London Day 4 - East End

Tuesday, 3 December 2019

London's East End is historically the poorer side of town being downwind from industry, but Rick Steves' guide has a self-guided walk, so off we went.  We took the Underground to Liverpool Street station where the walk started as soon as we popped out on the street.   We got a late start and it was around 1:30 PM, so I was starving.  Out of the corner of my eye I spotted a restaurant called Pilpel  The people were coming out with amazing looking falafels, which I now needed.  Holy wow....it was so good.  I wish I took a photo to share with you, but I was hungry and couldn't stop to take one, but believe me...it looked good and tasted amazing.

Now full, we were ready for the walk.  We walked through Spitalfields Market with market stalls and a food court.  I kind of wish we waited to eat here, but I was so happy with the falafel, that it didn't bother me too much.  We didn't buy anything, but I did look at everything.

Spitalfields Market

This is Christ Church with a 225-foot steeple.  This is actually a Protestant church built by Queen Anne in 1711 for the non-Church of England immigrants.

This is Brick Lane AKA Banglatown because of its high concentration of Bangladeshi residents.  This street also has multiple Indian restaurants each claiming to have the best, award winning curry and markets selling sweet and savory treats.  By the way...it was also in this area that in the fall of 1888, Jack the Ripper was terrorizing the neighborhood.

This smokestack belongs to Truman Brewery.  As soon as I read that, I was like...yes, I can use a beer.  Unfortunately, the brewery is gone and the building is now filled with markets.  We did walk around them, but as usually, we didn't buy anything.

Like most revitalizing neighborhoods, there is plenty of street art (poor Boris):

We wound up right on the boarder of the East End and The City, two very diverse area.  TIm enjoyed taking photos of the skyscrapers in The City and the older buildings of East End.

Beer...beer...time for beer.  I checked on google maps and there are 2 breweries another 25 minutes east of here.  Since we are already east of London, we decided that we should go for it since we are halfway there at this point.  So, onto an Underground to an Overground and after about 25 minutes we were in the neighborhood of Hackney Wick. 

We chose to go to Crate Brewery first since they have pizza and it is time to eat.  There is no photo of the pizza, but of course we have a photo of the flight we had.

Crate Brewery

After the flight, a pizza, and a couple of pints, we walked the 1 minute across the parking lot to Howling Hops Brewery.  There was a vegan Guatemala food truck there, so I ordered a sampler platter from them, and of course a flight from the bar.  This place actually have a very cool look.  Check out the bar on the right.  The beer is in those tanks...pretty cool.

Wow...they had a lot of tanks of beer.  The flight consisted of 10 beers...AWESOME!

Howling Hops Brewery

After more food and all this beer, we were pretty done.  We had a 1 hour train ride back to our apartment and got back around 10 PM.  Tomorrow we are going to visit Tower of London and we want to get there early before the huge crowds.  So, until then...