From Portobello Market to Palace Theatre

I would probably walk back to the Notting Hill Gate station and take the central line to Tottenham Court Road station. From there, exit the station and walk south down Charing Cross Road. The Palace Theatre is at the corner of Charing Cross and Shaftesbury Ave. Make sure there are no engineering works planned for the date of your visit (check tfl.gov.uk). Just want to make sure that you are going to the Palace Theatre (Priscilla Queen of the Desert) as there are other theatres with similar names.

Both Portobello Market and the London Underground can seem a bit daunting at first. As another poster has pointed out, Tube (another word for Underground) services can be disrupted at weekends. It's a good idea to allow yourself about 45 minutes for any Tube journey across central London. Two other things to keep in mind are that there are usually several ways to get wherever you're going, and that Tube stations in central London can be very close to one another. That last point means it is sometimes quicker to get out and walk than to change lines. Portobello market is quite long, and we recommend starting at one end and finishing at the other. There are Tube stations close to each end: Ladbroke Grove on the Hammersmith & City and Circle Lines; and Notting Hill Gate on the Circle, District, and Central Lines. Other stations near the Palace Theatre (assuming your tickets are for Priscilla) are Leicester Square and Charing Cross. Tips for visiting the markets: if you are interested in antiques, that section is closer to Notting Hill Gate and things get going very early on Saturday mornings. Be sure to go inside all the arcades, which aren't always obvious from the street. Withdraw cash ahead of time, and bring as much as you think you might spend - many stalls don't take cards, and cashpoint queues can get very long. Small independent shops tend to be located on side streets: Blenheim & Elgin Crescents, Talbot Road, Kensington Park Road. Golborne Road meets Portobello at the northern end, and has its own unique & exotic ambiance. For up-to-date info, follow @RBKC_Markets on Twitter or 'like' http://www.facebook.com/RBKCMarkets. The markets' own website is http://www.rbkc.gov.uk/streetmarkets Enjoy!

We loved the Portobello Road market on Saturday morning. We got there not so early and it was absolutely packed with thousands of people out walking. I didn't expect it to be so crowded! Prices inside the shops we visited were very high, it is clearly no flea market! I bought a cheap t-shirt for 4 pounds from a stall and that was about it. We walked all the way to the end of the market, which does turn into a flea market at the far end, with a lot of clothes and other misc. items out for sale. We then walked back to Notting Hill Gate tube station along some other less crowded side streets which were still interesting, and we stopped at "Books for Cooks" on the way, which is a very nice bookshop.