Photos from the weekend

I'm still figuring out how to post multiple pictures embedded in text without completely messing up the formatting, so until then here is a companion post to the one below... pictures from this past weekend:

The Natural History Museum: Inside the museum:

The entryway of the museum:

The White Tower - Tower of London:

Inside the Tower of London:

Stephen on top of one of the walls at the Tower:

Memorial - the spot where Anne Boleyn lost her head:

I didn't get a picture of the crown jewels, but there was a diamond in there as big as my fist!

Week 2

You know, the first week we were here the weather was pretty temperate. We even had a few days of sun, and all in all it just wasn't that bad! But I would see people walking around wearing winter coats that were twice their size, with ear muffs and scarves wrapped around their faces so only their eyes showed. Meanwhile, I was walking around places and taking off my jacket because I would be sweating by the time I got wherever I was going. This past week I found out what they were dressed for. It got cold. The kind of cold where you can't quite speak correctly because your lips are frozen. Yesterday when we went to the Tower of London Stephen wore his hat that covers his ears and I'm wearing gloves and scarves everywhere, so I guess we now see what the fuss is about! That's okay, honestly I was going to be a little disappointed if the London winter was like a Dallas January.

We are in high gear looking for a place to live. We found something last Friday that we both absolutely LOVED and made an offer, but they turned us down this morning because they don't want to rent to anyone with pets. I am running into that a lot actually, our particular set of needs is hard to meet. We want a 2 bedroom that is furnished and allows dogs. In the States it seems like there are options to at least do a pet deposit or something, here it is either yes or no to pets and most people say no. What is interesting is I see dogs all over the place! There are tons of dog owners! Do all of these people also own their homes instead of lease? Maybe. I'm getting a little worried, the clock is ticking on our free rent here at the corporate flat.

Other than that things are going well! We had a great weekend walking around and exploring the city. We went to the Natural History Museum (which was really fun), Hyde Park, the Tower of London, and walked around Kensington and South Ken - some of my new favorite neighborhoods. Thank goodness for all the walking because I just discovered tea with cream. Tea with milk and sugar was okay, but Earl Grey with cream and honey mmmmmm. Need to keep those to a minimum!

Stephen's birthday is right around the corner and we are thinking about going out of town on our first excursion to celebrate. It's amazing trying to plan a trip - there are so many options that it's a little overwhelming! Stephen is the vacation planner extraordinaire around here and he's still bouncing some ideas around, but I think we are settling on Rome. Woo hoo! I'm so excited. I can't wait.

Our temporary flat

Here is the entry way to our temporary home: The guest bedroom/storage room for all our stuff:

Dining area:

Living area:

Hallway:

Kitchen:

Bathroom:

Bedroom:

Closet in master bedroom - pretty decent actually:

Bedroom:

Flat Hunting

So today we went walking about looking for a new home and I took a few pictures:

After all that walking I needed an end-of-the-day beer...

First Week

Hello! This is my first blog post ever so it's probably not going to be my best until I get the hang of it. So stick with me!

Lots of people have been asking me for photos - unfortunately I need special software for my fancy camera to upload my pictures, and I'm not completely sure where that is right now. Hopefully I find it soon. I'm pretty sure I brought it with me and it's not still in Dallas!

We have had surprisingly good weather here this first week, more than one day of full blue sunny skies! It was a great welcome present, but the weather is supposed to turn back to cloudy and rainy over the weekend. Good thing I bought those new rain boots!

We are pretty settled into our temporary home, I actually cooked dinner tonight in our tiny kitchen. I met Stephen for lunch today at the Borough Market, which is just across the London Bridge and the Thames and runs every weekend. It's a fabulous outdoor food market and lots of fun to walk through (I have pictures of it on my Facebook page from our trip back in October). We bought several things, and everything is absolutely delicious - aged gruyere, freshly baked bread, garlic, avocados (yay!), basil, and cherry tomatoes (the likes of which I've never had before, they were amazing). All of which I used for dinner! I only bought a fraction of what I wanted, and I'm definitely going back for more.

This week I took a walk through town to visit the (world's largest) Apple store. The iPad was misbehaving and being that we are without our main computer for a while I would be very sad if it died. All turned out to be well there, but I really enjoyed the almost 2-mile walk to the store and then back again. I love living in a city where the primary mode of transportation is walking, and I don't think I'll miss driving much at all.

We just washed our first load of laundry in the combo washer/dryer and HOLY MOLY is it loud. When it hit the spin cycle Stephen and I looked at each other and wondered when the tube started running right beneath our 3rd story flat. It's ridiculous, I definitely can't run it at night. I already told Stephen that when we return to the States we are buying the biggest washer/dryer set we can find.

On the agenda for this weekend: catch up on sleep (this is mostly for Stephen), explore neighborhoods where we're interested in living, possibly check out some flats, and generally play tourist!

I'll update with photos as soon as I can, in the meantime I'll try to get some off my iPhone to make do.

Cheers from London!