Over the pond

We made it to London!! And this first week has flown by! I am new at this blog thing, so bear with me . . . I will try to make it interesting and full of fun details, but not too verbose. And so sorry for this design (or lack thereof!) to be changed soon, I promise!

The flight went by relatively quickly and before we knew it, we were at the lovely Heathrow airport. Thankfully all our luggage made it and the line at customs was not too bad . . . and we were on our way to our new castle in Chelsea! It was after 12 midnight by the time we arrived, but quite warm here (especially compared to the artic temperatures at home). We dropped our stuff at our new flat and before we could complain about the fact we could barely move without hitting each other, we darted out to explore our new neighborhood. Being so late on a sunday, it was like a ghost town. We did find a little convenience store and bought a couple things to tide us over. In our brief tour of the hood we found a very essential place:



Monday
Pat got up and took the tube to the office for orientation. It was only about 8 hours after we arrived, but he made it! Then I met him by his office so we could fill out the paperwork to open our UK bank account. It was much more complicated than I expected, but pretty painless. We opted to try Wagamama for a quick dinner. Sadly, we were quite disappointed, especially since it was voted the best restaurant in London! I promise to give it another try. Luckily we had had another place we had been wanting to try (see picture above). We were pleasantly surprised by the "Roman" style pizza!

Tuesday
We caught up on our sleep and awaited news about our impending move to a bigger flat. Less than 24 hours into our stay we realized that we really did need a flat bigger than a dollhouse. Thankfully, there was a bigger one bedroom available in our building and we were approved to move in! We decided to celebrate our good fortune by trying the local Mexican restaurant, Exquisito. When we were served cool ranch doritos and hummus as an appetizer, instead of tortilla chips & salsa, we laughed and were a little bit nervous about what was to come. But tried it anyway and decided it wasn't too bad (wow, we must have been really hungry!). We looked at the menu closer only to see that it was a Mexican/Mediterranean restaurant? At least that explained the hummus. Kind of. Regardless, the chicken fajitas and margaritas were pretty good (ok, decent), but the server was very nice. We finished off the evening with a trip to the pub around the corner - The King of Arms - where Pat enjoyed a Guinness!



Wednesday
Moving day! YAY! Flat #5 is a castle and we love it! [Video tour coming soon]. We decided to venture up to Kensington High Street and do some grocery shopping at Whole Foods. It is huge! And the entire upstairs is a cafeteria style restaurant with stations of every type of food. Unfortunately, we were not overly impressed by our selections. We bought a little cart to make it easier to get home with the groceries (it is about 1.5 miles). Then we stopped at the Sainsbury's (like a Jewel or Kroger) to stock up on the essentials. Here is Pat with our new grocery cart!



Thursday
Since we still did not have our boxes (stuck in customs) and Pat was not staffed yet, we decided to explore London. We took the tube to the Leicester Square (the West End Theatre district) to investigate tickets. We found great discounted tickets to Avenue Q for that evening. Then we walked around, visited the National Portrait Gallery and Trafalgar Square. Here is a picture of Becky facing Trafalgar Square ("Look kids, Big Ben!") and Pat in the square with the National Gallery behind him:





We walked through St. James park, down to Buckingham Palace, then over to Westminster Abbey and back up to Covent Garden for dinner before the show. It was great - the walk, the dinner, the show, everything! And afterwards we took the tube home, which seemed kinda odd bc we would never take the L home in Chicago at that hour of the night (around 10:30ish) but the tube was packed!

Friday
Nothing much exciting to report other than that our boxes arrived. Pat went to the office for a bit and we spent the rest of the day unpacking. Here is a picture of Pat taking a break from unpacking:



Good thing I didn't listen to him and packed the blankets we keep on the couch! Now, if we could only find them . . . .

Saturday
More unpacking & trying to find a place for everything. We walked up to Kensington High Street for a couple things (PC World! Topshop!) and for our daily visit to Argos. For those of you who have never experienced it before, Argos is kinda like Target, except there is no merchandise in the store - only catalogues. So you go to a little machine, punch in the number of the item you want and then it tells if it is in stock. Then you go to another machine to place your order and then you go wait in line for them to call your number (or until you can push to the front, whichever comes first) and then they give you your items. You can also order online, but that is too easy and you have to wait at least 2 days. Needless to say, we are Argos-ed out and are hoping we don't have to go back there for awhile.

Saturday night we went to a Chicago GSB alumni wine tasting. It was hosted by 2 guys that were in Pat's class and they chaired the wine tasting group at school. It was great to meet some new people (Pat knew a couple of them, I didn't know anyone). Here is a picture of the group:



Sunday
Believe it - more unpacking, another trip to Argos. yuk! We are nearing the finish line though. Then to an evening mass at Our Lady of Victories (with a really interesting Australian priest) and dinner at our favorite Indian restaurant. yum! more garlic naan please!!

And that was our first week in London! It has been great and we can't wait to keep exploring our neighborhood, London and Europe! More pictures and stories to come!