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!