Covent Garden

Posted on 09. Aug, 2010 by Kirsty in Blog, Cities

In July my parents took me to London for a long weekend to celebrate my birthday and graduation.  We had been a few times before but London is such a big place that we still had lots of things we wanted to go and see. The main places on my list were the imperial war museum, the cabinet war rooms, the natural history museum and the London museum. All were really interesting and you can read a bit more about my adventures here

London is a very very very big place, but each day we seemed to end up in Covent Garden for one reason or another. I’m not complaining about this Covent Garden is a pretty cool place, it was a fruit and veg market since the 16^th century and the building which you can see today was built in the 18^th century as a more permanent structure.  But it is now home to a range of boutique shops, cafes and restaurants and is surrounded by more shops and a few markets.  Away from the square you can find yet more shops and just about any restaurant that takes your fancy. It’s safe to say that I loved it there and would recommend it to anyone.

The interior of Covent Garden © Copyright Bill Henderson

Just off one of the streets it has the world largest travel bookstore, called Stanfords – heaven! It just about stoked every book you could ever need if you wanted to go and explore the world.  It also had a whole street dedicated to outdoor shops this is a brilliant thing about London it seemed that each genre tended to stick by each other making shopping and comparing really simple.

The food was amazing too. On the first night we ended up in a burger place called Byron Hamburgers, which quite possibly sold the tastiest burger I have ever had. It’s cooked from freshly ground mince and still pink in the middle.  The second night we went to Fire and Stone which sold pizzas, but not just any pizzas these had very different toppings on. They were grouped from different continents, and named after a specific city. I had half a Texas and half a Canberra. Canberra had chicken, cheese, mushrooms and roast potatoes on. I was a little unsure how roasties would taste on a pizza…. but tried it all the same. It was amazing! And was quite possibly the best pizza I had ever had! (Best pizza and best burger! I was doing well!).

Fire and Stone Pizza with roast potatoes on

Not only is there a wide variety of food and shops in Covent Garden but the atmosphere is great too. Most of the time when you walked into the main square there was some type of street theatre. On our second visit we stopped and watched a really funny show with a guy in pink pants riding a unicycle and juggling knives, he then topped this off my juggling a chainsaw on a massive podium! I’m not sure I am doing him justice but it was pretty spectacular and very very funny! His facebook page is: Covent garden chainsaw juggler with great ass if you want to check him out. There’s also a few YouTube videos of him in action.

Covent garden chainsaw juggler with great ass doing his thing!

Of all the places in London that I have visited Covent Garden does seem to hold a special place in my heart and would recommend anyone who is heading to London to spend an afternoon there and hopefully you will catch the Covent garden chainsaw juggler with great ass act like I did!

Title picture by n_willsey

Tags: UK