Bethnal Green

Bethnal Green is a mixture of hideous council flats and nice and small parks. There are nice cafés and pubs and it's right in the heart of East London! There's also a great flowermarket! Although the appearance is a bit grim, this is one of the nicest areas in East London. It's a place of contrasts. Some of the places are really hip, while some show the reality of the poor. In a very little time the flats on the free market have become very expensive in this area.

Markets:

• Columbia Road Flower Market offers all kinds of flowers for home and yards. The prices are very affordable. You can find all sorts of herbs for the kitchen as well. The atmosphere is always nice and there's live music and sweet treats for sale.

Eating:

• My Old Place is a popular restaurant offering authentic Chinese Food. 
• The Premises is a small restaurant, café or bar where you can get good breakfast or for example a delicious meze plate for cheap. They also have practice rooms for bands!
  
• La Forchetta is an Italian restaurant with pizza and pasta, and some Italian main courses. It's not the most special place for Italian food, but the pizza is still a lot better than the average pizza in London. The staff is friendly and there's a nice atmosphere. A small minus for the availability of different vegetarian options. They have some, but not many good ones with protein.
  
• Shisha Garden Grill is a fantastic Turkish restaurant with charcoal grilled food. They also have excellent vegetarian options. Their moussaka is absolutely delicious. There's also a room in the back for smoking shisha. The place looks amazing with all its Turkish decor. As a curiosity, they play cheesy Turkish music videos on screen. 

Cafés:

• Gallery Café is an outstanding café serving great coffee and vegan & vegetarian food. There's everything from falafel to curries and sandwiches to pizza. They have a yard that is open on weekends and they sometimes have live music shows.
• Scawfell Street is a studio complex for artists, but there's also a café with probably the best coffee in London. The café is really hidden and it's difficult to see even from the street you're at, but it's well worth the visit. Only inconvenience is the opening hours, but despite of what their website says, they are now open on Saturdays as well.

Drinking:

• There are a few really great pubs in Bethnal Green. The Star of Bethnal Green is interestingly decorated pub serving good value pizza on Monday evenings. In the weekends they have a DJ and a dancefloor.
• The Old George used to be an awful place, but after the renewal it's become probably the nicest pub in Bethnal Green. Decorations look nice, there are decent beers on tap and clientele is quite hipstery.
• One of my all-time favourite pubs is back in Bethnal Green. The Sun is a cozy and atmospheric small pub with bare brick walls and dim lights. Great place to sip on great beers or red wine in the dark nights of winter. The place looks quite magical!
• The Approach Tavern is a really nice pub, good for relaxing and hanging out with your friends. Great beers on tap and a garden for beers outside in the summer. 
• The Marksman is a beautiful wood panelled pub with chandeliers. A nice atmosphere to gulp down some pints with friends. 
  
• The Camel is a small but cozy pub on a quiet back street of Bethnal Green. Some seats outside and beautiful decorations inside.
• Nelson's Head is a beautifully decorated pub with dark blue walls and portraits on the walls. The beer selection isn't that great but the place looks great.
• The King's Arms looks like an old time neighbourhood pub from the outside, but it's been converted to a modern hipster joint with fantastic beer selection. They mainly have Kernel brewery's fantastic beers on tap, but also some guest beers from other microbreweries. On weekends, it can get a bit loud in there. 
• Mother Kelly's is a New York inspired beer shop and tap room under the railway arches close to Bethnal Green tube station. This place has a vast collection of craft beers both in taps and in bottles. There's also a big outside area in the front.
  
• The Last Tuesday Society is one of the strangest bars in London. They have abunch of stuffed animals and skeletons on the walls and books about occultism. The place is mainly a cocktail bar, but you go there for the atmosphere.

Parks:

• North East of Bethnal Green is Victoria Park. Great for jogging and you can continue running along the Regent's canal. 
• Weavers Fields is a small park with great opportunities for picnics and sports. There are some exercising equipment around the park, so if you're jogging and want to get some additional muscle exercise done, you can do it here.

Shopping:

• Jambala is a nice little charity shop selling second hand books, vinyl and CD records and DVDs. You can make some real bargains here.
• Simply Fresh is a very nice little deli store with delicious vegetarian and non-vegetarian delicatesses. 
• Cosmos Records is an excellent little record store with lots of vinyl records. Their focus is on jazz, soul and funk, but they also have some psychedelic rock and classic rock and pop.

 Areas around Bethnal Green: Shoreditch, Whitechapel, Haggerston, Mile End