By Michael Downing
Carnaby Street
Located in London’s West End, Carnaby Street features more than 100 shops and more than 60 bars and restaurants. The fashion side includes Birkenstock, Cole Buxton, Izipizi, Paul Smith, and Scotch and Soda. Restaurants include Dehesa, Inko Nito, Polpo, and Tapas Brindisa. Click here for Carnaby Magazine 2023.
Shopper’s heaven.
We walked around and checked out some of the stores. Shopping is a bit of a challenge because when you are packing one medium suitcase and one carry-on, there’s not a lot of room for designer outfits. There’s not much room for souvenirs (hunt for flat items: commemorative coins, magnets, flags, postcards).
We mostly browsed.
The history of Carnaby Street is interesting, Wikipedia suggests that the street was “probably laid out in 1685 or 1686” and was notable for a cholera outbreak in 1854, which led to “an early application of fundamental epidemiological principles to resolve the crisis.”
The John Snow was the pub on the corner of our block, two blocks from Carnaby Street. They do a steady business, day and night. Apparently, Dr. John Snow, for whom the pub was named, proved himself a local hero when he recognized that the cases of cholera were “concentrated near a pump on Broad Street.” His findings led to the pump being locked and “the reduction in cases of cholera was rapid.”
By the 1950s, Carnaby Street was a “shabby Soho backstreet,” which slowly but surely transformed into a global fashion destination largely by a male fashion photographer named Bill “Vince” Green, who opened a boutique called “Vince” and took photos of such British icons as boxer Billy Walker and Sean Connery (Wikipedia link just above).
Liberty Department Store
If you walk to the north end of Carnaby Street and take a left onto Great Marlborough, you’ll arrive at Liberty Department Store. It is incredibly gorgeous on the outside (see images below). The external timbers, they say, were salvaged from an old ship. The inside is equally gorgeous. We wandered all the way to the top floor (fifth) and then back down again. Thought about buying fabric (it’s flat) but, again, there is much wisdom in keeping your credit card in your wallet because otherwise you’d be blowing up your budget every day. This was a place that we did not know about beforehand but was magic when we found it.
Postcards
A tip on buying and sending postcards: Before we traveled, we put together a list of approximately 15 people who we wanted to send postcards to. Little by little on our travels, we bought postcards with certain people in mind: Some cards were traditional London with guards marching at Buckingham Palace, some were of The Beatles and Liverpool, some were Edinburgh architecture, some in Oban…all beautiful. But here’s the catch: the cards themselves cost about £1-£2 so that, times, equals ~£22.5. Postage was £2.25. So that, times 15, equals £33.75
That’s £56.25, total, which equals $70.31 American. My advice: Buy Global Forever stamps from the USPS before you go. They cost $1.55 and “can be used to send a postcard or 1 oz letter to any country in the world. You can also use any combination of stamps that adds up to $1.55” (USPS).
So the last part of this postcard art project was to have a cool, local postmark, so we saved the cards until we got to Oban–romantic and far-away Oban–and asked the postmaster directly whether the cards would have the Oban postmark and we were assured they would.
“Okay, that was pricey,” we thought, “but it’s going to be cool for our friends to see the Oban postmark.”
When in your life did you ever get a postcard with an Oban postmark? We were chuffed.
But then when we got back to the States, we checked in with family and saw that there was no Oban postmark at all, just a bit of orange bar-code type lines vaguely in the area of the stamp. Actually, the stamp itself didn’t even look cancelled. We were a disappointed. Seems a local postmark is increasingly a thing of the past. So, when you go, buy the Global Forever stamps and don’t sweat local postmark.
Oxford Street
Two blocks north of Liberty Department Store is the world-famous Oxford Street, which is massive in scale (it’s a wide cavern that stretches as far as the eye can see) and features more shopping than you can warp your head around, along with massive selection of food and drink. There are also hotels.
Compared to the two-person-wide sidewalks of Soho, Oxford is like a human six-lane highway. We found it curious that pedestrians in London do not tend to follow driving practices like we do in America. Americans tend to move toward the right when they walk on the sidewalk. In London, official driving practice made no difference. We were ready to follow along with any kind of accepted practice but there was none, which made Oxford Street into a human obstacle course, featuring approximately 50,000 contestants. It was truly a battle and were glad to be off that thoroughfare, back to the more narrow sidewalks of Soho.
House of MinaLima
Back in Soho, were we stopped at House of MinaLima. The two owners, Miraphora Mina and Eduardo Lima began working together in 2001 to “imagine and create the graphic universe of the Harry Potter film series for Warner Brothers.” Mina has a degree in Theatre Design from London’s Central Saint Martins School of Art and Design. Lima graduated in 1997 with a degree in Visual Communications from Pontifical Universidade Catolica in Rio de Janeiro. The House of MinaLima is a “gallery and store showcasing their entire treasury of graphic works.” Very cool and well worth seeing.
At the end of the day, we headed back to 45 Broadwick Street and stopped for dinner at The Ugly Dumpling.
On our accommodations
Upon our return, the question popped up: “Where did you stay? Hotel…hostel…AirBnB?”
We stayed at AirBnBs and were completely satisfied. All of our hosts were great and everything went smoothly. The primary reason we chose AirBnBs is because we prefer to eat in our flat, rather than dining out constantly and when you stay in a hotel, it’s easy to dine out for every meal.
I actually love to cook–it takes me to a relaxing place in my brain, which is nice for me because my job requires so much brainpower. So we cook pasta, big salads, full breakfasts. We also eat apples and grapes and drink lots of water. We plan to go the Air BnB route again when we visit Ireland.
Slides
Photos below include Carnaby Street, Liberty Department Store (exterior), Liberty Department Store (interior), So High Soho Gift Shop, treats in a Soho window, letters to Harry Potter in House of MinaLima. All photos by Michael Downing.
My Writing Wanderland 