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| Our house at 413 Fulham Road |
Apparently I haven't gone exploring Fulham Road with the Google street view on my London map. I spent much more time doing that for our Paris trip and for our Hong Kong trip in 2010 (street view became available for Hong Kong a few months before). Perhaps I've been distracted by all the menus now available for pubs and restaurants and by all the YouTube videos. Heck, these days you can really be an armchair traveler.
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| Sainsbury Local convenience store |
The block that our apartment is on (400s) seems to be the sole surviving block of houses, the surrounding area having been taken over by commercial establishments. We are on the corner with a signal for crossing the street and a painted reminder on the pavement to "look left" while crossing the street. If we keep our eyes peeled to the ground, these advisories should help us survive the London traffic. There's a
Sainsbury's Local directly across the street but it was closed at the early hour that the Google mobile took its photo.
Across Fulham Road and up half a block on the one-way cross street, Edith Grove, is the HK Bus Stop for the #328 which will take us south to Kings Road. Across the street and to the left half a block down Fulham Road is the HE Bus Stop for the #14 bus that will take us east to the South Kensington tube station (Old Brompton Road). We couldn't be better situated for buses, which will take us to the nearest tube stations: Earls Court (.7 miles north), Fulham Broadway (.6 miles west), and South Kensington (.9 miles northeast). There's also the HB Bus Stop in front of the house for the #14 returning from South Kensington (catch it at Stop T) which runs every 6 minutes and takes 10 minutes.
If we walk up Fulham Road towards the city, we come to Westminster Chelsea Hospital but we hope we won't have to use it. Across the street is a
Boots pharmacy in case we need ibuprofen and bath salts for our feet. The hospital has a storefront
Subway sandwich shop in case we get really desperate before 10 pm and next door is a Starbucks in case we get tired of tea. Across the street is the
B Bagel Bakery Bar which opens at 7 am every morning and further east half a block is
Le Pain Quotidien, which seems more like a restaurant than a bakery. Apparently it does have
bread but it doesn't open until 8 am. And next door is the "
Touch Ironmongery" if you need some brass fixtures.
Moving up the street we find
Luigi's delicatessen (M-F 8-21:30; Sat 9-7) where we can pick up some spaghetti to boil for dinner or splurge on fresh pasta or ready-made gnocchi alla Sorrentina. We can also get panettone for our breakfast or afternoon tea. It is probably too early in the year for the novello vinos and we'll have to get their cannolis when they are freshly made and filled.
Further up the road is
Gail's Bakery, which opens at 7 am, with more than 30 breads on offer. We'll have to check it out even if it is a chain. Their
malted whole grain sourdough bread looks and sounds good and so does their
Danish whole meal spelt sourdough. They even have San Francisco sourdough but they need 48 hours notice -- to fly it in, I suppose. I see croissants, Chelsea buns, Soho buns (with chocolate chips), pain aux raisins, and finally at the very bottom of the
breakfast menu, some drop scones. Oh silly me. I should have looked on the Afternoon dropdown for the
scones, being as they are for
afternoon tea. Lots of other options there too for creating our own tea party. Who needs restaurants?
And, in case we are lacking protein, next door to Gail's Bakery is
Wyndham House Butchery which offers fine meats, poultry and game, opening up at 7:30 am M-Sat (till 6 pm). If you don't want to cook, you can cross the street to
The Kings Arms pub and have an obscene burger since it is a Younge's "burger shack". They never call them hamburgers, just "burgers" but to their credit they do offer a lamb burger and a veggie burger. By the way, numbers on the north side of the street don't coincide with the ones on the south side (190 vs 341) but at least they both go up as they go down Fulham.
Moving on east on Fulham we come across another "ironmongery,"
FB and JD Beardmore, offering the "finest English-made door furniture". So if you or anyone you know needs door knockers or knobs, cabinet pulls or other "door furniture", you should stop in here and peruse their collection which is really very interesting and unique.
Next door is another "hardware" store,
Farmer Brothers.
Established in 1842, Farmer Brothers has over 55,000 products in stock. Even staff at nearby Harrods, can be overheard saying "you'll find it at Farmers". And it looks like Beardmore is part of their company. How about a pair of toast tongs? Or a wooden door wedge? Or a
kettle protector that reduces lime in your kettle for a fresher taste and more efficient boiling time? A shoehorn with a back scratcher? Who needs to go to a museum when you have a nearby hardware store?
And for us librarians, there is the independent
Daunt Books across the street which is known for its large stock of travel literature, in case we forget our London guidebook. It's open from 9 am till 9 pm. For those who don't read, in the next block there's a
Cineworld Cinema in a rather striking building along with another
Starbucks to make sure that you don't fall asleep during the movie. And Cineworld has a great deal:
Any film, any time and as many times as you like for just £20.40 a month.
All these stores to see and we haven't even gone half a mile from the house and in only one direction and only on one road! On the other hand, it appears that, aside from the Orée patisserie, many of the stores beyond Elm Park Gardens are furniture and interior design shops and so of much less interest to us so it's time to head in the other direction down to Fulham Broadway.
