Bruges, Scott's Version

Back from Bruges in Belgium after an excellent few days between Christmas and New Years.

Despite being led somewhat astray at the info centre in Brussels (they sent us on the ONLY one of 14 trains that head towards the coast from Brussels that doesn't go through Bruges) we made it in at about 7pm on the evening of the 26th. A cheap cab ride from the train station put us into the very centre of the old town where our hotel was. We couldn't have asked for a better location - dead centre, right behind the big clocktower and square that is the heart of Bruges.


We checked in and spent a while wandering around, stopping in a little restaurant just off the square for an excellent, if somewhat pricey, dinner. A few pints of lovely Belgian beer later, bellies full of mussels, flemish beef stew and chips, we headed back to the hotel and more or less passed out.

The next day dawned bright but foggy. We started, as one does, with a big Belgian waffle from a little shop and started walking and shooting. We spent most of the day wandering about, sampling beer and chips as we went (they do both *really* well). Unfortuantely Bruges is almost comically photogenic and we both became concerned that we'd run out of room on our memory cards for photos, only having room for several thousand shots between us.

Almost as if to prove that not everything in Bruges is quaint and well-done, we had dinner in a restaurant that seemed to go out of its way to be pretentious and slightly offensive. The decor was shiny and trendy, the food certainly looked good, however the waiters were awful, acting as though our presence was somehow tedious. On the other hand, the steak was tasty and as always, we can find a bright side in a bottle of wine.

Day 3 turned out to be brilliantly sunny, and a fair bit warmer that the day before - so much so that the ice on the canals had all melted. We decided to do a walking tour of the "off the beaten track" areas of Bruges which was in our little guide book, and we realized that they're off the beaten track for a very good reason - it's very boring. I suppose if you lived there, you'd want quiet little streets with nothing on them but rows of houses, not a pub in sight, but not if you're looking for a pub crawl on your vacation. We made it to the windmills on the edge of town, took a few quick snaps, and headed rapidly back in the direction of the crowds, waffles, and most importantly, beverages.

The only real downside of a town like Bruges is that there isn't much to do other than walk, photograph, and enjoy the local hospitality of various establishments. We discovered, much to Jamie's delight and my dismay (on considering my previously safe beer fridge stock) that Jamie really enjoys Belgian beer. We sampled extensively from the local selection, including Brugge Zot Blonde (brewed right in town, we did the brewery tour), the old standby Leffe, Tongerlo, Kriek Mystic (which turned out to be a cherry beer, pink in colour, much to my horror and the barman's amusement), Kwak, and several others (our memory seems to be a bit foggy for reason...).

Dinner that night looked like it would be a winner, and we were hopeful for a memorable experience after the horrorshow of the prior night. We definately got a memorable night.

We'd chosen a little place near our hotel that apparenly had been featured in the 2008 Michelin guide, and featured a very limited menu that they assured us was so small so that they could focus on the quality of each dish, as opposed to doing a whole bunch of dishes badly. Seemed good in theory, however I think they were cooking each table individually as it took more than 3 hours to complete the meal - we waited just over an hour between courses at one point. Despite the slowness, the food was excellent and they kept pouring the wine (we ponied up for the wine pairings) to keep us occupied between courses.

We were disappointed to have to leave on our final day. We got up relatively early and climbed the clocktower to get the panoramic views over the town, before dropping our bags at the hotel and checking out. We spent a few more hours wandering around, stopping for an extended lunch of mussels and chips, and possibly a couple more Leffes for good measure. We were forced, almost at gunpoint, to indulge in a few more hot mulled wines before walking the 20 minutes back to the train station.

We made it from Bruges back to Brussels with no incident this time, and caught the 5pm Eurostar back to London. I wonder how long my Belgian beer is going to last, what with Jamie developing a taste for it...next she'll be into my scotch, and then all hell will break loose...

We Have Returned from Bruges!

Hello everyone...we are back from our short break in Bruges, Belguim.

Scott is going to give a full report shortly, but I wanted to post some pics so you believe me when I say Bruges is the cutest city in the world!!!

A Christmas Weekend Saturday in the Park

Had a great day yesterday, we went out on the town with our camera's to capture the xmas spirit. One thing that we've found is that we tend to be more demonstative with our Christmas displays. I find that here it is more focused on family. Not many people have lights out, alot of stores dont play xmas music, and Boxing Day is not really a big shopping day. So we wandered from Trafalgar Square to Regent's Park, going down Regent Street, past Carnaby Street, and Oxford Street (which was a ZOO!). It was a lovely temperature out so we spent alot of time walking in the park. It really is a beautiful park, and I'd like to go back during the summer when the rose garden is in bloom.

Here are a couple of my pics...see if you can spot what's different about Scott!



After that we headed home to Clapham, got ready for our night out at the Nutcracker adn headed back to Leicester Square. We ended up finding a great little Italian place for dinner on Villiers Street (I think its street) between Charing Cross and Embankment tube stops. Had a fantastic rustic Italian dinner, which reminded us of our Italy trip this past Sept. Then headed to the ballet. I think Scott was surprised that he actually enjoyed it. It flew by! We then went out for glass of chmapagne and scotch at a lounge on Trafalgar Square. Great night!

Today we are relaxing. We spent the morning doing our grocery (and alcohol) shopping as everything is closed here on xmas day. There is a wine wholesaler a few blocks away and they deliver free so we had a bunch delivered for tomorrow. Talk about convenient...maybe too convenient!

Hope that everyone is enjoying their festive season!!!

Jamie and Scott

Merry Christmas from London

Well, its that time of year again...2007 sure flew by!!

I finished my last day at KPMG yesterday (YAY!) and have two weeks off to relax before starting my new job at Northern Trust in Jan. What a great way to start off the new year. We are starting off the Christmas weekend by going to the Nutcracker in West End tonight, which I am really excited about as I've never seen it before. No real plans for Sun or Mon, other than Scott has to go into work for the morning. I plan to sleep in...woo hoo! We are spending Christmas Eve at Ken, Christie and John's place and then Christmas at our flat. There is zero public transit that day so looks like we will be inside, and its suppose to rain (merry christmas). Our friend Mash, who just moved here, is spending Christmas Day with us so it should be very fun!

Boxing day we are heading to Bruges for 3 nights and then Ken, Christie and John are coming over for New Years. Cant wait to get on the Eurostar and visit Belguim...mmmmmm....mussels and fries!!!

Hope everyone is doing well and we wish you a very merry christmas and all the best in 2008!! And we promise to update more often in the new year!!!

Some Good News!

After 3.5 years of external auditing, I am leaving KPMG!!!! I have accepted a position at Northern Trust www.northerntrust.com and start in January!! I will be a Project Lead in the Internal Audit.

Woo hoo!

Finally another update

OK, its been a while since we posted...I've been sick, we've been working...but enough excuses...we've been chastised (or maybe its chastized) for not updating frequently enough so we promise to be better...I'm aiming for at least once a week!

Well, its rainy and windy in Britain...it is winter after all. To be honest, the weather changes probably 3-4 times a day. It can be pouring rain when we get on the tube for work, and then sunny by the time we emerge from the depths of the Underground 40 mins later. So while its about the same temperature as Vancouver, we actually see sun here daily, which is a nice change! We are further north here and we get about 1 hour less daylight. Its actually noticeable.

OK, enough about the weather! Sorry, its a big conversation thing here! But here are a couple pics of Clapham Common, the large park in front of our flat:



It was our 5 year wedding anniversary on Nov 30 (wow, did that pass quicky!) and we went to Royal Tunbridge Wells (see Scott's pics below) to celebrate. Its about 40 mins south of London in Kent. We were going to go to Paris, but with Scott looking for work we couldnt buy tickets far enough in advance to make it affordable. So we settled on a cute B&B in Tunbridge Wells.

We got there abou 7pm and heading out to a tapas restaurant to celebrate. A couple bottles of champagne and a few hours later we stumbled home. I should mention that I was horribly sick with a cold, so I was all sniffly all weekend. Poor me.

On Sat we headed to the old part of town called the Pantiles. This is a pedestrian area filled with a market, shops and the spa where the mineral water was found in 1606 and the town was founded(hence the Wells part of the name). After coffee to warm up we signed up for the walking tour and as it turned out we were the only ones. So we had a private 2 hour tour with this REALLY weird tour guide. He was like Mr. Bean...but VERY serious about his love for the town. Anyways, it was interesting. We spent the rest of the day walking around trying out different pubs :) Of course. Then Scott surprized me and bought me a beautiful 1/2 eternity band at the Crown Jewelers. It is absolutely beautiful!!!! The night, in true Jamie and Scott style we went out for a fancy dinner...however were disappointed. It was a bit fussy, with foam on all the dishes and little towers of veg...and the service wasnt great. But enjoyable none the less.

Sunday we awoke to gale force winds. We finished breakfast and heading out to a cafe for one last walk around town. We sat in a cafe and tried to dry off, then in true English fashion, the sun came out! We went for lunch, had a few drinks and then got back on the train back to London. Another great weekend!



I had a great week! Found out I qualifed for my Chartered Accountants designation on Wed, so all that paperwork is filed...after 5 years of hard work I am finally a CA!!!!!! WOOO HOOO!

We spent this weekend decorating our house for xmas...although I do have to admit we bought a fake tree. I know, I know...but the trees here are really lame...Charlie Brown trees. So we went out to Wimbledon on the bus and bought our tree at the B&Q. Unfortunately in came in a HUGE box that Scott graciously carried back on the bus. Poor guy! We also enjoyed dressing up the monkeys in their xmas finery. See the pics below. Poor Hamilton unfurled his tail the whole time!!!!!



Well, thats about it for now. Will update later in the week!!

A Day in St Albans

Nov 10 we headed out on the Thameslink train to St Albans...again with London Walks. I think we are single-handedly supporting their business! St Albans is about 45 min north of central London, so it was a quick jaunt out in the morning. This cure little town has a lovely market on Sat, and was also a very important Roman city back in its hay day. They even have a Roman theatre. Its not the most scenic town, but we thought the history was interesting. Plus they have a tavern called The Cock...and another one called Ye Olde Fighting Cocks. Cant be a bad place, right??




We've been busy with work these days...my busy season is starting early because I am on a client with a Dec 2, 2007 year end. So the next month should fly by! Scott is settling in with his work too. We've also been seeing a lot of other CDNs, which has been nice.

We've also seen Ken, John and Christie alot, which has been great. Tomorrow we are heading out with Ken and John and going to Borough market and maybe a pub crawl. Should be fun!

PS: weird side note....they spell aging ageing here! Thats just wrong!

Saturday in Canterbury

Today we took a trip to Canterbury, again with London Walks. Its about 1.5 hours by train south of London, on the way to Dover. This is of course the town famous for Geoffry Chaucer's Canterbury Tales. Scott actually knows the first verse or so in Middle English, very geeky!

We spent the morning taking the "scenic" route through town. As it turns out Canterbury is kind of grotty. Lots of Chav's and homeless beggers, weird for such a cute small town. The buildings are amazing, but filled with Starbucks and Subways. I hate that.

We had lunch at a little Italian place in the main square and then headed into the Cathedral. Abolutely huge and beautiful! All the Cloister buildings are beautiful as well. The Black Prince's tomb is in the cathedral, and its also where Saint Thomas Beckett was killed.

Again it was another grey day, so the pics are not the greatest, but here are mine:

A Saturday at Blenheim Palace and Oxford

Another great (and grey!) day in England. Today we took another London Walk to Blenheim Palace and Oxford.

We started early this morning, which after spending the night out at the pub with some friends was a bit painful! We took the train to Oxford and headed out to Blenheim Palace. The palace is huge and absolutely beautiful. Queen Anne gave the Churchill family the money to build it (I think 200K pounds at the time) after they helped her win against the French and save England. Winston Churchill was actually born there (its his cousin's families home and his parents were visting when he was born). They had a great display on his life.

After exploring the grounds we boarded the bus and headed into Oxford. Lovely little university town, and the university is gorgeous! I would have loved to study there. After a guided tour of town we shopped for a while and then headed back to London. All in all, a great day!

My pics are below:

October Update and a Visit from Rob

Well, I've been back at work for a month now. Blah. I suppose we need some way to fund our expensive habits like travel. I would love to win the lottery though! Currently I am at a client that is 1.5 hour commute from our house. I have to take the tube then an overland train then a taxi. Good times. At least I can read a book in transit.

Scott got a job and started this week. His company is a small private company http://www.ie.com/ that does some sort of work for large banking clients like Barclay's. He has to commute by overland train for about an hour each way, but he is enjoying the challenge. He thinks this will really set him up for some great City jobs (The City of London is the business distict, like downtown Vancouver) in about a year.

Rob, one of my coworkers/friends from Vancouver visited us last week and we had a great time showing him around. He just finished writing his UFE and was heading back to Vancouver to return to work on Sunday.

Other than that, not much is new. The monkeys are doing well...we finally bought a new flatscreen tv, and work is work. Looking forward to Ken's birthday on Sunday and meeting Christie for curry tomorrow night!

My Italian Pics (updated)

Here's the first of my Italian vacation photos - these are all from Rome. More to come as I edit them.

October 17 - Ive updated more photos and added them to the stream below...more to come later...

A Birthday Party in Limerick, Ireland

We headed out to Limerick, Ireland for Christie's 50th birthday this weekend. There were about 15 of us, a good show indeed! We flew out Friday afternoon on Ryan Air. It's one of the low cost airlines, and they don't assign seating, which means when they board the plane it is a mad dash to grab a good seat. Scott and I "splurged" and paid the extra 2 pounds each to get on the plane first. This worked out great as we got front row seats with tonnes of leg room! We also got to rub that in to the rest of the group who had made fun of us for paying the extra! Good start to the weekend!

We arrived at Shannon airport, dropped our bags in the hotel and headed to the bar in the hotel to start the weekend off right. After a few rounds we went to Moll Darby's for a fantastic dinner. http://www.molldarbys.com/ Food was excellent, company evn better.

Saturday dawned a foggy morning and we started off with a good ole Irish Breakfast. Unfortunately Ken and John had a few run ins with the restaurant staff due to past date yogurt amoung other things.

Limerick's main street O'Connell street is a large shopping area, so it was nice and busy Saturday morning. We wandered around taking pics and had lunch with Ken and John at a nice cafe. After lunch we toured King John's castle (An English castle in Ireland, quel horreur!) and spent the rest of the afternoon watching England kick Australia's ass in the World Rugby Tournament...much to the Irish fans dismay.

After a few more pints at the hotels bar we headed to Dolan's Pub http://www.dolanspub.com/ for dinner, drinking and the birthday celebration! Delicious food again, who knew the Irish could cook??? They had live Irish music, which was fantastic. In the spirit of Limerick, Scott and I wrote Chrisie a Limerick for her birthday:

We headed to Limerick in the cold
We drank whenever we were told
Christie turned 50
We said she was nifty
But really we thought she was quite old.

Hahahahaha...ok, we won't win any writing competitions but we had a great time. Here are some pics from our virgin voyage to the Emerald Isle:

More Pics of Italy

We're just going through our pics and thought we would post some of the great photos Bruce took. He has some great ones of the family:

Back from Italy!

Well, after a long break we are back in London and have internet at our house!! YAY!!

We had a fantastic 3 week trip to Italy with Bruce and Myra Shearer (Scott's parents), Todd Broadhurst (Jamie's brother), and Derek and Shirley Broadhurst (Jamie's parents). Yes, alot of family for 3 weeks, but it turned out great.

We spend a week in Rome, a week in Positano, and a week in Umbria/Tuscany. Here's the first batch of Jamie's pics from Rome...



And Jamie's pics from Positano...



And Jamie's pics from Umbria and Tuscany:

First UK Drive

Rented a car today to take the dogs out to a kennel for our Italy trip.

I did great pulling out of the Budget rental car park and managed to turn left into the correct lane. Things were going fantastically for 200 yards until I ran into a bus. Damn Brits driving on the wrong side.

Fortunately I just sorta clipped it and took off the passenger side mirror. Took me pretty much all day of driving to get used to the whole bulk of the car being off the left, not the right like I'm used to...

Not sure if I'll be driving much...good thing we got the extra insurance...

(seriously...I ran into a bus.)

Some of Jamie's Photos from London

Some pics from our first month in London...and a London Walk we did yesterday on our first Bank Holiday Monday in the UK.

We went to Peak District, 2 hours north of London on the train. We started in a small village called Eyam, famous for quarantining itself when the plague broke out there in 1665, which potentially saved hundreds of lives. Then we headed to the Chatsworth House, a beautiful house owned by a Duke that has public gardens.

West End trip 1

Yesterday ended up being a very busy day. We’d planned on getting up early and doing a day trip to Brighton with London Walks. When we got up and looked out the window, we saw it was overcast and drizzling – not the best weather for a trip to the seaside.

We decided that instead of gallivanting in the rain at the seaside, we’d get some chores done that we’d been putting off for a while – specifically a trip to the madhouse that is Primark on Oxford Street.

Primark is a bizarre store. It’s sort of like a combination of the prices of Winners and the absolute crap clothing and house wears you can get at Wal-Mart. On the other hand, at £5 for a towel, it’s hard to go wrong. Unfortunately, it’s the back-to-school shopping season and at £2 for a shirt, I think most of the school-age girls in London were madly winnowing through stacks of polyester crap looking for the perfect ensemble. We managed to get our towels and ran for the hills, sanity more or less intact.

After a few hours of recovering at home, we headed out again. Ken had managed to get half-price tickets to Boeing Boeing – a play in the West End starring, oddly enough, Rhea Perlman. The show was hilarious, although Rhea wasn’t quite up to the task and definitely seemed out of her league.

After the show we decided that a pint or two were in order so we headed over the road to the pub (one of the best things about London is that there’s pretty much ALWAYS a pub over the road, regardless of where you are). As it was getting late and it being a Monday, they started closing up so we were forced to wander over to an open-late bar that caters to West End actors over by Charing Cross. A bottle of wine later, we were all ready to go.

The tube stops running at 12:30, so we had to grab a cab back home – didn’t work out to be as expensive as I’d expected – only £20 and that in a black cab – next time should be cheaper if we take a mini-cab...

The Monkeys have Arrived!!

Phew...yesterday was an extremely stressful day! The monkeys arrived safe and sound around 5:30pm. Which meant we basically sat in our new flat (with no furniture) all day waiting for them to arrive. Very fun!

They were a bit stunned when they arrived, Charlie in particular. They are both being very clingy today, but they are getting lots of love. We're going to stick around the house today to make sure they settle in nicely. There's a vet right down the street so we will go introduce ourselves as well.

We also are getting our new bedroom suite delivered today...we are VERY excited about sleeping on a good mattress! We are also lucky to have a big bedroom, so we were able to get a queen sized bed instead of a double. Looking forward to a good nights sleep tonight!

Our New Flat

Here are some pictures of our new flat on Clapham Common - we took them with a camera phone while the cleaners were there so a) the picture quality is quite frankly crap and b) there's weird powdery brown stuff on the floor - evidently that's some sort of sea-grass carpet cleaner stuff that gets sprinkled and then vacuumed off. It didn't seem to do anything, but I think the cleaners felt better for it.

Living room including a bit of a view out the window and the fireplace:


Other angle of the living room (yes, that's a giant table with the benches on the top of it - they were cleaning and needed them out of the way):


Our bedroom:


The bathroom:


My kitchen (there's another little counter off screen to the left - it'll be good for the toaster and coffee machine):


The back garden - yes, it's actually bigger than the one in Burnaby:


The view from the little deck area in the garden back through the conservatory and into the kitchen:


We've ordered some furniture (a bed and a couch) plus we've bought some dishes and crap for the kitchen, so it should start looking like a real flat later this week. Until then we're staying in our temporary flat in Bermondsey which has luxuries like places to sit and a place to sleep, as well as things to drink out of...

More Photos

First Week Photos

This is the reason that you might want to re-think visiting London in August:


We spent a few hours wandering around St. James Park yesterday after being scared off by the hordes around Buckingham Palace - we'd thought that maybe we could visit the state rooms which are only open in August, but not with the massive number of people milling about...


There are loads of birds in the park, including a bunch of pelicans:


They even have a few herons that hang about:


Apparently the Queen owns all the swans in the world:


I feel like this some mornings:

Almost a Week

We’re sitting in our flat watching BBC morning news inside, and watching the rain come down outside. It’s just drizzle right now and evidently it won’t last long, but it’s making me wish we’d looked harder for quality umbrellas, although it’s hard to focus on that with the weather we’ve been having here – blisteringly hot and sunny, to the point that I managed to get a sunburn even with sunscreen on.

We’ve been busy the last few days. When we saw the flat in Clapham, we hadn’t actually seen much of Clapham itself, so we took the tube down to the Clapham South and started walking up towards the Common. The South side is a nice little area – a few little shops and a giant Tesco, which will be convenient. They also had a sign that there’s a farmer’s market on Sunday mornings, which will be nice as it’s only about a 7 minute walk from our flat.

Walking up the South Side road, there’s loads of decent looking houses and conversions on one side (along with a few council estates, although not really dodgy ones like in Hackney for example) and the giant park on the other side, complete with little ponds with people lined around the edges fishing.

Our flat is about halfway between Clapham South and Clapham Commons tube stations – perhaps a little closer to Clapham Commons. We walked up to it, timing the walk from our flat out of curiosity – it took about 5 minutes, although we were more sauntering enjoying the sunshine than walking with purpose like I’m sure we would in the rain on the way home from work.

Clapham Commons tube is at the start of the Clapham High Street, which is lined on both side by bars, restaurants, curry places, thai places, a massive Sainsbury’s, and load of little shops. I think we’re going to enjoy the area – it’ll take us AGES to visit all the pubs, but we’re up for the challenge.

After the visit to Clapham we tried to sort out our bank stuff. The company set up an account for us and were supposed to mail the bank cards etc to our temporary flat; however we hadn’t received them yet. We managed to find Jamie’s office just off Blackfriars and called the girl who was supposed to be dealing with it – turned out she’d forgotten to mail them. She said that she’d courier them to the office (she’s outside of London) and they should be there sometime today. Unfortunately we can’t sign up a phone without a bank card, so we’ve been without a phone so far. Should be sorted later today though, which will be nice.

Saturday we made a MAJOR strategic error. Our flat is only partially furnished and doesn’t have any chairs, couches, or a bed. We’d visited the John Lewis shop (a big department store chain in the UK – equivalent to a higher-end Bay from what we can tell)and found a mattress and couch but wanted to compare to other stores. The only other place we know of is the Marks and Spencers, and the only location with furniture is the Marble Arch store just off Oxford Street. This is where the major error occurred – we went to Oxford Street on a sunny Saturday afternoon in August. I wouldn’t recommend doing this. It was absolutely PACKED with tourists all being incredibly annoying. The M&S was disappointing – very limited in-store selection and what they did have wasn’t very nice. Good place for expensive pre-packaged food and perhaps clothing, but not so much for furniture.

We continued the disaster after the M&S by going on a London Landmarks walking tour. We started with a boat cruise up the Thames from London Bridge to Westminster. All of the tourists who weren’t on Oxford St seemed to be here. I had no idea that there were that many tourists in the world, let alone in central London. Absolutely insane.

The tour was fun and very interesting, although we were melting in the blazing sun (news says it got above 30°C). We ended up at Horseguards on Whitehall and walked as quickly as we could to the Westminster tube and back home.

Sunday was an excellent day – we’ve been on a Canadian expat forum on the internet asking loads of questions and getting some really good advice. We headed out to the Covent Gardens area to meet a pair of them and have a few pints. We hit the Roundhouse on Garrick Street – a typical and slightly pricey London Pub with a fair selection of ales on tap, although I stuck for the most part to Kronenburg as it was screaming hot again.

After a few pints, we walked up the road to a pub called “The Maple Leaf”, which is a Canadian bar. It was very odd – it sort of had the fake british pub thing that so many Vancouver bars seem to try to go for (ie Smiley O’Neals or The Lions on Cordova) complete with a fake log wall, a stuffed moose head and a stuffed black bear in the corner. They actually had a Sleeman’s Honey Brown on tap, which I was forced to try (not very good – tasted like they needed to clean the pipes or something) and a plate of not-hot hot wings. Very odd – felt like we were in Vancouver for an hour or so.

We called it a day and headed home. It was 30°C in our flat according to the thermostat in the living room, but no air conditioning. Friggen HOT. We had a light dinner and tried not to melt for the evening.

Rain seems to have stopped – evidently it’s going to be a nice afternoon, hopefully will give us time to find a decent umbrella. We have to sign the final paperwork for our flat this afternoon, and order some furniture...

Our Temporary Flat

We've been put up in a temporary flat in Bermondsey just off the Tower Bridge road. It's fairly small - we figure it's somewhere between 250 - 350 sq feet, consisting of a small living room with a couch and a tv, a little table for two, and a small kitchen area. We've also got a little bedroom area, although it's not seperated in any way from the rest of the flat, as well as a small bedroom.

It's in a newish development called "The Maltings", which is a converted brewery I think. Our particular section was just built/renovated two years ago but they did a crap job - the laminate floor doesn't quite meet the wall for example.

It's in a fairly decent neighbourhood, although Bermondsey is one of the "up and coming" areas in London. Formerly quite rough and tumble it's starting to become a slightly nicer area, although I'm not sure I'd feel too comfortable walking around at night around here.

We've got a nice view - across the city to the London Eye directly out our patio window, and a view of city hall if we stand on the balcony.

It looks like we're going to be here until the 11th at least, which means we're going to have to figure out how to use the little washing machine...

Here's some pictures of our view:

Satellite Image of our new flat

Our place is more or less at the green arrow:

First Days in London

Well, we made it.

We got to the airport at a reasonable hour on Tuesday considering that we had passes to the Maple Leaf lounge at the airport before our flight. We'd spent a busy morning runing around cancelling bank accounts and doing the final packing of our four giant suitcases.

We arrived at the airport at about 3pm Vancouver time and went to the checkout counter. We asked if we could upgrade our tickets from economy to business class and were told that we'd bought our tickets on some sort of a corporate rate and that it would cost several thousand dollars EACH to upgrade. Screw that. It also transpired that the corporate rate did not include passes to the lounge that we'd been looking forward to so much. Damnit!

Oh well...Milestones in the departures waiting area serves a nice pint so we spent an hour there waiting for our flight. The flight itself was fairly uneventful, except that neither Jamie nor I could sleep - a combination of nerves, excitement, and 6 small children (ie all under 5) in the front row with us.

We got into London earlier than expected and made our way to the immigration control area expecting the worst. Turned out the girl who admitted us was viciously uninterested in me and only asked what flight I was on and where I flew from. I answered those two questions and she stamped my passport and sent us on our way. We picked up our bags, found our driver and headed into town.

The temporary flat we've got is in Bermondsey just off Tower Bridge Road on Tanner St in a converted brewery - it's nice, but very small and lacking slightly in personality...it'll do for the time being. After getting settled in, we headed out for a bit of wandering. We didn't go very far - we managed to find the London Bridge Tube stop, where I pretty much crashed - lack of sleep and blood sugar did me in. We got our Oyster Cards (prepaid tube cards) and head to the Marks & Spencer food shop were we got some coffee grounds and supplies for breakfast. We headed home and tried to stay awake for the rest of the evening until 8:30pm when we couldn't fake it any more.

We slept well, but were both up and awake at 4:30am. Jet lag sucks. The morning was nice and we relaxed for a quite a while, waiting to go out for our flat search. We were really early and wandered around Knightsbridge and Harrods for a while (they have a Krispy Kreme counter in Harrods; how sick is that?!?). We were at the Homesearch office at 9:30 and loaded into Sandy's car to start our day of driving.

The first flat we looked at didn't bode well for the day - it was a fairly small basement suite with low ceilings, an odd smell, and damp stains on pretty much ALL the walls, including a fair bit of mildew on one. The only redeeming feature was a massive private garden in the back.

The next two were no goes - one was already under offer, and the other was in the process of having a contract signed as we pulled up; we didn't even get out of the car. We hit gold with flat number three.

Number three was a second floor flat in a block just off North End Road in Fullham - a very nice residential area just west of Chelsea and Kensington. It was small, but was very nicely done with a great kitchen, a huge fireplace, wood floors throughout, and TONS of storage. We put an offer in on it and kept looking, just in case.

The next bunch were pretty much crap. We looked in some fairly dodgy areas (Battersea mainly) and were getting pretty frustrated until we hit the Clapham Common South Side and found what turned out to be our new flat.

It's on the South Side road just across from the masssive Clapham Common green space (absolutely huge) and a decent-looking pub. It's fairly big by London standards - about 1000 sq feet as far was we could tell with a modern kitchen, a little solarium, a huge garden, massive reception room featuring 14-foot ceilings, and huge master bedroom. As we were looking at it, another girl was there putting an offer in. We fell in love with it as soon as we saw it and put one in ourselves. Turned out the landlord loves dogs and the kiddos were the reason she gave it to us instead of the other girl.

We move in on August 11th, the day Jodi and Tristan arrive for their one-day visit. It's only partially furnished so we're going to get to go furniture shopping - hopefully we can get everything delivered on the 11th.

The rest of the week including signing the rental agreement, exploring a bit of Clapham High Street and our new neighbourhood, and perhaps a pint or two along the way...

Enough for now - I'll try to get some pictures up over the next few days...

Our House

We managed to sell the house in what seemed like record time - a total of two days worth of open houses and two offers after the second day.

The place cleaned up pretty nicely. Mike had a professional real estate photographer come in and he took some excellent photos.

Getting Ready for the Open House

Our first open house is going to be this Saturday - we've been busier than hell getting ready for it, and we've got a tonne left to do this week - pretty much entirely after work.

So far, we've taken about 7 car loads of stuff to goodwill including 5 full bags of clothes, filled the dumpster twice (and I mean *filled*), painted and sorted.

We even went so far as to drop a cool $500 on re-doing the backyard to make it look nice for a change - the vast majority of that went towards plants.

I'm currently sitting downstairs while new carpet gets installed upstairs - I think it's going to look good, and will definitely not smell like dog/cat piss like the old one did...that may have been one of the more disgusting things I've seen (pulling up the carpet and even worse, the underlay). At the very least, the place will smell new, instead of moldy and nasty.

I think the open house is scheduled from 2 - 4 on Saturday, with possibly another one on Sunday. Before then, we've got to finish painting the bedroom, touching up the walls upstairs, arrange all the furniture up there to look good (IE turning my office into a single bedroom, and doing a final clean-out. I'm not looking forward to mucking out the rest of the garage.

Hopefully all this work is going to be worth it - I'm not too concerned about the price we get, I figure we'll make back everything we've spent so far. I'm just hoping it sells quickly so we can get back to a normal existence and actually enjoy all this work we've been doing.

Next update: after the open house, possibly with pictures.

Well Sorted

After some initial confusion, everything seems to be sorted – at least for the time being.

As it turned out, the temporary accommodation didn’t accept dogs. The relocation specialist suggested a local London company that places dogs in homes within the city – evidently they’d used them several times before. After a brief moment when we thought we might be able to stay with a friend, we’ve decided to go with this company.

An unlooked-for side benefit is that we’ve also found a woman who breeds pugs that also boards them, so we’ve got a place to put Hamilton and Charlie while we’re in London. She lives in Kent, which is relatively close to London, so a car rental and a quick drive will have us there and on our way out to the airport.

So – that’s settled. We’ve also talked to the relocation specialist (Sarah) about the type of flat we’ll be looking for, and the areas we’d like to live in. Our list of requirements seemed a bit long to us, but I think it’ll make the search go a bit easier – at least we KNOW what we want ahead of time. We told her that we wanted:

- proximity to tube (within 10-15 minute walk)
- safe street
- dog friendly
- in-suite washing machine (dryer optional but preferred)
- dishwasher
- proximity to green space appreciated (for the dogs), but not essential
- amenities within close proximity (ie pubs/restaurants etc)
- Prefer 2 floor or above, although street-level is okay
- If street level, an outdoor space would be preferred
- must be furnished
- American style shower and water pressure

And that we were thinking about the following areas:
- Docklands
- Angel
- Islington
- Fulham
- Putney
- Chelsea
- Clapham (South or the Common, not North)
- Belsize Park
- Notting Hill
- Maida Vale

Apparently Docklands is off the list as no where there will take dogs, and Angel, Chelsea and Notting Hill are going to be way off our budget. I think that leaves a fairly big search area. I’m leaning towards Islington and Belsize Park as they both seem nicest.

We’ve also had our flights booked for us. We’re flying out of Vancouver on Air Canada on July 31^st, landing at Heathrow on August 1^st at 11:30 in the morning. It seems that Air Canada only offers what they call “Latitude Plus” on one-way tickets, which is somewhere between economy class and business class – hell, we even get admitted to the Maple Leaf Lounge at Vancouver International – I think we’ll have to be at the airport a few hours early to take advantage of the free bar service offered.

I think that’s all the planning done for London for the time being – next on the list is selling our house, which I suspect won’t be quite so simple.

The Move (5 months prior)

The move is afoot - I've just had my spousal settlement visa approved by the British High Commission (in one day, if you can believe that), we've met with our realtor and decided on a timeframe for selling the house...everything is falling into place.

So, the plan as it stands now:

• Moving July 31st, 2007
• 2 weeks temporary accomodation in London as we frantically try to find a flat.
• 2 week general vacation and lounging, with a possible trip to Scotland for something to do.
• 1 month in Italy with the whole fam damily
• start work (for Jamie at least - hopefully I'll have a job by then).

I'll keep this up to date with more info as we get it...things are starting to move quickly now.