Wicked Witch of the East
I just came back from my first trip to Westfield Stratford shopping mall. Holy guacamole, that place is huge. You could lose pounds walking up and down the interminable corridors - and that's just the indoors shops. The 339 bus from outside my door takes 10 mins to get there... dangerous! interestingly, despite the bus being nearly empty on a Thursday morning, it had to stop just before the mall for a security guy to check for bombs. That's modern life now, get used to it.
All the high street stores are there, but you can't buy art works or art supplies. And only one bookshop - Foyles - which isn't even open yet. A tiny food court and sofas circa Big Brother 5 spread out on all levels for you to sit and chill out. Might prove tempting to all those people who regularly spend their days in libraries.
I bought tons of chocolate in Waitrose, a skin for my laptop, a universal plug converter and a traveller's shaving gel. I wanted to buy some pens for my nephew but, as mentioned above, no art supplies spotted (maybe well hidden?)
They have a Balans! Right beside a West Ham store! Tons of people walking about with a look of wow-I-can't-believe-I'm-walking-through-Westfield. The building's architecture is pretty uncreative. Security seemed to follow me for a bit and I got paranoid. There were about 50 people working in the Apple store and just a handful of customers (cult alert). I bought a coffee and had a brief chat with the barristas about how crazy the opening days had been. Everyone excited to be there, to work there. Tons of teenagers and the unemployed (apparently).
Very convinent, very dangerous to the pocket. Ok, now I better finish packing up and get ready for my flight. Cheerio.