Monday night in London, after all the museums and most of the tourist attractions were closed, was a day set aside for some shopping -- but it actually turned out to be window shopping more than anything else.
My boyfriend had heard that the flagship Dr. Martens store was in London, and he does love him some shoes. Unfortunately, if either of us was expecting a trip to shoe-topia, we were a bit disappointed. The store was neither large nor particularly unique; it was just one tiny location in the midst of a pedestrian mall area known as Covent Garden. The whole area itself was a minor interest for its sprawl and variety, but wasn't fundamentally different from a place like Pearl Street Mall in Boulder or 16th Street Mall in Denver. So the shoes were a bust.
To reach something of the scale we were perhaps hoping for, we next swung over to Harrod's, a massive department store filling a full city block and rising six stories. The only thing larger than Harrod's are the prices at Harrod's. I don't think we ever had any intention of seeing the whole store, but we'd barely made it through a third of it before we'd been assaulted with enough items at markups of 200-300% to pack it in.
So not a highlight of the trip, certainly. But like I said, the best tourist attractions in London simply aren't open late.
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