London's lovely lady Liberty
Since Halloween is now over, I see Christmas decorations for sale everywhere and last night I received an email that the holiday drinks are available at Starbucks.
If by chance you are traveling to London and want to get some Christmas shopping in, here are the top department stores in London. Most of these stores also have cafes and restaurants that give you a moment to recharge your shopping batteries.
Let us start with the official grocer to The Queen, Fortnum & Mason, the quintessential English store that has been selling food, luggage, home wares and clothes to London’s finest since 1707. This beautiful store has four restaurants and sells the most wonderful food delicacies. If you want specialist teas or exquisite hampers, then this is the place to go.
Next is a tourist destination in itself, established in 1849 as a grocery store, today Harrods offers everything from food to fashion, furniture to sportswear plus 20 restaurants and specialist services including dog coat fitting and piano tuning. Sights include the Egyptian Hall and the Pet Department. At night, the store is illuminated by 11,500 light bulbs.
The favorite shopping destination of Edina and Patsy from the hilarious show, Absolutely Fabulous, is a must for any fashionista. Harvey Nichols brings together an impressive range of designers from around the world and supplies an elite clientele with fine clothes, accessories, cosmetics, food and shoes.
The next store I had never heard of until I accompanied my London friend as she bought items for her baby’s nursery. John Lewis is a much-loved chain of department stores and has a large branch on Oxford Street, stocking nearly half a million products from buttons to beds and cushions to cufflinks. The store boasts seven floors of fashion, beauty, home and technology products, plus a new Brasserie and Bistro with a panoramic view of the West End.
The building that houses Liberty is a beautiful Tudor revival that was constructed from the timbers of two ships: HMS Impregnable and HMS Hindustan. The frontage on Great Marlborough Street is the same length as the Hindustan. It is a Grade II listed building. Opened in 1875, Liberty is one of London’s most traditional stores, but venture inside and you’ll find a whole host of cutting-edge ranges.
London’s flagship Marks & Spencer at Marble Arch boasts an impressive range of affordable buys. Staples like lingerie and clothing are joined by flowers, furniture and fabrics. There’s also Café Revive and the mouth-watering aisles of the food hall – enough to keep even the most intrepid shopper occupied. I know that while I am on the run in London I can always stop into a M & S and get some juice and a yummy sandwich.
You will see their yellow shopping bags (or as the Brits say carrier bags) all over London. Whatever you’re after – bags, shoes, cosmetics, books, a specialty food hall or cafés – you’ll find it at Selfridges. This is the department store that Alan Rickman and Emma Thompson go Christmas shopping in Love Actually with a side-splitting turn by Rowan Atkinson as a jewelry salesman.
Did I miss your favorite store?
Photo credit: Hauteworld.com
Lindsay is a DVD developer at Acorn Media, which means she watches TV all day. Away from work, she is plotting her next trip, playing with French bulldogs or has her nose in a book. Secretly wishes she could have an elephant as a pet.
As I do almost every day, I watch and run quality control tests on our programs before they go into replication. This past February I was watching a program from Athena called The Code. Episode three, which is called “Prediction” had a wonderful experiment that the host conducted with a jar of jelly beans and 400 office workers. It’s quite simple: he put over 4,000 jelly beans in a jar and asked for everyone’s guess of how many were in there. The guesses were all over the map from extremely low to 80,000. His point was that if you add up all the guesses and divide them by the number of guesses (the average) you would almost get the exact number. 
