Destination: 51° 31′ 45.84″ N, 0° 4′ 9.84″ W; Columbia Road Flower market
Monday, May 4th, 2009On a lovely sunny Sunday morning, you could do worse than take a walk through the East End, through Brick Lane to the Columbia Road Flower market.
I started my walk on Commercial Road. If you look around you, you’ll find constant reminders that this part of London was very much an industrial, working, part of the city.
In the Altab Ali park, just across the road from the Whitechapel Gallery, I came across a Shaheed Minar. And of course, this transported me back to Dhaka, Bangladesh, where last year, I actually saw the Shaheed Minar (the one in East London is a replica of it).
A short walk up Brick Lane, with the obligatory stop at the Brick Lane Beigel Bake, and through an estate and I’m at the Columbia Road Flower Market.
It’s always so colourful and noisy there. Traders plying their trade. People walking and chatting. Haggling. The road is lined with lovely Victorian buildings, most of them now either shops or cafes.
It’s the place to get flowers and plants in London I think… and if you get there just before the traders get ready to pack up (the market closed at 2pm), you can get yourself some real bargains.
