Whenever I go to Norfolk to my little cabin I always love to spend a day in Norwich. This city has so much to offer it has lots of my favourite kind of shops, the independents! The little places that make a city extra special.

There are so many parts to venture to, lots of shops to suit all kinds of people. As you probably already know I love Sheffield and it’s vibe, the steel city holds a huge piece of my heart, but I love Norwich nearly as much.

When I travel there I always travel by car. It takes about 25 minutes to get there. Parking is always just off Magdalene Street. This is the start of my journey. I love this street. You start at one end where you can get the best Arabic lentil stew, and then venture up towards the most fantastic vinyl shop and vintage retro shops. About halfway up on the left is Ruth’s Kitchen a Jerusalem Street food delight. The food is just amazing, and you generally get to see Ruth herself working very hard to provide very good tasting food.

I always try something different but I do love the Mezze there, a huge plate to share with someone, and eat pretty much everything they sell on one plate. This last visit I decided to try the lamb cooked with lovely spices, laid on a bed of chickpeas, and surrounded by hummus and served with a flatbread. Being a simple dish you do worry if it is filling but I can assure you it is enough to eat and very tasty, I seriously enjoyed this dish. I like Ruth, she is very humble and simply does not realise just how good she is. When I spoke to her about Twitter she said she couldn’t believe how many followers she has, and some very famous too. You can understand why if you love that kind of food, and I do 🙂

From there I pop into Loose’s an emporium full to the brim with antiques and furniture from every era you can imagine. There are little units inside by lots of different traders. You can pick up anything from a danish sideboard to an industrial sign and vintage crates to collectable pyrex dishes. I always spend about an hour in here eek!

Heading to the top of Magdalene Street, I make my way past the fashion building for the Norwich School of Arts, walk right up to the centre where the market is and then walk towards the lanes for more independent joy. Lot’s of cobbled streets leading to so many lovely shops. Coffee shops, and Interior shops, and vintage charity shops.

Photo Credit to Imelda’s

Walking up towards Upper St Giles street on Guildhall Hill I found the best shoe shop ever, (in my opinion) Imelda’s. This is a shoe boutique that was named after Imelda Marcos who is the widow of Ferdinand Marcos and he was the 10th president of the Philippines. Imelda was famous for owning a shoe collection of over 2’700 pairs of shoes! As I struggle to wear high heels, I found so many pairs in there to suit my style. My love of Green is so strong at the moment and they had some flats with a huge flower on, I think I should go back pretty soon and purchase them.

As I have loved metallics forever, I am of course loving the latest trend for the shiny stuff. In the 90’s I owned some fabulous Patrick Cox metallic loafers and I just wish I had kept them now. Wearing metallics with black is something I always enjoyed in my 20’s and so I think this could be a focus for me this year :).  Shoes, clothes and bags in metallics have been a fashion focus for SS17 and so while in Imelda’s I found a great bag to suit my needs. It fits across my body and so practical in the distribution of weight. In other words, it limits me to how much rubbish I often carry around. I also picked up a little silver metallic bag in a vintage charity shop which was so cheap and so I am happy with both my bags.

The Bicycle Shop

Heading down the lanes, there are some great coffee shops, but one I always like is the Bicycle Shop. It has a feeling of Tamper and Cafe no 9 in Sheffield all mixed into one. The food and coffee are very good. It is a very small cafe, pretty much like Cafe no 9 in Nether Edge Sheffield. The atmosphere though makes up for its small and cosy layout. When a window looks as good as this I just have to venture in and also take a photo, I guess from working in visual merchandising years ago, I just love a good window display!

Design shops that always catch my eye are Number Three on Magdalene Street which is a Scandinavian treat, with a Danish focus, and full of design classics, think Eames and Tom Dixon thrown into the mix and you get the idea. There is the Granary that has a few design pieces and sits around the corner from Jarolds. One of my fun places that I love and have only ever seen on the South Coast is Flying Tiger a Danish shop from Copenhagen that has a few stores dotted around the UK. I love everything in this shop plus I always buy something. My last buy was a set of Kitchen scourers in the shape of love hearts so when I was scrubbing the Scrambled egg mess off the bottom of my pan at home, at least I could be reassured that the design of the scourer used was a fun one and kept me sane during this horrible job.

Photo via The Birdcage

The Birdcage Bar is an ecelctic cool place in the lanes and the interiors are just my thing, I love the design and layout, I love the look of the building and I love the fact it does evenings of poetry and music to add to its attributes.

Because I struggle sometimes walking having problems with joints and bones, It took me a long time to be able to get across from one side of the city to the other. Going from only being able to walk a small stretch to walking all the way was a huge positive step for me. It made me enjoy finding all these little shops all the more and I am still finding little places I haven’t seen before. Last Summer was the first time in 3 years that I could walk the entire stretch around the city.

Last week I managed to walk most of the way but I did find that I hurt a lot when venturing back to my car. So sometimes I can’t do all my favourite places in one day, but that’s ok because there is some great stop off points to enjoy. My hubby is so good, in that if he sees I am struggling he will go back and pick the car up and drive to a location where I can just jump in the car.

If you haven’t been to Norwich yet, then please make it a place on your list to try. There is of course the tourist attractions like the Cathedral and the Castle which is a nice tourist thing to do, but I just love it for the independent shops.