See that silver purse Lori’s got a death grip on? She paid £4 for it. That’s about $7, or less than 6 Euros for goodness sake! And while it looks never-used, it’s old.
Sorry: it’s vintage.
At the same store–Hopkinson Vintage Antique and Art Center in Nottingham–Chuck picked up an insulated “gentleman’s trench” coat AND a thoroughly English plaid wool fedora for just over £30, or about $50. Both are 1950’s vintage and in perfect, just-off-the-rack condition. That was our splurge at Hopkinson Vintage Antique and Art Center.
It’s wonderful to discover something new and fun about travel after all the time we’ve spent in Europe, this year and in past trips. We’ve seen those markets–in the states we call them Flea Markets–in Europe before, usually on our way to seeing something else. We’ve even window-shopped at some of those antique shops (admiring a blue Delft toilet once in Amsterdam comes to mind) from time to time. But this trip, with more of a settle-in-for-a-while sort of pace, has afforded us the opportunity to actually take a real look, to step into some of those antique shops, and what we’ve discovered is a little bit shopping, a little bit bargain hunting, a little bit local history, and a whole lot of interesting.
When we started this trip we knew that we’d have to buy a few things toward the end of the trip. The December North Atlantic will be cold for our crossing on the Queen Mary, and we would need warmer clothes than we had brought for Portugal, Spain, and Turkey. Plus, the Cunard dress code is a tad bit more formal than the t-shirts and walking shoes we’ve been traveling with all this time. Chuck had read a travel blog ages back about using vintage clothing stores as a cost effective way for full-time travelers to swap seasonal wardrobes around, so we had planned to spend some time in these sorts of places for practical reasons. But it turns out we really enjoy it as a great taste of local flavor and culture.
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| Lori At Hopkinson Vintage in Nottingham |
Our first experience in English rummage sales (as they often call them) actually came a couple of weeks ago during our Sunday drive in the Cotswolds. That day, Stow-on-the-Wold’s town hall was hosting a small flea and craft market. Amidst the English tea spoons, old crystal and china, and comic books we’d never heard of, Chuck found a pair of nifty cufflinks for £4 (about $7). More recently, we ventured to Chesterfield, England to attend their “1940’s Market”, a massive flea market that was part of their week-long Chesterfield Market Festival.
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| Chesterfield’s 1940’s Market |
England seems crazy over these things. We’ve never seen anything like a yard sale or garage sale here, but we’ve seen quite a few “boot sales”. Recall that English call their car trunks “boots”: a boot sale is when a bunch of people throw stuff in the trunks of their cars and head out to a field where they back into a space and pop open their trunk to set up shop for bargain-seeking browsers. We haven’t stopped in to check one out, but we might if we see one this coming weekend.
Some of the regular, weekly rummage markets, particularly some of those in London, are famous and practically cultural fixtures. While in London in a couple of weeks, we plan to get to the Camden Passage and Old Spitalfields markets, and we are intent on visiting a well-known vintage clothing store called Beyond Retro. The Christmas shopping season is upon us, after all.
