On a spree

Author: By William A. Davis, Globe Staff

Date: SUNDAY, June 29, 1997

Page: M1

Section: Travel

But the fact is the British are remarkably enthusiastic, creative, and successful retailers of goods and services and justifiably proud of it. Take Harrods, as an army of international shoppers (Americans usually in the vanguard) tries to do year after year.

An ornate domed Edwardian pile of a building bedecked with the coats of arms of the royalty that patronize it, and illuminated at night like a public monument, Harrods looms majestically over its tony Knightsbridge neighborhood like the Great Pyramid of a department store that it is. The place is huge (there are 60 fashion departments alone) and it sells everything from caviar and cosmetics to riding boots and real estate.

The store's marble- and tile-decorated food halls look like the Emperor Nero's banquet chambers as imagined by Cecil B. DeMille. The in-house pub has a gold leaf ceiling, and the barbershop is a study in Art Deco elegance. Other British department stores have lavatories or ``loos.'' Harrods has ``luxury washrooms'' and charges a pound (about $1.65) to use them -- unless you can produce receipts showing that you've spent at least 100 pounds in the store!

The seriousness with which Harrods takes itself is perhaps epitomized by the Egyptian Hall. Here, where the decor pays homage to the temples of Luxor, an animated lyre-plucking mannequin of Queen Nefertiti solemnly presides over the sale of handbags and accessories like some goddess of high-end shopping.

Covent Garden is nowhere near as elegant a place to shop, browse, or use the loo as Harrods. But it's certainly cheaper, much less starchy, and provides lots of free live entertainment

Like Boston's Faneuil Hall Marketplace, Covent Garden is a former fruit, vegetable, and flower market (this is where Liza Doolittle of ``My Fair Lady'' raucously plied her trade) that has been restored and recycled into a shopping, dining, and entertainment center. The handsome Georgian central market building, erected in 1828 at the behest of the Duke of Bedford, today houses boutiques, specialty shops, restaurants, wine bars, and ``apple market'' stalls dealing in exclusively British crafts.

Every Monday and on the first Sunday of each month, stalls are also manned by dealers in antiques and collectibles. On the second and last Sunday of the month, there is an art market showcasing the work of painters, photographers, cartoonists, and printers.

The former floral market, adjacent to the main market building, now contains the London Transport Museum. There are still flower girls around, however, all doing their best to look like Liza and many with authentic pre-Professor Higgins cockney accents.

Covent Garden's piazza, an elegant colonnaded small square between the market building and the portico of St. Paul's Church, was designed in the 1630s by the great Inigo Jones, who introduced Renaissance architecture into Britain. The first Punch and Judy show ever seen in Britain was performed in the piazza in 1662. This historic street theater event is commemorated by the Punch and Judy Pub on the second floor of the old market building, which has a small puppet theater museum and a terrace overlooking the piazza.

After more than 300 years, the Covent Garden piazza is still London's most popular venue for street performers. Buskers of all sorts from jugglers, dancers, and clowns to musicians, magicians, and fire eaters perform almost continuously. And, special festivals of dance and magic, as well as festivals for children, are held throughout the year. For a budget-minded visitor, the piazza offers the best free entertainment in London -- next to the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace.

Charing Cross Road -- which boasts the greatest concentration of new, used, and specialty bookstores in the world -- attracts book lovers like iron filings to a magnet. The better part of a day could easily be spent here just browsing in Foyles.

Founded in 1903, Foyles grew incrementally over the years and now occupies several connecting buildings, 113-119 Charing Cross Road. It has five floors of books, some 50 specialized departments, and 13 miles of shelves. Its claim to be the biggest bookstore anywhere has yet to be seriously challenged. Other megabookstores on Charing Cross Road include the flagship Waterstone's, Blackwells (Britain's largest academic bookseller), and Books, Inc. Specialty bookstores include Murder One, which stocks crime, mystery, horror, science fiction, and (oddly) romance titles. And there is Silver Moon Women's Bookshop, which specializes in feminist theory, women writers, and lesbian erotica.

Portobello Road in Notting Hill -- a onetime multiracial slum rapidly gentrifying into a fashionable residential neighborhood -- has a concentration of antiques shops and consignment houses and is worth a visit any time. But Portobello Road really comes into its own at the weekly Saturday street market when some 2,000 dealers are on hand selling antiques of all sorts along with crafts, jewelry, and a variety of secondhand stuff ranging from classy to junky.

The Saturday market is really a series of markets with the serious antiques stores and dealers at the top of the road, a fruit and vegetable market in the middle, then a flea market that deteriorates into a garage sale and peters out after passing under the overpass of a motorway. The entire street market runs for over a mile, and when the crowds are thick and many of the goods offered intriguing (usually the case), it can take quite a while to walk from end to end.

Fortunately, there are a number of pubs, restaurants, and cafes to pop into along Portobello Road, most examples of the new Notting Hill chic. Cafe Grove at the corner of Lancaster Road, for instance, has an open-air balcony overlooking the street market.

Until the 1970s, the area around the Camden Lock of Regent's Canal was drab and uninviting. Then hippie entrepreneurs looking for cheap rents moved into the old canalside industrial buildings and began selling used and trendy new clothing, hip jewelry, and secondhand and bootleg tapes and CDs.

The youth-oriented market that eventually grew up around the lock -- as famous for its colorful customers and dealers as its bargains -- now ranks as London's fourth-most-popular attraction. Although some shops are open daily, the market is mainly a weekend affair and busier on Sunday than Saturday, for some reason.

There are clothing and music stores sprinkled along Camden High Street from the Camden Town tube stop to the canal. But the real action and the thickest crowds are around the lock, where the market was born.

It's still possible to buy old-fashioned hippie gear such as tie-dyed T-shirts and Moroccan love beads in the area, and the eclectic Compendium bookstore on High Street even has a Beat Poets section. But most of the fashions on sale in the old brick buildings by the lock and at stalls in the cobblestone courtyards between them -- colorful sweaters, handmade hats and skirts, leather bags, boots and jackets, cheap but unusual jewelry -- appeal to today's teenagers, twentysomethings, and wannabes.

Camden Lock market is still true to its psychedelic origins and youth base, but good quality antiques, crafts, jewelry, furniture, and musical instruments are also sold at the market and attract older shoppers. A musical pub and a comedy club in one of the canal buildings also appeal more to young professionals than teenyboppers.

Although the market certainly overshadows it, the canal -- built in the 18th century and a major waterway in its day -- is also one of Camden Lock's attractions. Traditional narrowboats operated by the London Waterbus Company depart on sightseeing cruises from the Waterside Restaurant by the High Street canal bridge, passing through the picturesque Little Venice quarter and beautiful Regent's Park and stopping at the justly famous London Zoo.

This Globe, which began its first formal season in June, is a historically accurate replica of the original, which was built in 1599 and destroyed by fire 14 years later. The new Globe stands on the approximate spot on the south bank of the Thames where the original stood and, like the theater Shakespeare described as a ``Wooden O,'' is round and made of plaster-covered wood.

The stage and galleries are protected from the elements by a thatch roof, but the central ``Bear Pit'' is open to the elements. The theater, which accommodates about 1,500 people, will stage plays not only by Shakespeare but also other Elizabethan playwrights.

The Globe project is part of an ongoing revitalization of the south bank of the Thames, once little-visited by tourists.

Additions include the Oxo Tower, a former soup cube factory recycled into a trendy dining, shopping, and residential complex; and the Design Museum, part of a similar development of old warehouses on Butlers Wharf near Tower Bridge. The Oxo Tower restaurant is expensive but excellent and has superb river views. The Thames views from the Design Museum aren't bad, either, but this summer museumgoers are likely to spend more time eyeballing the main exhibit than looking at the river.

Titled ``The Power of Erotic Design,'' the exhibition, the first of its kind, looks at eroticism as a theme in 20th-century design that reflects changing cultural and individual attitudes toward sexuality. Among the items displayed are Sigmund Freud's office couch and collection of antique erotica, Madonna's bra, Salvador Dali's ``Mae West Lips'' sofa, and sensually shaped perfume bottles by Elsa Schiaparelli.

Free literature, tourist information, and events listings for London can be obtained from the British Tourist Authority Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., by calling (800) 462-2748.