2. Whole foods! It is the largest and best whole foods I have ever been in. The entire downstairs is the grocery store. There's a bread oven where they bake the most magnificent smelling breads right in front of you, a huge dessert counter/section where they had a table stacked with the largest meringues I have ever seen, FOUR raw/cooked build-your-own salad kind of stations, a huge wine center, a pre-cooked foods center with pepper encrusted rare tuna steaks and the most beautifully juicy looking beef Wellington. There are regular aisles for grocery shopping too. When you walk in the store, there is a tower to the ceiling of potted orchids in purple, white, and pink. Gorgeous. Upstairs, they have a restaurant to your left and the Whole Foods Market to your right. In the Market, there's a gelato station, a salad/soup bar, a burrito station, a pizza station, a pasta station, a sandwich station, a sushi station and then tons of seating options. Saturday I built my own salad and sadly sat there eating it after I tasted Andrew's sandwich. I have yet to taste non-amazing bread here. Everything is AMAZING! Andrew's sandwich was on thick crusty bread and had rare beef, portobello mushrooms, mustard sauce, lettuce and some delectable form of blue cheese. Heaven!
3. The tube on the weekends blows. The Earls Court station is literally a 2 minute walk from our flat. The district and Piccadilly lines run through that station. The district line is what Andrew takes to work, and takes us most directly to the places we've, so far, wanted to visit. Well, this weekend the Circle line, Jubilee line, and one other line that I'm blanking on were completely closed for maintenance, SO that made the service from Earls Court all funky. We tried to go to a home goods store called next, but just maneuvering through the people on the limited lines was tedious!! When we finally got to where we wanted to go, we couldn't find the store! It was pretty humorous :)
4. First embarrassing event/my poor uggs. So after our useless trip to the Victoria Station area, we decided to get a little coffee and tea for the ride back. I carried my tea for awhile because it's always scalding when you first get it from Starbucks. We're standing on the Victoria line for literally ONE stop to get us back to the Piccadilly line and as soon as we pulled in to the station, Andrew drops his hand from the ceiling rail, slams the cup of tea from my hand, and it splatters EVERYWHERE - drenching my relatively new light-colored suede uggs. This happens literally as the doors are opening and the guys getting on gave Andrew and me the dirtiest looks and said "well done mate." I wasn't as concerned with that as I was with what an idiot I looked like walking around with half wet/half dry boots...Andrew swears all i need is a suede brush, but I say RIP uggs :(
5. Dinner with Family. Andrew has a cousin that lives with his wife and 7 month old literally a 4 minute walk from our house in Earls Court Square. Christophe and Ele invited us to dinner on Saturday night. Christophe's parents Katleen and Louis were also there and Victoria is the sweetest baby ever!! She such a chunker! I love it! There was Champagne and Thai food and good company all night! Ele invited me on an Ikea trip with her this week and to try out her gym with her! I'm looking forward to it :) She's on maternity leave and apparently gets as bored as me being home all day alone. Should be a fun week!! Dinner with them relighted my desire to learn French...
6. Homebase. A store where Ikea meets home depot. It's FANTASTIC! This weekend we got a microwave, a lamp so we could have light in the reception room, an iron, an ironing board, hangers, a trashcan, a clothes drying rack, and a toilet paper roll holder. Those few things have made our place so much more homey even without the furniture!
7. First meal at the flat. Thanks to the microwave, we were able to heat up some soup at our flat for lunch on Sunday. Seems insignificant but I am so so tired of eating out already! AND Sainsbury, one of the big supermarkets here, has amazing pre-made soups. Londoners lover their pre-made food in general (which I'm still trying to get over my fear of) and the soups are actually stellar.
8. Engaged. Jill, Andrew's step sister got engaged last week! Apparently Andrew had known for a few days and forgot to tell me... it came out at dinner with the fam. Nice, husband...
9. City of Bones. I've read all the Harry Potters and Twilight series a million times and now I started a new one on Saturday. I'm more than halfway done with the 500 page book, but the more I read about the 16 year old main character, the older I feel. I should really start reading books meant for people my own age that don't involve vampires, wizards, shadowhunters and other mythical creatures...
10. INSANE jetlag. Anyone who knows me knows that I normally can't keep my eyes open past 9:30 at night. Here, I seriously can't fall asleep before 1 or 2 in the morning. It's been like that ALL week. And then I can't get up the follwoing mornings. It's pretty terrible and is driving me nuts!! Falling asleep at will is one of the things I pride myself on. I need my powers back!
11. David Lloyd gym. It's the best gym I've ever been to. It's clean and fancy and all the people who work there are incredibly nice!! Andrew and I tried it out on Saturday... phenomenal. The trainers are mostly Australian (me likey!), there's a pool, a boxing room, a power plate centre (which is all the rage here), a cardio centre, 2 studios for classes, a juice bar, a lounge with free wifi, and two separate weight rooms. LOVED it! The only problem is that it's on the pricier side so without knowing what our monthly expenses will be shaping up like, I am reluctant to join right away. I told myself that when I get a job, it will be the present to myself to sign up :)
12. Out of curiosity, I walked through the isle market "Foods from around the world" at the Sainsbury. 1/3 of the isle? Uncle Ben's rice... way to go USA!
13. Giraffe. Between the vino at night and the black currants jam I have in the morning, my tongue is a constant shade of purple. I'm starting to worry...
OK, that's enough for now. I'm hoping today is our last day in the hotel. I'm going to lay here and read some more until I get the A-OK from the big guy to get my bum home because the movers are coming...oh a girl can dream!!
First!
ReplyDeleteTLDNR (jk)
Sounds like you're aclimating well (minus sleep), so thats awesome. I may have some people for you to look up in London soon to be your friends lol... i need to do some QC'ing first then i'll let you know