Labour & Wait

Labour and Wait is a cute little shop on Redchurch Street. Charlotte and I walked in there while looking for a gift for her dad. The store is like a mini man's paradise having items for dogs, gardening, and their tool box. And of course I was happy to look around the shop when I found a blue and white striped shirt. I have a little obsession with white and blue stripes. 

What I loved the most about this shop was the way they organized everything into beautiful tins, making the shop seem tidy and clean but giving it that little extra personality. They also had artisanal cooking items, a beautiful wooden spoon happened to catch my eye.

Labour and Wait is one of the best places in London to get a friend a house warming gift, or treat yourself with something new for your house. Every item seems to have a little story and a perfect purpose. And the people who work there are nice too!

Here's their website: http://www.labourandwait.co.uk/

Muji

Whenever I need to by anything small for the house or school the first place I think of is Muji. I think as a shop they produce amazing quality goods, for decent prices as well as giving us something of design. I recently went there to buy folders, notebooks and highlighters. Unlike other stationary shops in the UK they allow you to pick out the pens you want, in the colours you want and they don't cost £2 per pen. 

They also have bathroom accessories and amazing storage boxes. Every time I go in there I want to buy half the store just so my room will be all organised and matching. Luckily this time I was able to stop myself and only splurge on a new make-up case, which happens to be the best thing I bought there too. It even has a pocket for your toothbrush! 

Overall, I think their simplistic Japanese design is great for the overcrowded and colourful houses of Europe. All their items do their purpose flawlessly and everything is very long lasting. Maybe if you're writing some really long exam papers the pen will run out after the 3rd exam but that's normal of all pens. I just really love everything I've bought there. I got a watch from them back in 2010 and its still perfect. 

Here's their website: http://www.muji.eu/

Nelly Duff Print Shop

Columbia Road is amazing for many things including cute print shops and homeware stores. Each store is the ground floor of a little house, and it reminds me of shopping in small home owned stores. East London takes a lot of pride in the independent. It being shops, cafes, restaurants, everything has its own distinct style and personnel that cares a lot about the place where they work. 

Nelly Duff is an amazing little print shop, they have a variety of different artists' work. Most of the things they sell follow a fun and bright theme. They have a wall of books and cards all showcasing London in a great light. My favourite thing on that wall was a print featuring "Beigel Bake" a store on Brick Lane. 

If I had a stable home for a couple of years I would love to get some prints from here to decorate my home. Who wouldn't want a giant print of a fork next to their fridge? To me, prints are amazing gifts, especially since it shows you know a person's taste, and it's an unexpected gift. If they had a neon elephant I'd love that for my birthday. 

You can browse through their prints here: http://www.nellyduff.com/

Solid Id

Solid Id is a cute little pop-up shop for homeware in Spitalfields. I didn't buy anything there, but I did fall in love with a few pieces. They have vintage styled items integrated with modern design. And they have amazing candles too.

The people working in store are very friendly and will offer you a helping hand if you need anything, but they don't pester you like staff do in some independent stores. When you walk in it smells amazing just as though you had gotten home. Its warm and inviting, more so than other stores in the area.

I just went in there to browse but I'm really happy I did, if I have any friends looking for something a little bit more different and unique I'll tell them to shop there. I must have picked up at least five or six things that I thought would look great in my place. 

Too bad its a pop-up shop though, since I don't know when they'll leave. Maybe I should impulse buy something from them soon. Or simply buy something from them online. 

Here’s their website: http://solidid.co.uk/

Pitfield

Pitfield is a really nice home decor store that doubles as a café. Its really cute, welcoming and the food is really delicious. The people who work behind are all French, and to me that means they must know something about food, as well as their coffee. Because the French, the Spanish, the Portuguese, the Greeks and the Italians know about food. We have a saying "We live to eat" whereas the others "eat to live". We look for the joys in food, and I think that's what makes me a foodie too. 

I walked in with a few friends, and we went straight to ordering food, I hadn't had anything to eat yet that day. I got a salad, but not one of those weird leafy things. I got a mix of feta cheese, tomatoes, olives, and olive oil as well as cold pasta. And as an Italian I usually stray away from cold pasta salads, but this one was incredible, it almost made me wish I had only gotten the pasta part of it. 

I loved the inside of the place too, because there was a random bronze octopus in the corner and there were loads of cute little details. The section of it that was a store had really strange colour combinations, it was kind of eclectic but somehow everything looked like it was in style, and it fit. Maybe that's just because the place is in Shoreditch. 

Here's the website of the place: http://www.pitfieldlondon.com/

Also do you think I should start including mini maps to show the locations of the places? Comment to let me know what you think.

Kew Gardens

My friend Daniella and I escaped the city life for an afternoon and went to Kew Gardens, the Royal Botanical Gardens in west London.You do have to stay on the District Line for quite a while to get there, and there is an entry fee, but it was worth it. We brought a picnic with us, but we stopped and looked through the "Palm House" a huge green house devoted to plants from near the equator. On the lower level of the Palm House there was also a small aquarium where we saw seahorses and jelly fish as well as other different fish species. 

We then went on to have our picnic on the grass beneath a tree. It was great because it was a sunny day, and the park had a lot of people walking around but no one really disturbed each other because we were all trying to take in the nature and the experience. We stopped in an area of the park to then take photos of us in a huge bush of hydrangeas. And then went on to a wooden structure they built to see the view from the trees, which was pretty nice, I enjoyed seeing how far the park could stretch on, and we did get a little bit of sun. 

Of course when glancing through the flyers they gave us at the entrance we saw that there was an ice-cream shop which sold orchid flavoured ice-cream. So that's where we headed next. We walked through the Queen's Garden and back around to the Café with the ice-cream. But they didn't have orchid ice-cream that day so we ended up choosing apricot, honey and yogurt flavour, which was incredible. 

We then went to look at the green house filled with cacti and succulents which is names the Princess of Wales green house. And then we went on to the Rock Garden. After that we walked through some shops and sat down in front of a chapel like house, to relax before going home.

Going to Kew Gardens was a perfect afternoon, and I'd probably go again, because we were unable to see the whole park in one day. Here's their website: http://www.kew.org/

L'Eau a la Bouche

Walking through Broadway Market sometimes you just want to sit down and people watch. My friend and I struggled to get seats here, at L'Eau a la Bouche, because so many people are doing what we planned to do, sit and watch the people walk by. Previously I had been in this shop/cafe, to buy mortadella and other southern European foods. I really enjoyed the food I bought, and I had finished it really quickly. But this time we just wanted to get coffee and look at the people walking by.

Originally we had brought books with us to read in the crowded cafe, but I think I was only able to read 4 pages in the two hours that we sat there. It was just such a good view. We were able to see different families walking past, with cute children stopping to listen to and clap for the street musicians. We also saw the different ways people talk to each other, and analysed body language of different groups of people. It was also a good way to see what clothes we liked and which shoes I wanted to buy. 

They probably would have let us sit there for a lot longer, but the market was closing and there were less people to watch, and it had been a while since we had finished our coffees. But if you ever feel lonely in London, sitting there on a Saturday afternoon will really cheer you up.

Here's their website: http://www.labouche.co.uk/

Rokit

Rokit on Brick Lane takes up 3 shop windows. I've walked past it a lot because I went in there with my parents once and I didn't like it. With my flatmate Emily, I decided to try it out again. The first and last door lead to small vintage shops and the middle door has really modern clothes from small English clothing labels.

The vintage sections are really cheap, with the clothes divided really well by cut, length and type. All the cropped t-shirts are together, that way you don't have to spend ages in the shop looking for them. The women's wear spreads into the men's wear section a bit. There's at least one of everything in every colour you just have to be lucky enough for the colour you like to be your size but I guess that's always the case with vintage clothes.

The middle store is beautiful, its divided into mini boutiques where each small label has its specific section. All the clothes are hung in size and colour order. So you don't even have to sort through to find the thing you want. Everything has an interesting design or print. There was this one sweater I really wanted. But I think I'm going to try to survive without it because after all it does cost 40 pounds, and I don't really need it.

I thought it was really cool that the shop is divided because it helped me shop better in each individual one and I could focus more on what I needed to buy instead of what I thought I might wear. You can shop online at http://www.rokit.co.uk 

Wasabi

Wasabi is a huge food chain company that is all over London. They make sushi, bento and other Japanese style hot dishes too. I've only ever had the sushi. What I love about their sushi is its really really cheap. You can get 2 salmon nigiri (the one with the slice of fish over a bed of rice) for one pound. You can also get 4 avocado or cucumber hosomaki (small rolls with seaweed holding it together) for one pound.

Being a student I tend to go there a lot because I love sushi, and I can't really afford more expensive sushi that often. I've eaten at Yo!Sushi in Harvey Nichols but I didn't like it as much. I think one of the main things I like about Wasabi is how quickly you can get everything you want, and if you choose to make your own pick of sushi you can fill up a whole box-tray or you can leave it half empty depending on how hungry you are. 

Also one of the things I actually like is that you get to unwrap your sushi individually so you get to touch your food before you eat it, making you more excited and hungry. Its kind of annoying that they charge you for soy sauce (considering I use a lot of it), but at least its in a small package, making it more transportable. I've even eaten Wasabi on the tube. Here's their website: www.wasabi.uk.com

Amathus

On the 5th of May before going to Islington we stopped in Soho for a tequila tasting at Amathus. Amathus is a wine shop with several small stores around London, at their Soho store they have enough space to set up a bunch of tables in the middle/back of the shop. On the biggest table at the rear of the shop there were a few employees making margheritas in tiny little shot glasses. They later handed out these glasses to everyone in the store, if you weren't holding anything they gave you one. 

There was also a woman that makes her own queso, which in her case is a specific type of cheese, a younger version of queso manchego. It was really refreshing and taste-y, a really good contrast to the alcohol. She also had a chili spread if you wanted to add more flavour to the cheese. 

The smallest table, closest to the entrance was serving tequila. There are 3 main different types of tequila. White tequila, which is the youngest just taken from the plant, reposado tequila which is slightly aged tequila (reposado means rested) and anejo tequila which is the most aged and darkest tequila. Out of all these tequilas I liked the white one the best because its got the freshest and lightest taste where as the darkest tequila is very similar to whiskey. 

Overall, I really like the musical atmosphere because they had a mariachi band playing and everyone was incredibly happy and friendly. I was really tempted to buy one of their t-shirts that said "tequila is never enough" but they didn't have any left in my size. Maybe I'll have better luck next year. 

Here's their website: http://www.amathusdrinks.com/