Notting Hill - Part Two - Your Personal Style Here!

ALERT: On a completely other subject:  Please have a look at Gesbi's post about the Lyon Textile Museum and adjoining Decorative Arts Museum in Lyon, France, that are under threat of closure this March due to budget cuts.  A petition has been started to keep it open but your signature must be received SOON!   The cutoff date is January 22, 2016.  

I suppose that Portobello Road is the "main event" when one is talking about Notting Hill.  And there certainly is a sort of excitement and thrill of the chase about making your way

down the hill on a Saturday morning with hundreds of enthusiastic shoppers.  It's a spectacle, really

when you consider the people watching to be had and the variety of goodies on offer.  Old, new, beautiful and rubbishy......But can I suggest that you also make time for Notting Hill on a quieter

day.  And that you get off the main streets and away from the crowds.

Along Westbourne Grove, it has pretty much gone over to the chain stores you can find on Regent Street and elsewhere in London.  But on the quiet side streets, a very stylish life is being lived...Notting Hill still being made home by entertainment, arty, and fashion types and a renegade

spirit persists amidst bohemian gentility.

Little shops to cater to your quality of life

and appeal to your love of history.

Reminders that life is for living and for laughing

a little.

That there is a big world of adventure out there.

And that sometimes, the world comes to you.  If you're clever enough to make your home in Notting Hill.  "What is the reason that legions of Italian tourists are thronging the Portobello Road?" you might ask yourself as you elbow past handsome well-dressed families on the cobbled roads.  It might not always be because of their love of British bric-a-brac, but due to the many, many Italian restaurants in the 'hood.  (That's a pizza oven above.)  And the word must have gotten out that they're pretty darn good.  

Don't forget to bring oodles of personal style with you.  Everybody else does!