The weekend continues
I went to see my friend Doug again today. Besides being a great friend, he is the best guide to London that I know. I had two goals this weekend - make it to Borough Market and Spitalfields Market. When we got together, the first thing he said was, “I want to take you to a really cool place - Brick Lane which is really close to Spitalfields Market.’ How great is that?
Doug never just takes you directly to a place. He has a great eye for walking off the beaten path - for showing the interesting buildings and places on the way.
Our first stop on the way was St. Bartholomew the Great Church. This church is among London’s oldest, founded in 1123 and has been in continuous worship since 1143. The grounds are beautiful and the church seems very welcoming. Like all of London, modern buildings have sprung up all around the property. In front of the benches in this picture is an old graveyard, and the buildings are so close that the grave stones have been integrated into the foundations as decorations. Their placement near a sidewalk made me wonder if I was disrespecting the dead - but Doug assured me that the bodies had been moved and the sidewalk was not built on graves.
After Broadgate, we made our way towards Liverpool station, stopping briefly at Broadgate, which has some interesting art and a skating rink. This skating rink is very busy during the Christmas season and families were having a great time on the ice when we walked by.
Spitalfields Market is a sprawling market in East London filled to the brim with vendors selling everything from brownies to handmade clothing to Banksy prints to custom artwork to cheap umbrellas to obscure American funk music. It is absolutely huge, spanning several buildings and several blocks. On every side there are street vendors selling even more. It does most of it’s business on Sunday, and it was bustling with thousands of people.
Brick Lane is a dirty street sided with Indian and Bangladesh restaurants, street vendors, graffitti and a happy feeling. Salmon Rushdie described Brick Lane in the Satanic Verses as “philistine, sanctimonious, and disgraceful, but … not unexpected”. He’s right - it’s a perfect place to shop, watch people and look in the windows at the mini-boutique shops.
At the end of the lane are two bagel places specializing in salted beef sandwiches, which Doug said were the best in the city. One claims the title of being the oldest bagel shop in London, but Doug said that the better sandwiches were in the ‘new’ shop ‘Beigel Bake’. He was right - the bagels were soft, the beef was tender and delicious. I recommend the spicy mustard with extra pickles. Delicious.
After a day of browsing the market and people watching, we stopped again at Broadgate to see the light display in one of the courtyards. Colored lights shoot from one side of the courtyard to the other in a spectacular Tron-like laser show. It was a great end to the day.
