How To Spend A Sunday In Shoreditch

BRUNCH @ HOXTON GRILL

Now you can't start a day without a heavenly brunch now can you? Sunday is my favourite day of the week and the one day of the week where I actually have time to enjoy my breakfast without having to wolf it down in 3 minutes before starting work like I do the rest of the week, so I like to use my Sunday wisely and having been recommended brunch at Hoxton Grill by several people, it was finally time to test it out and I can tell you now, it certainly did not disappoint. I opted for the embarrassingly middle class option of smashed avocado and poached eggs on toast (yup, I'm cringing at myself RN) with a side of bacon, and as you can see from the salivating inducing pictures above, it was pretty god damn good. Although a little pricier than other brunch joints in East London, Hoxton Grill is well worth the extra few pounds, as the restaurant is set in the Hoxton Hotel (part of the Soho House group) so as you can imagine, it's interior is ridiculously Instagramable and there's always something a little more special about dining in a hotel. Located just a few minutes walk away from Old Street Station, Hoxton Grill is also ridiculously easy to find. 

Location: The Hoxton, 81 Great Eastern Street, Shoreditch, EC2A 3HU. 

INTERIOR BROWSING @ HOUSE OF HACKNEY

What I love about Sundays, is it is literally the only day of the week where you can wander aimlessly with no real rush to get anywhere. Whether you wake up at 8 or 11, nobody gives a shit because hey, guess what? it's Sunday! Although we all know that London is a city that never stops and the pace may seem overbearingly fast at times, I definitely think the pace slows down a little on Sunday's and the city as a whole becomes just  a little more lazy. Shops open later, breakfast and lunch merge into brunch and without a commuter in sight, there's actually time (and pavement space) to just wander around and actually look up and take in what's around you. So on our walk from The Hoxton - Columbia Road, we stumbled across House of Hackney, and my god, what a find! If the palm plant in the window wasn't enough to send my feet running for the entrance, then the pineapple lamp certainly did the trick. I love nothing more than wandering around unique interior shops (I love you Ikea, but no) and House of Hackney is literally what interior dreams are made of. With a palm print obsession ever since my Beverly Hills Hotel visit a few summers ago, House of Hackney has all things palm and leaf print, with some eclectic colours and prints thrown in to mix it up a bit. Need a pineapple lamp with a floral lampshade? Yep, they got it. Or a leaf print crushed velvet purple sofa do I hear you ask? Yep, they got that too. So do yourselves a favour and pop in to the shop of dreams...

Location: House of Hackney, 131-132 Shoreditch High Street, London, E1 6JE. 

 ANTIQUE BROWSING @ SHOREDITCH HIGH ST. 

On the walk from House of Hackney - Columbia Road, the street was lined with antique shops, so it would have been rude not to pop in. Although I am currently about 4839735083 lifetimes away from owning a house in London, a girl can still dream, so on Sunday's I like to play the game of let's pretend I have a house to decorate and pick out all my furniture. Like I said, a girl can dream...

Location: 45, Hackney Road, London, E2 7NX. 

FLOWER SHOPPING @ COLUMBIA ROAD FLOWER MARKET

And finally, after a few pit-stops along the way, we made it to our destination...the infamous (and probably most Instagramable road in the whole of East London...the Columbia Road flower market. Despite working just a 15 minute walk away from Columbia Road, I'd embarrassingly never been as I'm a North London girl at heart and rarely venture into the East on weekends, but there's few things in the world I love more than flowers, so I was itching to go and spoil myself with an obscene amount of lilies and tulips. Columbia Road flower market is just one street lined on both sides with stall after stall, all offering a beautiful selection of flowers and plants at ridiculously reasonable prices. They have everything from lilies, to tulips, to cotton plants, to cacti and even palm plants (yes I know I'm obsessed ok) and although it certainly lived up to expectations flower-wise, the busyness of it kinda spoiled it for me. There were hundreds and hundreds of people all attempting to walk down this one narrow street, which made it physically impossible to move at your own pace and stop at the stalls you wanted to, which kind of defeats the whole object of the market. In all fairness, I had been recommended to get there early to avoid the crowds, but because I got sidetracked by my poached eggs and antique shops, I arrived at quite possibly the worst time (12.30), as we were literally barricaded in, so once we'd finally bought our flowers, we then faced the challenge of attempting to a) keep them in our arms without people shoving them out of our hands and b) attempting not to crush those beautiful tulip heads. 

So moral of the story guys...don't spend hours tucking into your eggs and browsing the shops like I did and head to the market first thing (it's open from 8am-2pm) and do all your lazy Sunday browsing and brunching afterwards! Because despite the busyness, the market is oh so worth it! 

Location: Columbia Road Flower Market, London, E2 7RG. 

xoxo