To Market! To Market!

Whenever my husband and I are in London visiting my sister and her family, we rarely miss the opportunity to visit the Portobello Road Market in Notting Hill. By noon, you can hardly move in the street. So making your way over to the wonderful tables full of shiny antique (and not so antique) silver, old wooden printing blocks, and even older prints requires a bit of ducking and sliding (and sometimes a little pushing and shoving). The line for the Hummingbird Bakery (alone worth the trip to London) is usually out the door and winding down the street, as enthusiastic tourists wait patiently for the best cupcake in the known universe. Standing at the top of the road and looking down, it's nothing but a sea of people. But when we found out we would be expecting our first little one, there was no crowd intimidating enough to keep me from making a trip to the market during our most recent stay in London.

I knew there was a stand there, loaded with old prints (well, if you consider 1950's old) of Babar the Elephant (a childhood favorite of mine) that I always knew I would put in a nursery when the time came. So at 32 weeks pregnant—by some miracle—we arrived just as the market was opening up. After a good 45 minutes of rifling through every print, and even requesting that more be pulled out, we found 4 perfect prints. And they do look beautiful in the nursery, just like I had imagined.

So if you find yourself in London on a Saturday and you don't mind crowds, it's worth a trip. Even if you are looking for nothing in particular, you never know, you might happen upon a treasure.