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London markets: Covent Garden, Camden, Portobello Road, Brixton, other London markets
London markets are an excellent way to find bargains.
Covent Garden Market
At the colonnaded Covent Garden covered market (tube: Covent Garden), pictured right, you can find a bit of everything: an enormous variety of crafts, jewellery, clothing, accessories and antiques. Over 200 stallholders are registered with the Market, although most only exhibit once or twice a week. Being next to the renowned Covent Garden Piazza, you can also enjoy its celebrated street entertainers. Covent Garden market is in the same area as the famous Covent Garden opera theater, the Royal Opera House. Visit the Covent Garden's Jubilee Arts and Crafts Market Hall.
Camden Lock Market (Camden Town)
The Camden Market is a huge market, covering almost a whole neighbourhood, and it takes hours to explore. At weekends it gets extremely crowded, but it's beautiful to walk along the Camden stretch of the Grand Union Canal, looking at the narrow boats on one side and the market stalls on the other. The area is also full of shops and stores. The market and stores sell new and second-hand clothes, arts, crafts, ethnic knick-knacks, jewellery, bric-a-brac, furniture, designer clothes, army surplus gear, records, 1960s clothing: a bit of everything. It's very good value, especially for designer clothes.
It's situated in Chalk Farm Road, London NW1 (tube: Camden Town or Chalk Farm).
Open Monday to Sunday 10am to 6pm.
Portobello Road Market
Portobello Road Market is the London market par excellence, famous all over the world for its antiques and art objects. Portobello in fact sells other merchandise too: new and traditional clothes, household goods, furniture, radios, watches, lighters, boots, jewellery, shoes, bric a brac, ethnic goods, at very good prices (even bycicles), but at the North end of the Portobello Road, further from Notting Hill Gate and less familiar to tourists. In the middle, Portobello sells food, fruit and vegetables. Among so much colourful, unusual merchandise, you can find excellent bargains.
It's obviously in Portobello Road, London W11 (underground: Notting Hill).
Open Fridays and Saturdays 8am to 3pm.
Brixton Market
Brixton Market is mainly for ethnic foods, fruits and vegetables. You can find odd merchandise, like wigs, rare records, homeopathic root cures.
It's situated in Electric Avenue, Pope's Road, Station Road and The Concourse, London SW9 (tube: Brixton).
Open Monday to Saturday 9am to 6pm, except Wednesday when it's open 9am to 3pm.
Other London markets
For good quality fruits and vegetables there is Berwick Street, in the heart of Soho (underground: Piccadilly Circus).
But if you want very good organic fruits, vegetables, tofu and other foods, go to Spitalfields market, in Commercial Street, Aldgate, London E1 (underground: Shoreditch or Aldgate East). It's open Monday to Friday from 11am to 3pm and on Sundays from 9.30am to 5.30pm. At Spitalfields market you'll also find crafts, antiques, bric-a-brac and clothes stalls, and a falafel cafe.
At the market of Club Row, Shoreditch High Street, London E2 (tube: Shoreditch), you can find good bargains in furniture, radios, boots, shoes.
Still antiques in Bermondsey Square Market, London SE1 (tube: London Bridge).
The market of Petticoat Lane, in East London, sells new clothes and electrical goods.
London, Thursday 28th August 2008