Westfield London photo essay

Malls and me don't mix. Artificial light, unoriginal shops, endless queues, rude people scurrying, screaming babies, and so on. Westfield London, which opened last week, isn't as bad as the Westfields in Australia, but there's nothing too original about it. All the shops are the same as you'd see elsewhere; it's just that some of them are larger. So basically, any high street store you can think of is here, in the one place.

If you are after something then it is quite handy to get to, but I would definitely avoid going on a weekend. Luckily the ceilings are tall and the light does shine in through the glass roof during the day and bounces off the marble floors, so you don't get that headachey feeling you normally do in other places.

The food court's saving grace is Pho, the Vietnamese noodle restaurant that has two other London branches. It, and Yo Sushi, above, were clearly the busiest places in the entire 6-football-field-sized building, department stores included.