The smell of London in the morning, the rambling of tubes, the river of human faces. Going to London, for me, means a cheerful combination of the following: shopping, pubbing and going to the theater. Decadent you say? Decadent indeed, since London is the decadent capital of the world. This is no place to look for spirituality, enlightment or rest. That is, you might as well find any of those  here, just as in any other city in the world, only this is not what London is all about. London is all about culture and style. And this page is about style.

Generally speaking, my favorite shopping places in London are Covent Garden, Neal street and Floral street (all near the Covent Garden tube station on James street).

This entire area is not only beautifil and cheerful but it also offers some of the hottest and coolest names in the clothing, shoes, accessories etc industry. A walking distance from the theaters of Leicster Square and the Soho, with its colorful market and lots and lots of tiny (and not so tiny) stores, Covent Garden is the place I love most in London. To name just a few of the great shops in this area are Nine West (great shoes), gadgets.com (a crowdy trandy gadgets store. Claims to be very high-tech..), Agnes B (a young fashion designer whose store in Paris was one of the most beautiful I have ever been to. Watch your purses girls! This is very expensive..) has a store on Floarl street.

The Covent Graden itself is always full of music, street shows and concerts. The new age store on its first level has a huge cpollection of Tarot cards. Right out side of it you can find a live string concert, dancing violinists or young japanease boy playing a 3000 year old brass instrument. The Pollack toy museum store on the street level is wonderful and holds many fun and beautifully designed items. There are lots and lots of great toy stores (Peter Rabbit and Friends, Hemmli's, the dolls house store etc). The place is also full of places to eat and drink (my favorite pub, Punch & Judy is there on the street level).

And now, here are my favorite shopping places in this area!

20 The Market Covent Garden London WC2 020 7379 7401	Whistels is my favorite store in London. Tough pretty expensive, they offer the most beautiful collectoin of different young european fashion designers (much like Katomenta and Razili in Tel-Aviv). All extremely cool, top of the line quality garments which can make a girl proud. Their dresses are fluffy, romantic and all in all - perfect. Yes, a dress might as well coost you some 300 LS but they also have a nice last year's leftovers room which sells for about 50% less (and sometimes more) than its original price.  Another great advantage they have - their cloths come in size 16 too (and not only up to 12 like most designer store I know).
Paul King's store on Floral street is a real wacky one. This designer has a very cool funky style. Mostly portaying his favorte monkey and friends and japanease cartoons inspired stuff. Here you will be able to find the coolest bags and purses (colorful and with all sort of cute and sometimes very strange illustrations), the coolest T-shirts, pijamas and clubwear. The coolest designer I have seen and in ruther reasonable prices. I got me a pink hamster backpack, a purple worried teddybear hand bag, a shirt and a cool monkey pijama for my brother. Fun fun fun!
	Located in a nice little mall on Neal street (with another branch, which adress is on the card on the left) High Jinks offers a wide collection of clubbing and rapping outfits. I bought  the coolest trousers ever - long, loose fit corderoys that are as wide as the sea. Each pant could easily be used as a skirt  and still some room would be left. Le look de tres cool!

39 Floral street, Covent Garden London WC2E  www.camper.com	The spanish Camper sell high quality comfort shoes, that come with a full 6 months guarantee. They are beautiful, comfortable and expensive (around 60-100 LS a pair). They didn't have the pair I dreamed on since April, but I did get me a nice black strange sole pair instead. Oh well..
37 Neal Street, Covent Garden Lodon WC2H 020 7240 2783	Birkenstock sell anatomically designed comfort shoes which are extremely beautiful. Though I sinf them very expensive, I heard that there are people who go to London just to buy a pair or two for the new season. I liked what I saw very much, but thank god I couldn't get a pair, due to my flat feet which cause problems with such shoes. My bank account was safe (for now).

The Neal Street East bookstore, on 5 Neal street, holds a huge collection of orienthal specialty books and items. They have a japanease water color painting corner, art books and a department for every eastern philisophy and religion known to men (some were new to me). The owbern is eager to help and very friendly and a large amount of staff members can help you find what you are looking for. They also have a not very impressing (to us middle easterns at least..) clothing department with all sorts of far east and indian dresses and colorful fabrics.

I got me some japanease brushes, a "teach yourself to do japanease water color paintings" book for begginers and some body paiting henna kits. Lovely. Even lovelyer when it rains outseide and you have all the time in the world.

Last but not least, my good old favorite accessories store. Even though I am older now, and with less hair to play around with, this chain of stores never fails to draw me in to any of their many many branches (they have about 4 in the Covent Garden area only). This is the most colorful store chain on the face of the earth - Accessorize.
 

Equipped with the greatest collection of hats, bags, jewls, scarves, gloves, makeup and any other fashion accessory you can (and can't) imagine, this store has it all. Though the makeup is somethingI wouldn't recommend to a girl over 5 years old, their hats and bags are the coolest and the prices are friendly. You can match colors and create a complete look, from your earings to your hair pins and purse. I love it!

For a list of their stores, go to: www.accessorize.co.uk

How about some  ?

me