Here Already

I can't believe we're in London already. Time seriously FLEW by. We officially touched down at 8:34 am on Tuesday, March 9th, 2010. We had a hired car take us pick us and our four giant bags up (after the cab fiasco last time that cost us a bazillion dollars...oops, pounds) and then we were on our way. We stopped at the listing agent's agency, Chard, to pick up the keys and then walked into our new place for the first time as actual tenants!

The flat is as nice as I remembered it, perhaps a little smaller than I had been decorating in my mind, but definitely very nice. The kitchen is TINY! Andrew and I will definitely be elbow to elbow when we try to cook. I think we have four small cabinets of storage? The bottom cabinets are taken up by a fridge, the washer/dryer combo, dishwasher, and oven. Our fridge looks like a mini bar. Should be interesting!!

It took us a few hours to get the heat going. A fuse blew, apparently, and we had to go to the "Ironmonger" to get a new one. Fuses here looks like a teeny tiny, itty bitty container of ooze (from Ninja Turtles II - Secret of the ooze) or kind of like a dumbell? More like the ooze container though. So once that was fixed, the heat was flowing nicely and I could finally take my jacket off.

The second bedroom has a door that opens into the back garden. It's super cute!! It looks like the lower ground floor neighbors might also have access so we should probably make friends with them soon!

The bathroom has a towel warmer. Unaware of how these things work, I grabbed it with my hand to see if it was on. It was. No major damage done, but I recommend not a lot of skin/towel warmer contact.

Our house currently has zero furniture and an air mattress so we are staying at the South Kensington Marriott until probably Friday. Hopefully the air shipment will come by then so we can comfortably stay in our flat!!

Yesterday, we also found the nearest Starbucks. Andrew's response "I've never lived so close to a Starbucks!" We checked out two of the local gym options, went to the new Westfield shopping center, to the TV store - Andrew is such a boy, to the cellphone store, to the grocery store, and on a stroll through the garden we have literally outside of our front door. It was amazing!! You can't sign up for any kind of services in London without a bank account and a chip/debit card I believe the cellphone man called it. We have the bank account, but not card just yet. So no celly for me yet, boo.

Andrew is off to work today and I think I'm going to start looking for possible internships. There are soooo many opportunities here, there's gotta be something for me :) I want some graphic/web design experience.

But my main mission today - to find hangers. I don't think it's hit me yet that I will be calling London home for awhile, but the people are super nice and I actually understand how to navigate the tube, so hopefully when it does hit me, it won't be too scary a realization...

This is what the front of our building looking like :)

The garden out front