had.

The adorable pastie lady in Borough Market.  Putting to shame anyone who ever thought Sweeney Todd was #1.

A word about cheese:  Cheddar is great, and I'm quite in love with the crumbly mild tang of Wensleydale, but everything else I've tried so far has been inferior to their counterparts over the channel.  The cheese-mongers, ever so helpful, will doll out samples, saying, "this one is like Camembert, this one is like Beaufort...are you looking for a blue?  because this Stilton is similar to Roquefort".   I've tried some really excellent small producers that are making interesting cheese, and I'll keep you posted when I find something special.  I will keep trying anyway.  Neal's Yard has some excellent cheese- they provide Cheese for one of my favorite restaurants in Paris, Frenchie, including my absolute favorite Isle of Mull Cheddar, which I will subsist on solely if allowed.

Grocery shopping here is kind of an adventure in a bad way.  They just have so much weird, processed, odd foods and sauces, mostly in tins or frozen, totally unappetizing.  I'm going to have to document this next time I go, as some of it is just mystifying.

Mostly, I miss the daily street markets in Paris.  The rapport you have with the sellers and farmers is priceless, and being able to run out and get really fresh lovely produce is something I'll never tire of.  In the past few weeks, I've had more mushy, mealy apples than I care to.  Boo.  You aren't really going to encourage people to eat healthy if you aren't offering them appetizing things.

I never got his real name as he was always "Monsieur Pêche" to me.  He knew how to pick the best peaches, nectarines, clementines and berries for me, and it didn't seemed odd at all that I would seek him out four times a week to get my fix.  He humored my French, and I'd like to think that he misses me.  

Still, they seem to be closeted francophiles here, and I found a French cafe in the Brixton Village Market selling all sorts of goodies, including Sel de Mer butter and a good variety of saucison sec (including donkey!).  I have quickly become a loyal client.

Bottom line:  I will not be starving any time soon.

Camden Town

One of the things I'm loving about London is how there are all these parts of it that operate and feel like small villages rather than a sprawling metropolis.  While the city is enormous, it feels less overwhelming than New York to me because of all these bite-sized pieces you can break off and explore.



I spent a recent sunny day exploring Camden.  It's an eclectic, odd place with tons of markets selling all sorts of good junk.  The canal-side Lock Market and the formerly equestrian Stable Markets sprawl across town, with an odd assortment of storefronts on high street connecting the two markets.



Predictably, it's a mob scene, and it offers great people watching.  The vendors in the stable markets were kind of blah, but if you wind your way further back into the stalls there are some great vintage clothing shops, including a woman who had an amazing selection of vintage furs that, even though I would never wear, wow'ed me.



You can really get lost in here, in the best possible way.



While it had a lot of ho-hum junk- the same hippie clothing and crude-phrased t-shirts could be bought at every other booth, it was a worthwhile exploration.









Most of it was just so tacky, you couldn't help but stop and stare.



This was the place to go if you want to get that tattoo that everyone else has, and dubious-looking pot brownies while being offered dimebags of limp, sad little buds.

I did spy this amusing vintage pet store awning that is now re-purposed as a bakery:


 
When the thumping bass and incessant consumption of top 40 music got too much, it was off to Regent's Park, a sprawling green space.



The odd thing about Parks here are that they are generally huge, and mostly vast lawns with a pin-straight walkway with tall trees cutting through the center.

It's almost disorientating to be  in the middle of such a vast lawn.  You really can't judge distances well at all, and even in February, the grass is so green it hurts your eyes.









I can't wait for it to dry out enough for a picnic.  I foresee a glorious summer of  picnic-only diets ahead.

Shoreditch

Hello!  I am still here in London, learning and getting to know the city.  Somehow, miraculously, the internet will not be installed until sometime next month (!) but I've been keeping busy.  The flat now looks cozy and clean, with everything neatly put away, and a real bed is in the bedroom, and I love my new home.  

Rather predictably, I did get a whopper of a cold as soon as we got moved in.  This happens every time I move- the combination of much stress and brand-new germs always gets me.  Not that this has been a particularly stressful move.  I think it went quite swimmingly.  Still, it sucks to be sick, and I feel as though I've managed to slick snot on every possible surface without even trying, and every time I encounter another person I know that yes, they are probably amused at the fact that I probably have something hanging out of my nose.  Also, no one has been murdered within eyesight recently, I love it when that happens!  

It's been raining a brutal amount lately.  Whole towns are underwater south of here, and to keep the Thames from flooding London, all the excess water gets spilled out to the 'burbs, and those are under water as well.  All those storms burying the East Coast of the US with mountains of snow have been blowing across the Atlantic and battering the UK. 

On the occasional sunny day, I choose a neighborhood and get out to explore.  Recently, it was to Shoreditch and Spitafields in East London, which have an insane amount of markets on the weekend.

London is shopping mad.  There are open-air markets going on every day.  It's hit or miss- there are a handful of unique vendors always, but they you have to really wallow through a lot of tacky t-shirt vendors and hippie clothing sellers to get to them.  Spitafields had some unique clothing vendors and designers, and the area around Spitafields market had tons of upscale vintage stores.  

Further in, near Brick Lane, there is a car park that turns into a food market on Sundays, and there are tons of other markets popping up in the area as well.

Londoners are like Parisians where it doesn't matter how cold it is out, as long as it's not raining, they will sit outside.  

It was pretty awesome to see so many different ethnicity represented in the food market.  Caribbean, African, Mideastern, Southeast Asian, Mexican and lots of American BBQ.  In fact, that seems to be the trendiest food in London right now- Fried chicken and slow-cooked pulled pork and ribs and brisket.  I have yet to give it a try as I've been on a vegetarian kick as of late, but I'm curious about it.  

  

On Brick Lane, next to the dozens of curry houses, there's a remnent of the older jewish neighborhood before that, and you can get bagels and "salt beef", which I determined to be corned beef.  The bagel places had long lines snaking out onto the street, so I gave one a try.  It was...disappointing.  Not a New York bagel.  I have to stop this habit of comparing everything to New York; it's ruining things for me.  

Finally, a walk through the Columbia Road Flower Market.  

Everyone is dreaming so hard of springtime here.