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...