BES Assignment 5

The East End: London's Contemporary Art Centre

For this assignment we had to walk around and explore London's East End. The walk started at Liverpool Street station after taking the tube. It then took us north past Spital Square. The first point of interest is dennis Severs' House. This is an 18th century house that has been wonderfully restored. Next we went to Spitalfields Market. It was packed! We found a stand that made smoothies and took advantage of the opportunity. There were also a lot of quirky stands selling material items like hand-made coasters. The next structure of significance is the Christ Church. It was beautiful, but honestly at this point in the semester, I think I am a little 'churched out'. So unfortunately I don't think I fully appreciated it's beauty. Our next sight was the Whitechapel Bell Foundry. I remembered seeing it from when we went to Tayyab's. It is really cool to think that the Liberty Bell came from that building. It felt almost surreal that the foundry was still standing and that this simple building is older than the United States. From there we retraced our steps and went back to Brick Lane. I have been here a couple times already, once during the day and once at night. Packed to the brim both times. There are some cool shops that are relatively cheap. We stumbled into a warehouse of some sort food heaven. There was every kind of ethnicity represented here: English, Mexican, Sri Lankan, Ethiopean, chinese, Italian, and a few I had never heard of. We ended up getting Ethiopean, which helped me with my goal of expanding my horizons. There was a lot of chickpeas, beans, lentil stew, and koose-koose. It was actually pretty delightful. I would eat it again. After that we headed back to Liverpool Street and visited some small market stands on the way.

Overall, I enjoyed the East End. There was uniquely beautiful architecture and wonderful shops. Not to mention that the East End is generally a little cheaper on the whole.