A Wander Through Columbia Road Flower Market

Having lived in SW London for two decades I always feel a little out of place in East London. Occasionally I venture there but still feel like a fish out of water. It's become busier over the years, if not bustling, and is now full of vintage clothes shops, quirky independent coffee shops and cool bars. Market stalls line various different streets on different days of the week.

One of those, which I heard about a few years ago but had never visited until this weekend, is Columbia Road flower market. A small stretch of the road between Hoxton and Bethnal Green comes alive with dozens of flower stalls each Sunday. It's not the easiest place to reach on first glance, with no tube stations that close, but there are plenty of options whichever direction you're coming from. Hoxton Overground station is a few minutes away, but the Overground often closed at weekends (so check before you set out!). I walked up from Aldgate East (easy District Line journey from Parsons Green for me), up Brick Lane and through Shoreditch (lots to see along the way). It's not too far from Old Street tube station either, on the Northern Line (City branch).

By 10.30am the place was already buzzing, stall owners shouting about their wares (everything is pretty much a fiver), and giving a little jokey spiel to get you to buy from them ("so cheap you can even afford to buy them for people you don't like!" said one, with huge bunches of yellow flowers in each hand). Nearby cute little independent boutique shops entice in the locals and tourists that arrive in their hoards on a Sunday morning. The older, traditional eastenders rub shoulders with the young hipster types that now frequent the whole of east London, with families and photographers everywhere too. Stripey t-shirts abound.

 

 

 

 

It's a great place for a wander, a people-watch, or to buy flowers, of course. I couldn't visit a place like this and come away empty-handed, so I bought 3 little lavender plants for my window box for £6 (£5 only gets you two!) from the man who promised they were so cheap I could buy them for my enemies - his line was the best of the lot, I thought.

More of my photos can be seen on my website and more information about the street can be found on the Columbia Road website.

Night out in E1: Brick Lane & BrewDog

Some friends recently arrived back in the UK after living in the US for just over a year. While they were over there their love of decent, flavoursome craft beer had grown. So it seemed only right that we should all go to a BrewDog pub together, as they always have a good selection of interesting beers to try. Having been to the one in Camden a few times, my hubby and I decided to try out the new-ish bar in Shoreditch. I'd walked past it recently and it looked very different from the Camden one - more a bar than a pub, with its floor-to-ceiling glass and burly bouncers on the door.

We walked up from Aldgate East (nice and easy way to get to Shoreditch if you live on the District Line - none of that changing-lines-waiting-for-connections rubbish to deal with), heading up the vibrant Brick Lane. Along the way we were accosted by a few restaurant touts, promising us mouth-watering deals (curry plus wine for a tenner, etc..), but we passed them by in favour of a dosa restaurant on Hanbury St. 

Brick Lane and its side-streets are a street photographer's paradise, with colourful locals (from all over the world), quirky shops and restaurants, shisha bars, bagel shops, temples, smart architecture, and huge amounts of creative, artistic graffiti.

We arrived at the BrewDog bar to a text from our friends informing us that they were downstairs, a bit of a relief as the upstairs was heaving and very noisy. The downstairs bar took a bit of finding - following a few instructions scribbled on the walls to find the place. Inside it was extremely dark and took our eyes a good few minutes to adjust. The acoustics were great, in spite of being busy down there too, so it was possible to have a decent conversation, something which would definitely have been more of a struggle upstairs. The crowd was a little older and calmer down below... Various groups came and went on the tables around us, with some staying around for quite a few. The barman gave us a few recommendations; I tried the new #Mashtag beer while the others stuck to various IPAs. My #Mashtag - an American Brown Ale - was delicious, but strong at 7.5%, so after a couple I felt rather tipsy. I learned that it was a Twitter-created beer, with various ingredients determined by popular vote!

 

 

After a bout of unexpected hiccoughs (after only three beers!) we headed off and stopped in for a quick nightcap at a little bar called Monty's on Brick Lane. As we wandered back to the tube the curry houses and late-night partying were in full-swing; police meandered around to ensure things didn't get out of hand (and that the revellers used the public conveniences provided!).

By the time we got the tube it was past 11.30pm, so we joined the usual sociable late-night crowd for the journey back west along the District Line.

Gorilla Perfume: An Exhibition For All The Senses

I've been to many art exhibitions in my life, ranging from old masters and religious works to modern video installations and sculpture, with a lot inbetween. But until last weekend I'd never been to one that was not only a visual and auditory experience but a pongy one too!

Gorilla Perfume is a new shop/art gallery in London's rather trendy Old Street/Shoreditch area, showcasing the perfumes of Mark and Simon Constantine (co-founders of Lush cosmetics). I don't head out east very often, but there are some surprising things to be found: lots of cool graffiti; great little shops & cafés; nice architecture; people with moustaches when it's not Movember, and so on. So I guess a shop with a smelly art exhibition, Voice of Reason, out the back shouldn't have come as a surprise.

I was led around by one of the shop workers/curators, who explained a bit about the different exhibits to me (all a bit too much of the over-analysis for my simple mind). Each room was very different from the last, ranging from men's toilets (yes) to old phone booths, to a darkened forest. Upon entering each, the nose was hit with a new aroma, matched by the surroundings. The men's toilets, for example, smelled of toothpaste and cologne (not urine, thankfully - that would've been pushing it a bit far); the old phone booths of musty sandalwood; the forest of, well, a forest. In some of the rooms we donned headphones and were given an additional, auditory stimulus to accompany the visual and olfactory. The exhibition wasn't quite for all the senses - nothing to touch or taste, I'm afraid.

My guide was from Chile, a place where I'd once smelled the most unique fragrance at the top of a wonderful hike, in their lake district. I told how I wished I'd been able to bottle that smell; it would take me back to the magnificent view in an instant (nine volcanoes and endless araucaria forests visible, condors soaring overhead). Once we'd been round the exhibition she gave me some sample scents, to see if any of them matched my mountain-top one; sadly none came remotely close.

There are numerous fragrances for sale, both for men and women, and I wasn't sold on any of them, but that's just me - I'm not much of a perfume-wearer these days (and have plenty of barely-used bottles cluttering up my bathroom shelves already). I find the smell emanating from Lush shops a little over-powering (to say the least!), too, so I'm not clearly not their target market. The place is definitely worth a visit, though, even if you don't like perfume all that much and aren't interested in investing in some pong, as the exhibition is a truly unique sensory experience. It's only on for another week, but I imagine that they'll have similar spectacles in the future, showcasing work from up-and-coming local artists. It was certainly unlike any other exhibition I've ever visited. Once you're done, there's a great coffee-shop in nearby Leonard Street - Ozone Coffee Roasters - they even roast the coffee on-site. And then there's some great shopping just down the road too.