Portobello Road - one of the most famous streets in the world market. It stretches across the whole neighborhood of Notting Hill - more than three kilometers of shops, stalls, tents, open shelves and the local Saturday antiques market is the largest in the world.

The street is named for the farm "Portobello", built here in 1740. The farm also received this romantic name in honor of the victory over the city of Porto Bello (in what is now Panama) in the war with Spain. There was a real countryside - six acres of fields and meadows. City came here in the Victorian era. Now Portobello Road is a long wriggling out. Small houses are narrow in width in one or two windows - blue, red, pink, lilac - create a very nice cityscape.

The already well-known area even more famous when in 1999 on the screens out the romantic comedy "Notting Hill" with Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts in the lead roles. The film, which many scenes were filmed right on the Portobello Road, showed tireless street life. Until now, tourists are looking for in Notting Hill "house with a blue door," in which he lived a hero Grant and store guides. The door is no longer blue, the room where the plot was the store changed owners several times, but the atmosphere of the streets of the market is the same - the cries of merchants, polyglot hubbub of the crowd, the smells of food. Hero Grant called Notting Hill village in the middle of the city, and in a sense this is true: here everyone knows each other, and the sellers and the locals.

Basically Portobello Road is famous for its antiques market, open on Saturdays. It is said that a man was looking for, he will find it here. If the buyer is coming here for the first time, he can not worry about lost - you just have to get out of the metro station "Notting Hill Gate" and to follow the flow of people, which will lead into the midst of the market. Copper kettles, embroidered handkerchiefs, tickets for the concert "The Beatles", faded love letters, Meissen porcelain, cutlery, jewelry, books, photographs, paintings - rummage on the shelves for hours.

Also here are selling fruit, vegetables, bread, fish, cheese. Late on Saturday, when the market is closed, it is possible for one pound to buy a box of fruit. There are street stalls and shops selling clothes and shoes, there is a section of the second-hand. Immediately, the market, and you can have breakfast, lunch and - eat a hot dog on the go or sit in a restaurant Asian or Mediterranean cuisine. The most important advice that locals always give tourists - watch out for purse and things: the market is the market.