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Notting Hill and Bayswater
Notting Hill is one of London's most famous trendsetting square miles of multi-ethnicity, music, and magnificent street markets. Throw in a goodly number of see-and-be-seen-in restaurants and a sprinkling of the younger and adventurous versions of the Cork Street modern-art galleries, and you see why it remains a favorite of the hip and happening set. That crowd of musician/novelist/filmbiz/drug-dealer/fashion-victim local residents and hangers-out has been dubbed by the style-watching media the Notting Hillbillies. And the whole thing has mushroomed around one of the world's great antiques markets: the Portobello Road, a top spot to find treasures in the trash. There are few historic sites here, so just wander the streets to savor the flavor.
The Notting Hill district is centered around the Portobello Road antiques market, bordered in the west by Landsdowne Road and Landsowne Crescent—address to the Hill's poshest 19th-century terraced row houses—and to the east by Chepstow Road, with Notting Hill Gate and Westbourne Grove Road marking the southern and northern boundaries. In between, Rastafarians rub elbows with wealthy young Brits (a.k.a. "Trustafarians") and such fashionable folk as reporter Christiane Amanpour and Lady Antonia Fraser have been spottted at the chic shops on Westbourne Grove and the lively cafés on Kensington Park Road.
Notting Hill as we know it was born in the 1840s, when the wealthy Ladbroke family laid out a small suburb to the west of London. Before then it had been known, informally, as "the Potteries and the Piggeries," in honor of its two industries: ceramics and pig farming. Notting Hill's transformation from poverty-stricken backwater to super-trendy enclave started in the 1980s and had reached its peak by the early 2000s—helped, in no small way, by the Julia Roberts' flick that bore its name. For the Notting Hill of the film sets (the Travel Bookshop on Blenheim Crescent is Hugh Grant's bookshop in the film Notting Hill), head straight for Westbourne Grove, replete with chic boutiques and charity shops laden with the castoffs from wealthy residents. The whole area sprung up around Portobello Road, with the beautifully restored early-20th-century Electric Cinema at No. 191. The famous Saturday antiques market and shops are at the southern end; Westway Portobello Green Market, under the Westway overpass, is filled with bric-a-brac, secondhand threads, and clothes and accessories by young, up-and-coming designers. Nearby on Acklam Road are the Westbourne Studios, an office complex with a gallery, restaurant, and bar open to the public, and the capital's best skateboarding park, Bay Sixty6.
In Bayswater—found north of the royal parks and a welcome hub of tourist restaurants and midprice hotels—the main thoroughfare of Queensway is a rather peculiar, cosmopolitan street of ethnic confusion, late-night cafés and restaurants, a skating rink, and the Whiteleys shopping-and-movie mall. Nearby Paddington Station is the namesake for the marmalade-loving Paddington Bear.
