Sunday, Another Market, but Decidedly Different...

Spitalfield's Market today.  Really really cool, but in a different way.  Not much food in the actual Spitalfield's market (markets so far have been open air under a roof, which is probably a simple necessity given the weather)

It's rained every day we've been here, but not all of any day, not even most of any day.  And largely light rain.

So, Spitalfield's was more about clothing and crafts.  And what made it so cool was that what we saw was largely unique stuff.  New innovations.  Purses decorated with zippers.  Bracelets made out of anodized copper wire.  T-shirts with innovative graphics.  Good chocolate samples (that wasn't necessarily an innovation, but was appreciated!)  People walking with dogs.  Carrying dogs.  A guy with a leather jacket and kilt (both were leather).  Even saw a t-shirt with a sketch of our neighbor and his band on it, but it was an "off" enough sketch that we wouldn't have recognized him without the caption.

Left Spitalfields and headed down Brick Lane.  Really really really interesting shopping.  Stalls in the basement of a building.  An open air South African BBQ.  A free standing haircutting place (reluctant to call it a salon).  Exterior space outside a glass building where they'd set up tents and tables to sell things.  Used clothing.  Decorated jeans.  Caribbean-African food.  Thai food.  Indian food (aside from the market areas themselves, it looked to be primarily an Bangladeshi neighborhood.  Notes on bank windows listed a British Pound to Taka conversion rates).  Very young crowd.  We were oldest by probably 30 years...  Brick Lane markets were another world in a sense.  One that we didn't have any exposure to.  And very large with hundreds of food and clothing and antiques and etc. stalls.  Couldn't help but wonder where else, if any, that something like this and this large could exist.  Not in LA.  Nor in Paris.  And probably larger than anything sustainable in NY.   While I certainly felt outside "my" world, it was so interesting in it's completeness as another world, that we might go back.

Started our Spitalfields/Brick Lane adventure with lunch at a restaurant Maxine had found called St. John Bread & Wine.  As I type it, that sounds quite religious.  But, what it really was was a very earthy restaurant.  Salads very lightly dressed with hints of olive oil, of mint, and good salt.  I had a terrine of rabbit and felt that I needed to verify with the waitress that it wasn't going to be served with the eyes -- they do some sort of pig snout to tail thing that I just don't want to know about.  And their sweetbreads (which we thought were brains) we were told were thyroid glands.  The sort of restaurant where they knew that sort of thing.  And where they made their own donuts.  With a very nice dark chocolate filling.  And had a walk up sales counter for the various breads.  Including the one we took home to eat with our soup for dinner.