brick lane + notting hill - hugh grant

today monique, emily and i decided we would suck it up and wake up early (10:30! ha) and get going on our day. we have a list hanging on my wall of all of the things we want to do while we are here, and until today we had yet to cross anything off, so we decided to tackle this saturday.

we started by walking through shoreditch, a really trendy street-arty place near where we live to get to brick lane. brick lane is unlike anywhere in california that i know of. it's this really long street lined with indian restaurant after indian restaurant after vintage shop after indian restaurant. it's pretty empty during the day but as soon as dinnertime hits, BAM, tons of hipsters and indian people. apparently for years it has been a predominantly indian area (kind of like downtown santa ana would be for hispanic people in orange county) but slowly over the last couple of years the punk/indie crowd has encroached on the area, squeezing in vintage shops and coffee shops between authentic indian restaurants. i can't really describe to you what it's like without you being there...it's a very interesting and unique place.

the reason for our visit to brick lane was a secret sample sale we had heard about online. we each spent some time looking through the designer clothes, some things discounted up to 90%! we each walked out with a bag of goods and the satisfaction of knowing that we bought some great stuff for very little money.

[mo and i with our purchases!]

we decided that we would continue our successful day out by heading over to notting hill to peek at portobello market. it reminded me of a mix between the melrose trading post (hey kate) and the antique shops in orange circle...lots of old jewelry, books, and random trinkets. we had lunch, walked around a bit, talked to a very nice british man about the soldiers of the british army (he was selling little figurines), and looked through some vintage shops along the way. i found a gold givenchy shift dress for 25 pounds (!) but it was too big. i'm excited to go back in a few weeks and see what else i can dig up!

notting hill is absolutely precious. it kind of reminds me of san fransisco, but all i could think about was the movie with hugh grant and julia roberts. i kept an eye out for the famous blue door hugh grant lives behind, but all i found were touristy references to the film (a store called "the blue door" and the movie's logo plastered up and down portobello road). unfortunately, we didn't run into hugh or julia, but i had fun exploring an unfamiliar part of london anyways.

[full house? wrong side of the world.]

tomorrow we are going to tackle some homework in the morning and then hopefully make it over to harrod's. i've been before, but there is no way to see absolutely everything in harrod's in just a trip or two, so hopefully i'll conquer yet some more uncharted territory!