Spitalfields Market, East London

Market clothes cost twice as much as the clothes from high street stores. Either the high street stores I go to are more back-street than high street, or these markets have gone WAAY up in standards.

If your idea of a perfect weekend is one that involves alot of cold air, substantial amounts of rain and lots of parking wardens, you might wanna spend your weekends here.

We arrived for our lunch appointment (which was at 1.45pm) around 1.30pm and so, with a flash of inspiration, we decided on browsing the stalls before meeting our friends for lunch.

Spitalfields, however, is to parking wardens what smelly socks are to puppies --- lots of fun.

The cars parked in front of and behind us had bright yellow plastic bags stuck to the front of their windscreens, usually a hint that you've been fined (either that, or the anti-environmentalists have been visiting again).

A quick look showed that most of the parking bays there are available to the public on Sundays, but only after 2pm. Before that, only cars displaying residents permits are allowed to be in those bays.

So, we do what most cheapskates will do in situations like these. We sit for half an hour in the car, until it's 2pm, glancing furtively at the rear, side and all mirrors possible for parking wardens.

Menus on railings = great idea

It was only after the lunch, and after I had seen these pics that we realised the restaurant that we didn't go to had roast also. Although, using the word 'also' might be misleading because the restaurant we went to didn't quite had roast (it has roast duck, which wouldn't really be classified as a roast, would it).


Evidently, half of London decided to come to check out the rain, the cold and the parking wardens that weekend.


At a guess, I'd say that the market is split evenly in terms of space allocated to restaurants and market stalls. The ground level of the market has both restaurants (of the chain variety) and stalls, but the upper level of the market only has stalls.

The stalls sell mostly clothes, decorative pieces and paintings (you get the picture, haha) but there is one small section selling olives, confectionary and pastries, and little nibbles.



Lovely olives, some pitted, some with pimento, all so nice.


Pizza isn't usually this expensive. One whole large pizza from a takeaway costs about £7, so this pizza here is slightly above average (price, not sure about the quality).

Organic vegan cakes, looking deceptively like un-organic, full of meat, full of nice-ness cakes.

Fudge. Lots of fudge, in all sorts of shapes and colours. I don't really like fudge, dunno why, something about how it's just soft and mudgy, I suppose. Now there's a new word. Mudgy. A mix between the word mushy and fudge.


You can kinda tell that I'm running out of ideas to describe the pictures.

I'll finish this post with this one.