Garuda Indonesia Colours Magazine March 2018 | Page 89

Travel | London
87
1
2
2 A street accordionist
performing near Columbia
Road Flower Market in
Shoreditch.
3 Columbia Road Flower
Market is open on Sundays.
1 Green-fingered Londoners head to Columbia Road
Market for their cut flowers, pot plants, shrubs and trees,
bulbs and seeds.
4 The view down onto
Borough Market
(underneath the triangle of
railway viaducts) from the
top of The Shard.
3
If ever a market epitomises the 21st-century London street scene, then
Columbia Road does it in spades. This is where green-fingered Londoners
head for their cut flowers, pot plants, shrubs and trees, bulbs and seeds.
4
to believe that Portobello Road is not a film
set. With its rows of pastel-painted Georgian
townhouses, quaint antiques shops, trendy
little eateries and distractions such as the
Electric Cinema (dating from 1910, it has just
83 seats, some of them armchairs), it’s hard to
imagine somewhere that is more
romantically London. The market is best
explored on a Friday or Saturday, and it’s an
epic journey that starts at the southern end
as an antiques fair, becomes a fruit and
vegetable and household goods market
around Westbourne Park Road, changes into
a vintage clothes and collectibles bazaar
under the Westway flyover, and ends as a flea
market before Golborne Road. Turn right
there and the market continues through the
long-standing northern Moroccan and
Portuguese communities – the cafés are a
welcome spot for a lunchtime lamb tagine
followed by Portuguese coffee with a pastel
de nata egg tart.
Sunday: Columbia Road Flower Market
If ever a market epitomises the 21 st -century
London street scene, then Columbia Road
does it in spades. This is where green-
fingered Londoners head for their cut
flowers, pot plants, shrubs and trees, bulbs
and seeds. The choice is so daunting that
the market can occupy visitors for an entire
morning, but agreeable little shops in the
surrounding terraces (often hidden behind
the stalls) distract those who are not so
flora- or foliage-focused, including
interiors, vintage and antiques, and craft
and handmade shops, and of course some
good coffee, street food and restaurants to
keep energy and enthusiasm levels topped
up. Columbia Road is a satisfying meeting
of the horticulturalist, the hipster and the
hungry. It’s best visited between 10am and
1pm (only on Sundays) and is handy to the
dozens of Vietnamese eateries on
Kingsland Road or the buzz around Brick
Lane and its markets.