My first day alone...sniff

Since I have a notoriously bad sense of direction and I forgot my map (not that it would have helped), I decided to stick around Greenwich and Blackheath today instead of forging a new trail into unexplored parts of London. I woke up late and on the wrong side of the bed this morning, stumbled into Greenwich, managed to pull on a push door for about five minutes before figuring out that I needed to push, couldn't find what I was looking for, but I did find a realtor and I am going to look at some flats tomorrow. Yippee, skippy. Hopefully Jim can come, too. For some reason I feel sheepish and clumsy in the presence of British people. I think I just feel like I don't belong...which I don't. So that makes sense.

Anyway, here are some pictures from my walk today. This is the Queen's House in Greenwich. I believe it also houses the Maritime Museum, but I wasn't motivated enough to go to a museum today, so I didn't explore. The nice thing, though, is that most of the museums here are free, so we definitely plan to check them out. Especially the Tate Modern. The Queen's House borders Greenwich Park. When I took this picture, I was contemplating walking up the big, huge hill below (the building on the top is the Royal Observatory). You can't see it in this shot, but there were little kids in their school uniforms screaming and running full speed down the hill. That seems to be the thing to do when you are a little kid in Greenwich Park. I decided I was too lazy to walk up THAT huge hill and veered off to the right, where I walked up another huge hill. Greenwich Park has great running potential, if I can ever get myself to actually go running. It rivals Boston with it's hills, which are hard to walk up, so I imagine they will be hard to run up, too. I thought this door, at the top of the hill I did choose to walk up, looked like The Secret Garden. Everything is so historic and old here--a big change after Texas!
Past the Secret Garden gate there were rose gardens, more historic buildings, more winding paths, gnarled, old trees. It's a beautiful park. If I had walked around the whole thing, I would have also been able to see the largest herd of enclosed deer in England...but I decided to go into Blackheath instead, where I had lunch, window shopped, and then got lost trying to come back to Greenwich the way that Jim took me yesterday. I ended up in London's version of "the hood" (which probably really wasn't very far away from where we are staying, as we are on the border of "the hood") and found myself in Lewisham, which I remembered Jim had marked "Bad! Bad! Bad!" on my map...so I turned around and eventually found familiar territory again and made it back to the flat where I am staying until tomorrow (I think). 

Some flat pictures

Here are a few pictures of our temporary flat. We probably won't be staying in such luxury once we are in a long-term place, so we're enjoying this one for as long as we can. Here is Jim on our front stoop:


And a chilly lunch on the patio--veggies, cheese, bread, hummus from the farmer's market...and leftover spaghetti from the other night. As well as wine and tea, of course.
This is our temporary kitchen (great shot of me doing the dishes). You can't see the evil washer/dryer because it is hidden behind the island. It's smaller than a dishwasher:


And the room on the basement floor of the flat that looks out onto the patio. We haven't taken pictures of the rest of the house yet....so stay tuned.
 

More pictures of the Farmer's Market

 

British TV

The most annoying and evil gameshow ever: "Come on, dolls! Call me and tell me what THIS phrase is to win 20,000 pounds!! Don't forget to turn your telly down, so we can hear you loud and clear, loveys! Awwright! Come on, call me, call me ,call me...only a pound fifty per call!" 

The market and the first culture shock experience

We headed out this morning for the Blackheath Farmer's Market--a brisk, 25 minute, uphill walk which started out cold, but got warm fast. If we come back skinny, it's because we're walking a lot more than we used to. If we come back fattened up, it's because we have been going to a lot of pubs, eating cheese and bread for almost every meal, and adding milk to our tea and porridge...and it's not low-fat milk either.

The Farmer's Market was really neat--much smaller than the one in Dallas and stocked with local farmers' produce: farm raised and produced cheese and milk, fish, beef, chicken, eggs, bread, flowers, pies, jams. We purchased broccoli, salad veggies, some delicious herbed goat cheese (lunch), two loaves of bread, garlic and onions and trekked a few feet to a deli/cafe, where we crammed into a corner and had porridge (Claire) and pesto muffin with mushrooms and eggs (Jim). We are definitely not starving in London and thought it was funny that the "American Breakfast" at this cafe consisted of pancakes with scrambled eggs in between them, bacon as a side, and smothered in maple syrup--a combination of ALL American breakfasts!

Upon returning to our flat, we decided to do some laundry, which, apparently takes a rocket scientist (or at least a Brit) to figure out. Washers and driers in London seem to be typically very small and located in the kitchen. The one in this flat is a combo washer/dryer. You can fit about 2 pairs of underwear and a sweater into it and we have yet to discover how to get the soap to go from the drawer you put it in, to the actual load of laundry that you are doing. Also, once it gets started, the door seals shut and there seems to be no way to stop it, soap or no soap. And the wash cycle goes on for HOURS...doing laundry must be a day long process. Of course, if we can ever get our clothes out of the washer again, there is no way that they will dry in that thing, so we'll hang them on the drying rack in the bathroom. I suspect that our jeans won't be dry for a few days. If anyone in the US ever complains to me about their washing machine again, I will have no sympathy.

Jim goes back to work tomorrow and I will have to get around the neighborhood and the city for the first time by myself. With my incredible sense of direction and map reading abilities, I'm sure that I will end up someplace unplanned.

parks and parks and parks

Well, after rest and illness yesterday, we moved into high speed tourist mode today. We took the tube to Westminster where there were SCADS (good British word) of people. Jim forced me to have my picture taken in front of Big Ben (For some reasons, I'm not able to add pictures to the blog right now) and then we got out of there as soon as possible and took a less crowded walk around St. James Park, where we saw ducks, Canada Geese, Black Swans, and also some seagulls. Even England has seagulls and even people in England feed them. Sigh.

We headed through St. James park and marveled at the number of people who thought it was a good idea to stop in the middle of narrow footbridge, blocking all people coming and going, for a picture. Eventually we ended up in front of Buckingham Palace (more huge groups of people taking pictures not with the guards, but with the policemen, who were cheerful about it) and cut across to Hyde Park. The parks in London are plentiful and beautiful. There were people running and biking and playing soccer...and also an obese child selling hotdogs, which gave me hope that I will get a job here in London (sad, but true).

After Hyde Park we hit Oxford Street, which was the most crowded place of all. There are lots of department stores and shops (H&M!) There are so many different kinds of people here. The women wear tight jeans with boots over them or very short mini skirts with boots--always boots. Most of the men have some sort of spiked up hairdo and pointy shoes. We got off of Oxford Street and met up with....Dan and Meg!!!!

Sadly, we were so excited to see Dan and Meg that we forgot to take pictures, but we did have some pints, rode in a black London taxi to Hampstead, where they live, met their cat Jack and then headed out for the most expensive Indian (Curry, they call it here) dinner that we have ever had. It was delicious, though, and it was great to see our good friends, although we were unable to rally enough to go out again after dinner.

Now we are back at our temporary flat, where Jim is trying to convince me that it is a good idea to call the hostess of this incredibly annoying game show, Make Your Play. The goal of the game is to call in and guess a phrase, part of which they give you. Every time you call in, you get charged a pound. If you guess a correct phrase, you win 20,000 pounds, 50,000 pounds, etc. They play suspensful music and hardly anyone wins, but this woman chats you up on the TV, and tries to seduce poor, defenseless people ( I suspect that most of them are old) into calling over and over again until they get through and can guess. It's completely moronic, but somehow Jim is drawn to it. British TV is a hoot!

Still haven't taken pictures of the flat, but we'll do that soon. Tomorrow we head out to the Blackheath Farmer's Market, where we'll by farm fresh local produce.

A flat! (at least for now)

Today we moved from our very small and spare hotel room to a very roomy and cool "holiday stay" flat in Greenwich. We'll be in our temporary flat for 3 weeks while we seek permanent digs somewhere in London. Unfortunately, I gave in to my jet lag this afternoon and did not wake up from my long nap in time to take pictures of the flat in the daylight, but we will do that tomorrow and, until then, I'll describe it.

We were picked up yesterday evening by Patrick, the guy who represents the owner of the flat (The owner, apparently, is an artist...and not a very skilled one, unfortunately for those of us who are staying in the flat and are faced with her art for sale at every turn). Jim promptly tried to hop into the drivers seat of Patrick's car. We are getting better at not getting run over, but the steering wheel on the opposite side of the car phenomenon is still baffling us. We careened through the streets of London and invaded the privacy of a Nigerian lawyer who was staying in the flat while we poked through all of the rooms. The flat is three stories--tall and narrow--with a garden/patio in the back (too cold for that now, though) and a big, modern looking kitchen on the bottom floor, along with a sitting room which has a twin bed/chest built into the wall. Patrick decorated the room with lillies. In the kitchen, there is the smallest washing machine I have ever seen and there is no dryer, but, in the bathroom there are drying racks suspended from the ceiling, where we can dry our clothes. British flat design doesn't really leave room for washers AND dryers...or closets.

The second floor is where the main entrance is. There is a small living room with a TV and pull out couch. Down the hall is a spare bedroom and up some steep stairs is the third floor, where the master bedroom and a huge bathroom are. We have lots of beds here, in the event that anyone comes to visit us in the next few weeks. Can't say that for sure about where we'll end up permenantly.

The flats are in long rows down the street, with alleyways that lead to the Greenwich park, shopping areas, etc. We can hear the people next door walking around, babies crying, dogs barking. We're not far from the tube or the DRL (some other train system). Jim brought home a baguette and some delicious cheese that he got out in little markets here and there and on Sunday we'll line up at 10am to go to the Blackheath (neighboring village) Farmer's Market, where we can buy fresh local produce, milk, cheese, meats etc.

Tomorrow we are off to explore Hampstead Heath, where our friends Dan and Meg live. It's listed as one of the most beautiful walks in one of my London tour books.