Westfield London Shopping Center

Today for Calvin’s last day in London, we decided to spend some time shopping at Westfield London, which isn’t anything exciting to write about, but I wanted to include a small blurb here about the mall because it’s probably the nicest mall I’ve ever been to, in terms of interior design and appearance.  I was born and raised in Edmonton, home of West Edmonton Mall, the largest in the world until 2004, so big malls are nothing special to me, but Westfield London, the largest urban mall in Europe, did make me go “Wow!” just a little bit…

Westfield London cost £1.6bn to build and opened in October, 2008 – not exactly great timing because of the world economic financial crises.  Considering how much I keep hearing in the news about the current recession, I’m not sure how this mall will stay in business!  Paul and I call it a “Julie mall” – affectionately referring to one of my best girlfriends who’s willing to splurge on luxury goods such as Gucci and Jimmy Choo.  The mall is full of designer and high street labels, especially in an area called The Village, where all the stores are premium brands (e.g. Burberry, Dior, Furla, etc.).  There must be a lot of Julies in London to keep this place afloat!

While the whole mall is aesthetically pleasing, the food court was the thing that blew me away the most – it looks more like a giant Earls restaurant than a food court!  We took a break from shopping and ate lunch here, and Paul and I tried out a fast food chain called Square Pie, which is on About.com’s top 10 cheap eats in London.  The bangers and mash was decent, as was the steak and ale pie, and the price wasn’t bad – £4.99 for the bangers and mash and £6.99 for the pie.  It’s nice that even though the food court is nicer than the ones at most malls, they still have reasonably priced food (although there were a few more expensive places such as the sushi restaurant). 

After an entire afternoon of shopping, I managed to leave empty handed and we headed back to our hotel for some rest, parting ways with Calvin for this trip as his flight leaves early tomorrow.  Now it’s back to just the two of us for another week in London…