Above Ground on the London Underground—-Day 56: The East End of London [From the Cereal Killer Cafe to the V&A Museum of Childhood]


If it's Friday we must be back in London. Every Friday I take a virtual walking tour ‘above ground’ on the London Underground. Using my Tube guide & my fitbit® device, my goal is to walk 10,000 steps a day roughly following along the Underground route, reporting back here on Fridays with my findings We're currently following the Central Line. Here are the previous days. This is Day 56
.
I’m starving! Time for brekkie. I don’t know about you, but I don’t start my day, not every day anyway, with what they call the full English breakfast: fried eggs, stewed tomatoes, sausage, toast, beans (beans, ugh) black pudding (blood sausage, yikes! but my dad loved ’em) and, oh I dunno, mushrooms, avocado, etc. My dad would have added fried bread.

 Not my breakfast. I’m a cereal woman. Usually Cheerios with a sliced banana. Sometimes porridge. That’s oatmeal to you, Yankee. To be honest, calling my Quaker Oats “porridge’’ is one of my few remaining shout outs to my British heritage. Another is calling what you term a washcloth, a flannel but I digress.

Cereal Killer Cafe


9 out of 10 days, I’m all about my Cheerios, so imagine my delight when I learned the Cereal Killer Cafe is just down the way from where we departed last week’s walk at Petticoat Lane and where I can get my usual bowl. Or because it's the Cereal Killer Cafe maybe I’ll broaden my horizons and get something really cray cray as the kids say: a bowl of Brit Krave hazelnut cereal with bubble gum flavored milk and Reese’s pieces or Rollos chocolate candies on top. With cereals from all over the world, there are hundreds of variations of cereal, milk and topping combos to try. Don’t like cereal? They’ve got poptarts. Who doesn’t like poptarts? You? Okay, how about toast? With marmite and something they call ‘popping candy spread.’

 Run by a pair of twin brothers, the cafe is on Brick Lane and the object of controversy. The Keery twins are accused of gentrifying the neighborhood, pushing high end pricey and trendy foodstuff instead of creating anything for use by the local community in which they’ve inserted their colorful little restaurant. Judging from the lines, the 1%ers don’t seem to care.

 Close to Spitalfields and Petticoat Lane, the cafe is in a part of the East End of London that’s seeing a lot of spiffing up lately, a center for fashion and the arts, the area is known for producing cutting edge artists such as Banksy, Stik, ROA, D*Face, Ben Eine and Omar Hassan.

 Breakfast out of the way and my milk mustached dabbed away, we’ll head over to the Columbia Road Flower Market to stop and smell the roses.
 image via timeout.com

From the Columbia Road Flower Market website: 

“We are one of the few streets in the country composed of sixty independent shops. Small art galleries sit next to cup cake shops, vintage clothes stores, English and Italian delis, garden and antique shops. There is also a wealth of great pubs, cafes and restaurants. The shops have a common thread, a love of the flower market and its history, and a refusal to be dictated to by a retail world where the sense of fun has all but gone.’’

image via visitlondon.com

As far as the flower growers go, I couldn’t help noticing that 7 out of the 8 flower growers featured on the site are men. The remaining grower is a married couple. Just saying when you stop to pick up a bouquet, who knows you may pick up something else.


Victoria & Albert Museum of Childhood

 image via V&A Museum of Childhood

Our bellies fed in yummy kid style fashion, let’s feed the kid inside a bit more at the V&A Museum of Childhood in Bethnal Green. There are four main galleries in the museum focusing on Childhood, Moving Toys, Creative and the Front Room gallery. Dollhouses, old-fashioned toys, moving objects like k'nex and all kinds of building sets from Legos to Meccanos.  Full of old and new fashioned ways kids can interact with each other and the world, the Museum of Childhood may be about kids, and for kids, but like cereal, grown ups like it too.
image via V&A Museum of Childhood

I think I’ll just stay here and revisit my youth. The museum has over 100 dolls' houses on display throughout the museum, dolls' houses that remind me of the old fashioned doll house my dad made me back in the day. While I’m sure I coveted a Barbie’s doll house complete with swimming pool and a convertible in the garage, that doll house my dad made and mother decorated when I was 8 or 9 years old, is what I remember. My father wasn’t the handy type—he didn’t have a garage with a workbench and tools, and I don’t recall him hammering anything but the occasional nail to hang a picture—but somehow he built a two story dollhouse about 3 feet high, down in our basement, taking me completely by surprise on my birthday. The acrid smell of the glue they used to stick the carpet down on the floor and wallpaper to the walls—they’d gotten hold of books of carpet and wall paper samples, probably from a vendor my dad worked with at the store he managed—is a scent that sticks in my nose to this day when I think of doll houses.

 Let me get in there and have a look see at what else they’ve got. There are art sessions where I can build a puppet (although it’s probably an activity reserved for the kiddies) there are storytimes where kids can help tell stories using props and exploring sessions where children are given short talks about a display and then given a chance to handle it themselves.  Beyond that I’m not sure how interactive the place is, lots and lots on display but it doesn’t look like there’s that many things a kid can actually play with.

 Correct me if I’m wrong, please.

 Still, admission is free but I’d happily part with a fiver for the trip back to my childhood.

Sidenote: It looks like the museum does a pretty decent job for kids with special needs, from autism to the visually impaired 


 ‘‘Making SENse Family Packs
Making SENse packs are designed to make the Museum more accessible for families with additional needs, and are available to borrow from the Information Desk for one hour. Packs are available for families with children on the autistic spectrum, with toys to touch, sound mufflers, PECs symbols, a photo booklet and colouring in sheets. There are also packs for families with a visually impaired child, containing large print, Braille translation, raised images, a Penfriend audio guide and toys to touch.’’






 Cereal Killer Cafe
139 Brick Ln, London E1 6SB
 +44 20 3601 9100
Columbia Road Flower Market
Columbia Rd, London E2 7RG,

 V&A Museum of Childhood
Cambridge Heath Rd, London E2 9PA, UK

Counting the Fitbit steps



Day 1-55:                                                        382,590 steps/167.75 miles


Day 56: Liverpool Station            .               7000 steps/3.5miles
                                                          

Total Imaginary Miles to Date                 389,590 steps/171.25









 Connect to Joy Weese Moll's British Isles Friday meme

Popular posts from this blog

5 Ways to feel like you’re in France when you don’t have the francs

Image
Are you Dreaming of France but finding yourself short of the francs you need to take you there? Ladies and Gentlemen, Mesdames et Messieurs, step right up and j oin my travel club and take a journey that won’t cost you a red hot centime. Because this is a trip you take in your mind. Okay, it ’ s not exactly there -there but if you can ’ t actually get to Paris or the Cote d ’ azur, it ’ s the next best thing.  Here ’ s five things to pack in your virtual valise to put you in a French  state of mind.  Substituting French words for English is a great starting point... Un: French Ambience Pretend you live on a charming street near the Eiffel Tower with the simple application of this artistically incorrect mural. How do you say cheesy in french? Or better yet, decorate your home with every  Eiffel tower you can find — never mind most self-respecting French citizens would likely prefer to leave the tour  Eiffel on the Champ de Mars  where  it belongs.  Deux: La mus
Continue Reading »

Baker Street Station—Sherlock Holmes was there

Image
Baker Street Station The main thing my husband wanted to see in London was London ... as Sherlock Holmes saw it. So our first move, like any fan of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's creation was to take a double decker bus to Baker Street. As it turns out I read the map upside down or sideways or maybe it was backwards but we found ourselves in Putney at the bridge. Very much in the wrong direction. Over half an hour by car, which we didn't have. We wound up taking the tube back in the right direction which delivered us to the Baker Street Station. The station is one of the original stations opened when the Metropolitan Railway—the world's first underground railway—was built in 1863.  While we don't immediately think of Sherlock dashing out on the tube, he very well could have and in fact the rail, train etc is alluded to in several dozen Sherlock stories. The Baker Street station is situated on the very block where Sherlock lived at 221B Baker Street. Or should I say th
Continue Reading »

Above Ground on the London Underground—Day 46: White City

Image
If it's Friday we must be back in London.   Every Friday I take a virtual walking tour ‘above ground’ on the London Underground. Using  my Tube guide & my fitbit® device, my goal is to walk 10,000 steps a day roughly following along the Underground route, reporting back here on Fridays with my findings.  Here are the previous days . This is Day 46. Today we’re walking from the Ealing Broadway underground station to White City. The trek is 4.2 miles which should clock in at just about 10,000 steps.  Back in 1908, the area was transformed from Shepherd’s Bush farm land into the location for the Franco-British exhibition and the 1908 Summer Olympics. Called the white city because of the white cladding of the ornate exhibition buildings, the area was used for the Japan-British exhibition in 1910, the Latin-British exhibition in 1912, and finally the Anglo-American exhibition in 1914 when WWI put an end to it. After that the White City was left to fall into disrepair and ult
Continue Reading »