Assignment 1 London Markets

I have gone to Portobello, Borough, Camden, Brixton, and Brick Lane markets. Each one was a little bit different from the rest. Camden had shops that sold everything from postcards and souvenirs to hookahs and smoking supplies. There were multiple tattoo and piercing shops as well, right next to a food stand. It was strange walking around and seeing so many different types of people with different beliefs and ways of life.

Borough is my favorite as far as food is concerned. I got a duck sandwich there the first time I was there and it was fantastic and also a good portion.  I wasn’t used to being able to walk around and having people offer samples of everything they are selling. The second time I went, I basically had a nice little lunch off of eating the samples they were giving out. This is also the time I tried Turkish Delight and I don’t blame Edmond for betraying his friends, that is some tasty stuff.  

Portobello was a very big market. I got there and started walking down trying to look at everything I could, but it was difficult seeing everything with the road so packed full of other people. Portobello was a fun market to just walk around and see the different clothing and foods that were offered. There was also a lot of old antique stuff which I find interesting myself, so I ended up looking around at that kind of thing for a while till I realized how big the market was and that I didn’t have a ton of time before it started to close down, so I ended up going through it a little faster than I would have liked, but I still got to see most of the market. I ended up stopping and turning around because it looked like it was going to rain and I had been there for a couple hours and knew I had to walk that much farther back to the tube station.

Brixton was a little sketchy, with just tents set up and not one of the best looking markets I’ve been to. It was fun to walk around and see what all there was being offered there, but there wasn’t anything I would really want to buy so I didn’t end up spending a whole lot of time walking through it. There were lots of fruit stands and also places selling fish, so in many places, the market would smell like fish.

Brick Lane was kind of a surprise to me. I thought it would be a bit run down, and it was, but it was also a lot of food stands. We went in a big section of food stands from everywhere and also right next to it there were a ton of places selling clothing and also jewelry. We started off walking down the road and we had three or four guys stop us trying to get us into their pub to eat there by offering us discounts and free beers, but we wanted to check out what all Brick Land had to offer so we told them we might stop back, but in reality, we never did.