Today was such a nice day. I took my time getting up and I updated my blog before I got ready for the day. Anna Marie and I met at the Regent's Park Station and then we met the rest of the class on the steps of St. Paul's Cathedral at 2:30. We started our tour from there and it was so fun walking around The City. It feels completely different than any other part of London we've been to so far.
Even though it was only 3:00pm in the afternoon, there were business men in their suits lining every street. You could definitely tell this was the business district. The first thing we saw was the mall. It was so different from an American mall. It was so open and had such an airy feel to it. You could enter all of the stores from the outside. Almost all of the stores were completely open with glass fronts.
The next stop on our tour was the Royal Exchange. It's a big building they think was once used as a stock exchange or something but now it's converted into a mall. We walked inside and it was incredible. The middle was used as a restaurant and there were small stores lining the building. They too were mostly glass windows and no walls. All of the stores were high end and designer. The building itself was very ornate but also discrete. You would never know it was like a mall unless you went inside.
The stores around the Royal Exchange were exemplary of the area also. They were business-like, open, luxurious, and very masculine. Everything had dark colors and rough fixtures. My favorite window display was Louis Vuitton. They had men's white button down shirts in a square around a single piece of luggage. Of course the luggage was the LV brown. The background was also a deep brown and played off of the masculinity of the luggage.
Our last stop was the Leadenhall Market. This is one of London's best kept secrets. The structure itself is very historic and survived the blitz. When the area was being rebuilt, they decided to turn it into a small shopping area. It was very decorative and had cobblestone streets throughout it, which I think is the most unique part about it. It wasn't as open as the other places we saw today. It had designer shops within it but the market itself felt very informal. There was street art being displayed in the middle of it and music playing around it.
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