Yes, we're alive.

So our temporary internet stopped this past Friday and we don't get our permanent internet until sometime this coming Monday...so, yes, I've been disconnected from the world. It's been painful. But alas, I come to you from a delightful little cafe around the corner from our place called Mocchacafe. They aren't even judging me for sitting in front of my computer, eyes glued to the screen, for the past 2 hours. I'm afraid this post won't be long because my vision is getting blurry from staring at the screen for too long.

We continue to get settled into our new place. It's really starting to look/feel like home. We hauled a massive load home this past weekend from Ikea - Keibler-style, if you will :). I've put my freakish organizational skills to work and it's really looking homey. Pictures next week, promise.

Our friend Chris was in town last week so we headed to dinner with him on Tuesday to a pub near us called Elk in the Woods. Crazy menu, good food. Chris has something called frikadeller or some version of the word I just attempted to spell. I think it was pork meatballs? Or some kind of meat...ball? It was yummy. I had a board of pea guacamole, pita, beet salsa, feta and some other delicious things. Matt had rabbit paella, which was also good, but nothing to write home about. We ended the night with a Guinness at a local pub, where Chris was able to sample his first REAL Guinness (not the crap they pour in the States), yum!

Saturday, Chris was able to score tickets to the Arsenal/West Brom game. Arsenal hadn't lost in their own stadium to West Brom since the 80s...or something ridiculously long. Unfortunately, Chris and Matt must've been bad luck because Arsenal lost. Oh well. Better luck next time. The Arsenal stadium is only about a 25 minute walk from our place, which is pretty convenient. Matt continues on his search for the perfect Arsenal jersey...

Saturday night, Matt and I went to dinner with our friend Nick at a local Mexican restaurant...possibly the only decent Mexican restaurant in London...called Desperados. It was quite good despite Whit's warnings against Mexican food in London...which we mostly agree with. Desperados did not serve unlimited chips/salsa, but the food we ordered was good and satisfied our Mexican fix for now. However, I'm already planning on a Mexican feast when we come home at Christmas. Be ready El Burrito Mexicano!!! And all the other amazing Mexican restaurants in Chicago. We continued our night at a pub in Soho...after a short stroll through London's red light district (hey, we were curious! Cole - doesn't hold a candle to Paris)...that was apparently a piano bar. While it was crowded and full of seriously drunk people (we weren't quite there), it was really fun. Everyone sang along to the piano and we heard Journey. Enough said.

Hmmm, what else? The Kolmans arrive tonight...otherwise known as our first friends visiting for fun and not work. Hooray!! I'm excited for companions during the work week! We're planning a day trip to Bath on Saturday and other fun outings, including...YES...a Harry Potter walking tour. I CANNOT WAIT. Luckily, I brought my HP shirt that I scored at a Champaign Salvation Army shop so I can be in full HP nerd mode on the tour. You best believe I'll have a picture at platform 9 3/4 to post soon. :)

Some of you have asked about my job search. Well, not that I didn't expect it, but so far, it's been fruitless. Not that I haven't tried, but a dietitian looking for non-dietitian jobs is difficult. That's all I'll say about that for now, except that if anyone has any magical London contacts, I'll be your BFF.

One day Matt will blog and comment on his work over here. From my end, he seems to be doing quite well.

I think that's all for now folks. I am officially starting to go blind from computer-staring syndrome. Time to head out into another glorious gray, raindy London day (FYI, the weather hasn't been bad at all, lots of sunny days to combat the rainy ones and lovely fall temperatures...the scarves have been busted out!).

Cheers!!

Pics!

Just a quick post to let you know that pictures are updated and we have temporary internet at our place for the next 4 days so we'll be able to post at some point this week. I'm also hoping to add more pics so you guys can see what our new place looks like.

Moving weekend wore us out so we're off to bed. Hope everyone enjoys the rest of the weekend!

MOVING DAY!

We're excited...can you tell? ;) We are mid-moving process - had our walk through the new flat this morning to check that everything was in working order. I'm not sure how it works in Chicago since I never officially rented a place, but the walk through was extremely thorough, which was comforting to us. Only a couple things that require attention - nothing too major thankfully. But the walk through took an hour and a half by the time we got through everything. There was an agent from the lettings office and an independent guy who was our representative (i.e. to make sure we didn't get screwed). The agent walked us through the place and then "our" guy walked through with a recorder noting EVERYTHING. Together, they make a extensive list of the inventory and state of the flat to ensure it's all the same when we move out. Crazy. Enough about that.

So our moving van (basically a big white GMC-type van) arrives in about an hour so we'll start the sad, long process of carrying all our stuff down the hall to the elevator, then outside to the curb, then load it into the van, ride in said van to Islington (our new neighborhood), take everything back out of van and carry up 1.5 flights of stairs. Whew. My back already hurts just thinking about it. But after this, NO MOVING FOR 18 MONTHS!!!!!!!!! We have moved more in the past 13 months than any human ever should. But no complaints because it all brought us to this point. We finally get to start to create our new home in London.

After we dump our stuff and manage a shower, we're heading out with the London gang tonight (if you haven't figured it out yet, London gang = Mike, Sandy, Nick and Brock) in Islington (we'll most likely be able to walk home, gasp!). Tomorrow, we're heading back to Bodean's to watch the Bills/Packers game because Mike and Sandy are Buffalo fans and Brock is a Packers fan...no one's perfect though, right? ;) They are showing the Bears game elsewhere, but we'll manage a week without seeing the game.

Oh and it sounds like we should have internet up and running by Sep 27 or so. I'm hoping to blog again from a coffee shop with wifi, but no promises. Hope you can all hold out until then.

Enjoy your weekends! And a very HAPPY HAPPY 25TH BIRTHDAY to my favorite brother BJ on Sunday!! Wish we could be there to celebrate!!

Cheers!

t-3 days

Only 3 more days in our temporary flat. HOORAY!! There really are no words for our excitement. Tonight, we're heading to pick up a bunch of housewares from a girl who is finishing up her rotation here and then Saturday morning, we head to the new flat for a walk-through and then move our stuff in - YAY! We are still in the stage of trying to figure out what company to go with for internet/cable, but hopefully (fingers crossed!), it doesn't take too long for us to get set up so we can get back to blogging, finally post pictures and regain the ability to skype from my computer. That will be a truly amazing day.

Last weekend was another enjoyable time. Friday was a low-key night, but we headed to dinner for Thai food with our friend, Nick, at a place in Islington which is literally a 30-second walk from where our near place will be. Their Tom Yum Goong soup was tasty, but not as spicy and amazingly delicious at the Thai place in Canary Wharf that we've hit up a couple times. My main dish was a spicy noodle dish with chicken, chilis and peppers and was my favorite Thai entree thus far though - we are really enjoying all the different types of cuisine that are so readily available. We continued our evening at a pub down the road on Upper Street and had a few pints and called it a night. Sunday was, of course, the start of NFL football. Matt had done a bit of research on pubs that might show NFL games so we headed to one called Bodean's that was walking distance from London Bridge. It was apparently started by a guy from KC and served BBQ - not usually something I would sign up for in London, but I do love KC BBQ. We were insanely pleased when the first thing we saw walking into the place was a Hester jersey sitting at the bar and the Bears game on the big screen. We took a spot at the bar and enjoyed Coors Light (yes! they had Coors Light) and soon realized after the 89-yd touchdown run by Forte that we were surrounded by Bears fans - the whole place went nuts. It was SO fun! We made friends with a couple Chicagoans at the bar and learned that we had most likely chosen the best place to find Bears games - score! If only we could find a place that shows Illinois football...and also find a way to make Illinois football worth watching.

London has the pleasure this week of the company of Jilen Bouwer and the three of us headed to dinner last night at a little Italian place near St. Paul's - super tasty. It is insane that since we've arrived, we've pretty much had 1 person in town visiting (for work so far) every day. Crazy. And also really nice. While we are so excited for our adventure in London, we definitely miss home sometimes, especially our favorite orange fuzzy man. I'm so glad we didn't put Cosmo through the trauma of coming to London, but we miss our little guy. And our friends and family. And knowing how everything works. And the US dollar. :) But we really hope that everyone who is able makes the trek over here or is up for meeting us in another European destination.

Alright, time to start packing some stuff up. We'll try to blog once more before Saturday in case internet set-up takes awhile. Happy Wednesday everyone!

9 days and counting...

Well, we are STILL in the middle of paperwork for this flat, but things seem to be progressing nicely and we just found out that we get to move in on September 18! In 9 days!! YES! No more temporary flat. It's a nice enough place to live (you'll get to see pics eventually), but after 3 weeks of being here, we are ready to settle in. Which we can't do here. Because we cannot REALLY unpack. So we've essentially been living out of our suitcases since our arrival (boo). I want to unpack and organize and clean and settle in. Plus our new place is just adorable - tons of character, located over a little clothing shop on a cute street, and a fair amount of storage for a London flat.

This week hasn't been overly exciting. Matt is getting more familiar with what his work role will be and I've been on random exploration adventures, including a lengthy walk through what will be our new neighborhood yesterday. Halfway through, I decided to venture out to the IKEA that was supposedly not too far away. The tube ride was only about 10 minutes, but then there was supposed to be a free shuttle to IKEA because it was essentially suburban where I was. Well, let's just say waiting for the shuttle took considerably longer than expected, but I eventually made it to IKEA. Overall, it was disappointing. I am well aware that IKEA products are not the highest quality, but well, eh. I didn't even buy napkins...and that's saying a lot (right, Abbie?). Oh well. We could definitely get some basic dishes/glasses but not much else. Maybe other UK locations are nicer?

Today, I got an email from the London edition of Daily Candy alerting me to an Orla Kiely sample sale at the Chelsea Old Town Hall. Ummm, YAY! I love Orla Kiely. Love, love, love. As mentioned in a previous post, I've already made the trek to one of her UK stores...I think in the first week we were here. So needless to say, I set out for Chelsea this am. The sale started at 11am, but I arrived around 11:30am. It. was. madness. I'm not kidding. People were walking around with up to 20 bags on one arm. I've never seen anything like it. I made out with a wallet and a make-up bag for 50 GBP, a huge deal. I saw some people with some pretty amazing finds, but I think you had to be there at 10:59am to get the good stuff.

I've also been keeping myself busy trying to decide where Matt and I should celebrate our 2-year anniversary next month. No official decision yet, but we're leaning toward Paris. I mean, it's no Galena, IL (where we celebrated year 1), but I think it would make do. :) If anyone has an recommendations for Paris or other locations, let us know!

Cheers for now!

Fifth time's a charm

Hooray! We have an accepted offer on #5!! The landlord responded just this morning and the next steps involve some paperwork, but we will hopefully move in around September 20. Unfortunately, this means more expensive time in our temporary flat, but as long as this goes through, I don't care.

We had another wonderful weekend. You already know about Friday so I'll start with Saturday. Our original plan was to head to Camden market with Annie, but tube closures made the trip ridiculously long so instead, we headed to Sloane Square in search of new shoes for Matt. We happened upon a small market in the square and had a great lunch. Matt tried a pie (I believe made by the Pie Minister? Or some similarly catchy name.) called Porky Pig (again pics to come later) - it was awesome. I've been hesitant of the traditional English pies thus far, but this one was really delicious. I had a Carribean Roti wrap - it had hummus, spicy lentil sauce, tomatoes, avocado and a bunch of other tasty things. We shopped around for a bit - found shoes for Matt at Russell and Bromley and picked up some fun things at a store called Muji. It's one of my new fav. stores - most of the packaging is in Japanese (I think), but it's a sort of container-store-meets-west-elm-meets-a-cute-clothing-store. And relatively cheap - yay!

We then headed to dinner with our London gang of friends - Mike, Sandy, Brock and Annie (our temporary London friend - she'll head home in another week :( ). Sandy had heard about a neat-o Asian restaurant called Inamo. We had to go at 5:15pm because it was the only time available, but the deal is, you get your table for a specific amount of time (we had 1.5 hours). Basically, each seat at the table has a computer built into the tabletop so you use your mouse pad to order everything - drinks, food, etc. It was SO fun. Then they would just bring it to you. I started with spring rolls that were outstanding and then had grilled tiger prawns, which arrived with the heads still on. That was a first. Luckily, they popped right off - I had visions of wrestling with my prawns, trying to decapitate them. After dinner, we headed back to Chinatown to introduce Sandy, Mike and Brock to our favorite Chinese waffles - yum! Next up was pub #1 then pub #2, which was where we parked ourselves for the remainder of the night...and proceeded to have a few too many pints. Whoops. But all in all, it was another great night out in London.

Sunday was spent mostly sleeping, then lazying around the flat and watching Charlie Wilson's War and the Pursuit of Happyness - both great flicks.

I'm off to do a little grocery shopping. Hope everyone back home is enjoying their Labor Day!

WCGW

Well, here we go.  The acronym WCGW is used in one of our tools at work to document "what could go wrong."  We've seen plenty at this point.  Today we went out again with Ellen to look at additional properties with the hopes that last night's offer would make the trip irrelevant.  Unfortunately, there were not very many new properties added to the market and a few of the most promising ones were let before we had the chance to see them.  So we started the day with a short list of only 6 stops, but with hopes that it wouldn't matter. 

The first couple near West Ham were terrible.  About that time we learned that we had lost our fourth flat we offered on.  The landlord accepted a revised offer from the people who had seen it before us.  With this background, we saw our third flat of the day, which had a great location a few blocks from Islington Upper Street but required a lot of work.  After seeing that garden apartment, we headed to lunch at a pub in Islington and considered whether that flat was our best option and worth settling on even though it was over our planned budget.  While it probably goes without saying, we found ourselves quite dejected and had to have a pint with our meals.

During lunch we saw a light at the end of the tunnel.  Ellen stopped by the agent's office for our after lunch viewing and, through a personal friend at the agency, learned of another flat in Islington, right off of Upper Street and not even on the market yet.  With a stroke of luck we were able to get a showing after lunch.  The place was awesome, primarily because of the location.  The actual flat isn't as great as the one that had the person fall through the ceiling, but it was more than acceptable (we'll call it #5 going forward). 

We saw another flat near Clerkenwell (just south of Islington) with the same agent, that had a pretty awesome kitchen and was off of a cute garden square, but didn't have the location or the space of #5.  So we put in our fifth offer (ridiculous) on #5.  Of course we couldn't get a quick response.  While we are at the asking price and our relocation team thinks we have a 99% shot at it since no one else has been able to see it and it isn't even really "on the market," until we have a signed contract we will continue to sweat it out.  This place exceeds our planned budget by a fair amount, but the location is exactly what we wanted and it's a cute flat.  We will have no complaints if this goes through.

After the flat searching, we stopped by the Borough Market on the way home.  It's a not quite open air market with a fantastic variety of butchers, fishmongers, produce stands, and just about everything else.  On Whit's recommendation, we picked up fresh pasta, wild boar tortellini that was made earlier in the day, and brought it home.  Quite tasty to say the least and it was comforting to have another home cooked meal rather than a restaurant stop.  Jenny and I finally watched District 9 after starting it with Jason months ago.  Good, unique flick and worth the watch.  All in all, it was an enjoyable evening.

We're off to bed soon with hopes that tomorrow will bring confirmation on our offer and the chance to put to rest all of this madness.  Hope you're all doing well.  Have a great holiday weekend in the States.

Cheers!

Week Numero Dos

So it’s been awhile since we’ve posted. Sorry. But I promise we’ve been busy! Grab a beverage, this is not a short post.

So we left off at Saturday. We spent the day in Greenwich, which was a super quick ride for us on the DLR (Docklands Light Rail, an elevated train) from Canary Wharf. The Greenwich market was great, lots of food vendors and craft/clothing/art vendors. We meandered through and then had lunch at the Greenwich Union Brewery, which was a small microbrewery with tasty beer and a friendly bartender who let us try a bunch of the beers – yum!. Afterward, we trekked up to the observatory on the Prime Meridian (and I do mean trek, it’s a serious climb) then wandered through the Queen’s House and the Maritime Museum and finished off our day with a couple of cupcakes from the market. All in all, a lovely way to spend a Saturday.

Sunday was a lazy day. We slept in, browsed through the mall near our flat and then Matt spent the evening with his fantasy football draft and I watched “In Her Shoes.”

Monday was a bank holiday for the UK so Matt had the day off and we spent it on a double decker bus, tourist-style. We met his friend Annie (friend/colleague from KPMG in Chicago) in Piccadilly Circus and rode around seeing the sights. Again, Whit and Kate, you were right – totally worth being “touristy” for. It was a beautiful day and we had a great time. We also took a short boat tour in the middle of the bus ride (you got a free boat ride with the ticket price) AND (this was the highlight for me), we rode underneath the foot bridge that’s in a Harry Potter movie!! It’s the bridge where the dementors fly around and make it move and people grab on to the sides…in the beginning of the movie (I can’t remember which one, but I think it’s the one most recently on DVD)…ringing any bells, HP fans? We also saw the school where HP was educated (the actor, not the character…and also Winston Churchill, which was more exciting for Matt and few others) and learned of a pub that he frequents. Yes, I will try to stalk him there. Ok back to the day. After our tour, we ate another meal in Chinatown with Annie and she introduced us to these AMAZINGLY delicious Chinese waffles. Wowsa. I could eat one every day. We took pictures of the waffle-making process and the waffles themselves – stay tuned for those.

On Tuesday, Matt headed to the office for his first day of work. Funnily enough, Tuesday also marked Matt’s 5-year anniversary with KPMG – hard to believe it’s been that long! I’ll let him comment on his time at work in a later post. So back to Tuesday, I headed to an area called Mayfair to wander around. It basically took me through an extremely rich area of town, starting with a stroll down Old/New Bond St – London’s version of Oak/Walton St. – except WAY more out of my price range. I continued my stroll past Berkley Square and the house where Winston Churchill grew up and had a lovely lunch at a little pub called the Only Running Footman. After lunch, I walked past a house where someone important lived because they were patrolling the sidewalks with machine guns – it was crazy!! Maybe it was the Prime Minister? My adventure continued past the US Embassy, a massive, but boring-looking building and ended with a long walk down Oxford St. Needless to say, my dogs were barking by the end of the day. I have yet to figure out how Londoners are able to walk all over in shoes I wouldn’t last 10 minutes in.

On Wednesday, I headed to Sloane Square and Chelsea. And fell deeply in love. Colette, I can’t believe we never ventured to this area when we were in London. I took the tube to the same stop that we did when we walked up Sloane St, but just went in a slightly different direction to Sloane Square/Chelsea. I don’t want to bore everyone with my shopping details, but let’s just say the shopping was fab – my favorite area yet by far. Somehow I wandered around the area for 5 hours (read: again, barking dogs) and stopped mid-day for lunch at a pub called Album. Fun side note, apparently if you head to the Red Cross in Chelsea, you can score some pretty amazing finds because that is where all the rich folks drop off their stuff for charity. I will be stopping by in the near future with my fingers crossed for some couture!

Unfortunately, also on Wednesday, our fears were confirmed. We lost both flats we put offers on last week, including the amazing one off Northcote Rd, bringing our grand total of lost flats to 3. This time, we were closer to getting an accepted offer with the flat off Northcote Rd BUT instead a construction worker decided it would be more fun to fall through the floor of the flat above/the ceiling of the kitchen, rendering the flat un-rentable. AWESOME. We were (and still are) devastated. So, because of that, we had to extend our time at our temporary flat by 1 week and as of now, will be paying half the cost (440p/week! gulp.) and Matt has to take Friday off so that we can go out with Ellen again to look for more places. We are trying desperately to remain positive, but honestly, this process has been a nightmare. Hopefully it’ll all be a distant memory soon. To drown our sorrows a little, we headed to a pub near us called the Gun and had a delicious dinner and 2 big ol’ pints (I had Tiger again and Matt tried Bitburger – yum, love the beer here).

Ok, that catches us up to today. I was super pumped because I was going to FINALLY try bikram yoga for the first time. I’ve had my reservations because I don’t really enjoy being super hot during my workouts, but everyone has raved so much that I had to try it. So I got there early, registered and took a spot in the back corner. They weren’t kidding when they said that people wear little clothing. I couldn’t BELIEVE how little clothing some people were wearing, including a few very hairy men with big beer bellies. ICK. Anyway, the room was hot when I walked in, but definitely bearable. I thought to myself, dude, I can totally handle this heat. Ha. About 5 minutes later, the instructor comes in and informs us that the classroom will start to get very hot. And it did. He also made me move to be next to another newbie in the back row so he could keep an eye on us. Then we started with some breathing exercises and progressed to half moons, chairs and a few other poses. I was feeling atrociously hot and dizzy, but trying to keep it together, but everything kept going white anytime I stood and I quickly realized bikram yoga was absolutely not for me. I longed for my usual hatha or vinyasa in a 72 degree room. Also, I really really did not want to faint in front of everyone (still traumatized from this happening during cheerleading practice when I was a freshman in high school). So I walked out – the instructor told me to try to at least stay in the room – I said no thank you. Once outside, I felt much better but the instructor wanted me to sit for awhile to make sure I was alright. This turned into me sitting for probably 25 minutes – he went back into the class, but I needed to swap out my locker key for my ID being held hostage. Also, I was literally locked in. So I sat. And sat. And sat. I was 100% embarrassed and I just wanted to go home. Finally, he came out and set me free. Ugh, I hate that my experience with bikram was so awful and that I’m a quitter, but I guess now I know that bikram and me were not meant to be.

I came home and Ellen called to tell me that there was a flat she wanted me to see today, especially because it already had 1 offer. So I rushed back out the door and headed to Clapham. The flat was actually a bungalow – very different than anything else we’ve seen, but nice. I’m still not in love with the area like I was with Northcote Rd, but at this point, I guess I need to compromise. It’s still close to a tube stop and to the main street of shops – just not as Southport-y. So we put in an offer, but will most likely not hear anything until tomorrow, when we head out with Ellen again to look at flats. Again. So ready to find a place and start getting settled already!!!!

Whew, that was a long one. We’ll try to post more often from here on out, but we’re having some issues with our internet (Matt’s computer gets it, mine doesn’t and he takes his computer to work) – this also means that pictures may not be posted for awhile, but something to look forward to? Alright time to get dinner started. We’ll keep you all posted!