London - Street Markets, Food and Canary Wharf

Hello and welcome to this weeks blog.

This is another one that was set in London, however we decided that we would set off to see the less touristy location of Canary Wharf. On the way we encountered a few street markets and found ourselves an American vegetarian/ vegan restaurant.

Warning: Some of the images you are about to see may cause uncontrollable hunger

But first: The plan was simple: get to London, get breakfast/ brunch and then go check out Canary Wharf.

On the map below the plan would have been arrive by train at the red dot, go to orange dot for breakfast and then yellow dot for the rest of the day. 

Here is what happened:

Did you know that London is like a ghost town early Sunday morning? There were people about but everything was shut like there has been some sort of Apocalypse and I wasn't told.

We knew the direction that we had to be walking so we headed that way. 

I remembered that I had once got lost in this direction before and that there was a building that had a giant aquarium in it so we decided that we would check it out on the way through. 

The photo below is taken from outside, as the building was closed like the rest of London.

"110 Bishopsgate boasts the largest private aquarium in Britain. This spectacular feature holds around 90,000 litres of water, 70,000 litres of which is contained within the display (featured in the lobby) and the remainder held within the life support system located three floors below ground in the basement levels of the building.

The display measures 12m wide by 2m deep and 4m high, weighing approximately 100 tonnes when filled. The aquarium itself is made from acrylic, not glass."

The information above, and photo below is stolen from this website http://www.herontower.info/your-building/aquarium

Once we had seen what could be seen of the aquarium we resumed our quest for food which google maps was telling us was 30 minutes away. Perfect because the place we were looking for didn't open till 11am (it was around 10:30 at the time..). 

The following are the distractions we found along the way, in the order that we found them in.

Petticoat lane Markets - This market seemed to sell only clothes and shoes, but it just seemed to spread the whole way down the main street and then out into some of the side streets (Apparently there are more than 1,000 stalls). Supposedly this a world famous market and we just happened to stumble upon it on the right day at the right time. 

Fun Fact: "Petticoat Lane" as a street doesn't actually exist any more - we have the Victorians' prudishness to thank for that, wishing to avoid any reference to undergarments they changed the name to Middlesex Street in 1846.(http://www.londontown.com/LondonInformation/Attraction/Petticoat_Lane_Designer_Fashion_Market/82c9/)

Spitalfields Markets - This was a more modern and dare I say 'hipster' market. It claims to be about arts and crafts, fashion and food. 

I found it fascinating how the English have adapted their outdoor places and between buildings into this market area that allows for an outdoor type of lifestyle/ market experience that is protected from the elements year-round. 

There were a lot of niche items in this market such as top hats and pin-up clothing. There was an entire shop of felted items (see photos below) and definitely some works of art! this market I have pinned to come back to at some point to spend more time at and perhaps spend more time checking out the food and drinks available.  (http://www.spitalfields.co.uk/)

Before we leave this market I do need to mention the little Ethiopian vegan stall that we spotted as we left the markets (Photo above: Bright green stall center right). All the food at this stall looked amazing but we had set ourselves the goal of finding this American-style vegan restaurant and tasting everything on their menu so we didn't want to eat anything to preserve room in our bellies. But this stall's food looked amazing, and we were still 30 minutes on foot from our destination so we decided to try a little and support such an amazing looking stall see photos below.

Their shop has a Facebook page you can visit, they are called Merkamo, and are an Ethiopian vegan food stall. 
https://www.facebook.com/merkamolondon/

So after the a quick snack we were back on the street and again still heading for brunch, but we came across yet another market and it too had so much good food (and other things, but we were so hungry at this point all we could see and smell was food!)

Brick Lane - According to it's website Brick lane is "a chaotic, bustling artistic hub which attracts a lot of young Londoners in search of second-hand furniture, unusual clothes and bric-a-brac." 

I am not sure even what to describe this market as, there was a lot of culture and art! 

Kyran's words were "There is too much culture here for me"

Just in the area around there were murals painted on the walls of the street (see below), innovation-spaces and huge contrasts between old and new/re-purposed spaces.

The innovation space that I mentioned above was the Second Home Spitalfields - I would like to mention this place here as it was appealing to me as a entrepreneur and having been in a part of the entrepreneur community since university these types of places fascinate me, and renews my faith in humanity. 

If you could point a type of infrared detector are these types of places and if it read the ideas and passion that flies around places like this you would see it glowing bright red, places like this are where the future comes from. People like this are who are changing the world and to have so many different people with so many different ideas all in the same place it allows for input, networking, pivoting, the ability to bounce ideas off each other.  AMAZING!! that's what I have to say about places like this!  
https://secondhome.io/ (If you wanted to check it out)
    
At last we made a bee-line for the restaurant as we could stand the hunger no more, nor could we resist the amazing food smells that we were continuously surrounded by. 

90 Degree Melt - The American restaurant that we were so dedicated to get to (http://www.90degreemelt.co.uk/). 

Surprisingly the food was very decent, when you hear american food you think fatty, overly large portions, cheese, meat and sugar. This place did offer some amount of that but the:

Pancakes were wholemeal (I think) and banana with topping of banana, berries and rose petals,
Chili & Sausages: Were sausages with small hash browns/ potato gems, bread and a wholesome chili bean mix.

The Pesto mushrooms on toast was exactly that, no extra sauces, but we did get vegan cheese in the place of feta.

The Melt, (this was may favorite) pesto, vegan cheese, mushrooms, tomatoes, peppers/ capsicums all in an toasted sandwich, simple but delicious. 

After we had eaten enough we continued on to complete the mission that we had set out to achieve - to wander through Canary Wharf and see all the fancy modern architecture. 

Canary Wharf: During the Second World War, the docks made the East End a prime target for German bombing raids. If you shut down the docks, you made life difficult for all of the UK and not just London. It is estimated that the Germans dropped around 2,500 bombs into the area, destroying a lot of the dock areas and local housing.

The ships are now bigger then the docks so they had to move out the ports where the water was deeper.

After the wharves closed down the properties in this area were owned by a few different companies that could not agree on anything. As land in London was always at a premium the government stepped in and created the London Docklands Development Corporation. The rest is history, development boomed and even during our visit if you stood in one place and rotated 360 degrees there were at least 8 high rise buildings going up.

Canary wharf in now a financial hub as well as being home to private luxury accommodation. 

That my friends brings us to the end of another blog with the Findlaters and our travels around the world.

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