Lola's Cupcakes (London, day 2)

There isn't a shopping street in the world more famous than London's Oxford Street. It's Europe's busiest shopping street with more than 500 stores! Ever since I've heard of it, I'd wanted to go - I'm somehow addicted to shopping. When I finally got to do it, I spent two days wandering around, trying to find something to buy, cute but not too expensive. In the end, I came home empty-handed. It was so crowded that getting into some of the affordable stores, like Top Shop or Primark, was extremely difficult, and actually browsing for something I'd like to get was impossible. Needless to say, I was disappointed because it was nothing like I thought it would be.

My favorite store on Oxford Street was Selfridges. It's a high end department store, the second largest shop in the UK (after Harrods) and it's 101 years old! The building is humongous (540,000 square feet or 50,000 square meters) and the architecture is just amazing. It really stands out in the ''crowd''.

I love department stores. They're usually more expensive, so they aren't that crowded. I don't actually buy those famous expensive brands that they sell, but I spend my time in other areas of the store, like the bookstore, stationery, food hall... That's why I like these stores so much, anything you want is right there in the same building. In Selfridges, I even got to touch a cranberry Kitchenaid Stand Mixer (I thought that color was discontinued!?). At first I wanted to take a picture with it but then I decided it would be best to just walk away (after five minutes of looking at it) and not look like a mental patient. I'm not sure I succeeded with the latter. 

If you like food in any way, the Selfridges Food Hall is unbelievable. There's a great choice of takeaway food and even more cakes. I've never seen anything like it. Although some of the prices, like one scoop of ice cream for 2 pounds (seriously?) were shocking, other things seemed actually worth it. I found my second cupcake stop right here, in the Food Hall: Lola's Cupcakes. They serve normal and tiny cupcakes, at 2.25 pounds for the normal one and 1.10 pounds for the tiny one to take away, prices to eat in were slightly higher. They also sell beautiful boxes of 9 different tiny or 4 different regular cupcakes, giant cupcakes (called Show girls), cupcake cakes and bottles of colorful sprinkles. 

I treated myself to two tiny (mini) cupcakes: chocolate and Oreo. This is the box they came in. Isn't it cute? I didn't even get any frosting on it, so I could bring it home.

I didn't eat them right away, so they had to wait in their little box until I got to the hostel. First, I tried the chocolate cupcake. It tasted good, although the batter was a little dry. I blame myself, because I should have eaten them sooner. I loved the huge sprinkles on top. 

The Oreo cupcake was a different story. It just didn't taste good. I don't know why they even bothered naming it Oreo, apart from the cookie on top there wasn't much taste that would even remind me of Oreos. But I should have known this before I ordered it, since it didn't look impressive at all. Luckily I chose two tiny cupcakes, so I could eat both of them whole.

I'm definitely coming back to Lola's next time I'm in London, since there are so many flavors to try! Fifteen, to be exact. If you want to try some Lola's cupcakes, you can find them in the Selfridges Foodhall, but they also have other locations (Harrods Patisserie Counter and a cupcake counter in the Top Shop store on Oxford Circus for example). If you live in London or somewhere in the UK, you can also order their products online (Lola's Online Store).

LOLA's Cupcake & Coffee Bar

Selfridges Foodhall

400 Oxford Street, W1C 2BU

• Candy Cakes (London, day 1)

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