London: day twenty

Today IES took us on a tour of some of the markets in East London. We took the Tube over to Liverpool Station and spent about forty-five minutes exploring the Spitalfields Market – packed to the hilt with food, antiques, crafts, and various other vendors. We then followed Brick Lane down to the Brick Lane UpMarket where Hannah and I got some food (chicken and bubble tea for me), and browsed the different booths and vendors. From here, they moved us to the Backyard Market which was part market and also part antique shop. We also checked out the Rough Trade music shop which was filled with vinyls and CDs. Unfortunately, I use neither of these, however, I was thumbing through some of the books and came across one about Pink Floyd. Whilst looking through it, I was reminded of a place that I hope to visit while I am here: the Battersea Power Station. This was the factory on the cover of Pink Floyd’s album “Animals” – pictured with a great big inflatable pig hovering between the front two smoke stacks of the building (which was an actual balloon they hoisted up there, not photo-shopped as would be easily assumed). I hope to go check it out eventually, and will certainly post pictures when I do – and will absolutely be sure to wear my Pink Floyd shirt on that day.

From there, we wandered up Brick Lane, stopping briefly at a 24- Hour Bagel Shop before continuing to a place called BOXPARK which is a bunch of freight containers (big metal ones, the kind you load onto ships) stacked on top of one another, but fashioned in such a way that each on is home to a small store – both on the top and the bottom. At this point, we were in Shoreditch on the exact same street that Hannah and I were on just the other night when we were looking for the pizza place, were turned away and went to a pub instead, and then decided to go touch the Gherkin, just so that we could say we did. We followed the road back to Liverpool Station after that, and the majority of the group did go back to NIDO. However, Hannah and I wanted to retrace our steps from the other night and go back to the Gherkin so that we could get pictures – neither of us having had our camera on the first adventure, also because it was dark then so we couldn’t have taken pictures. So we made our way through the streets back to the Gherkin and took our pictures, but from there, we decided to explore some new streets on the way back and ended up taking the Tube from Bank Station instead of Liverpool because of where we ended up. Needing to get a book for class, we made a pit-stop at the Waterstones in the Angel District, and from there walked back to NIDO.

favorite pictures of the night: