Penge is the next district to Sydenham, just a few blocks from our flat. We found our favorite Indian Restaurant, Tamarind, there early in our stay, because they left a flyer on the doorstop; later, we decided to explore the town a bit more and took a walking tour.
These cottages (there are 164) were built in 1866 by the "Metropolitan Association for Improving the Dwellings of the Industrious Classes". They're privately owned now, but it It's listed status gives it a a charming story-book look, like a real version of a child's block village.
Penge was the most heavily bombed part of London during the Blitz because a major rail transportation tunnel lies within it. So a lot of it is relatively new -- not many pre-Victorian buildings survived. Thus, the high street is all kind of blah 50s architecture.
In addition to the cottages for industrious people, there is also a lovely old building built in 1848 as an almshouse. It was built at the request of Queen Adelaide in memory of her husband William IV as a "Royal Naval Asylum." It provided residences for twelve widows or orphan daughters of naval officers. That building is now privately owned flats. I don't know if I'd want to live there -- sounds like a good candidate for a haunted house.
This is Gipsy Hill. This district is two stops west of us, on the loop toward Victoria Station. We found a favorite restaurant here too. The kind we like, great food and informal atmosphere. It was a good place to stop on the way home from London. The trouble is that the rail station is at the bottom of that hill and the restaurant is at the top. Nice view though -- and a good excuse to eat, in order to recover your strength.
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Every block of every district in London has a greengrocer. These are little hole-in-the-wall shops displaying their wares outside. Mostly they are run by immigrants and the produce varies depending on which country. This one in Sydenham is called "Istanbul". Others in Sydenham are Pakistani, Indian, Halal (we looked it up -- it's the Arabian version of Kosher), Caribbean, and Iraqi. Every block also has an "off-license" shop -- meaning you can buy beer and wine to take home, and what is called a pound store or cheap store (of course, like our dollar stores, but smaller and more crowded) and just as useful for certain necessities. We've also found a good barber shop, a beauty shop, and a small supermarket right on our own high street. The most fun about our high street, or any other, is that they are so lively and vibrant -- there are always people. We found a couple of malls (called centers) in two of the larger districts nearby, so they exist and with a lot of the same stores there are in any mall anywhere in America, but they haven't killed the high (main) streets, like they pretty much have there.
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