The Flat Hunt

OK...the first 24 hours might have been chaotic, but these past couple days have been incredibly draining.
So, we made it until 10 PM Friday night, but lo-and-behold 3 AM called to us again and we were both WIDE AWAKE, but didn't realize that the other person was awake too so it was a very boring 2 hours of lying in bed awake.  At 5 we finally realized we were both up so snuggles might have happened again...

and then we were both hungry, so 6 AM in bed sounded like a great time to have some yogurt.

It was a long day after this...
Saturday was start to finish flat viewings...I think there were 6.  They tend to start melding into 1 so it's hard to keep straight.

Because we were up so early we decided to get an early start on the day... our safe breakfast at the cafe, then on the train to Clapham Junction to see how long the journey to Streatham Hill (not said like is looks like it should be, it's been a problem)  where our first 2 viewings of the day were.  It ended up not taking very long at all so we were there about an hour and a half early. 

We wandered around, found both the properties we were viewing (about 3 blocks from each other...we didn't need the 1.5 hour break in between, oops), wandered some more...then stood awkwardly in front of the place for the last 10 minutes waiting for the agent.
The place was nice, the agent was really nice and ended up talking to us about the Canucks and Vancouver Olympics hockey...he's Slovakian so he knew Demitra played for the Canucks and some stop Luongo made against him in the Olympic hockey game?  Anyways, super nice guy.
So then we had an hour and 20 minutes before our next viewing, so we headed to our favourite location...coffee shop with free wifi.  This one was called I <3 Coffee...We had tea.

So emails were sent, wifi was used, tea was drank, then off we went again.
Second viewing was good...a bit too expensive, but nice.  They had the funniest thing ever in it...a dryer bunny.  Essentially a blown up, parachutey material bag, on a hanger/wire stand thing that fills with hot air and dries your clothes...so a weird clothes dryer.  No one has dryers here so it was strange, but so funny looking.

So then we had almost 3 hours to kill so...Starbucks for free wifi it is!
We had 3 viewings in the Wimbledon area that were all way too expensive for us, but 2 were so cool that we decided we had to make offers on anyways, so we low-balled and offered what we were hoping to get the other places for. So far it isn't working.

We then had a final viewing out in Mordon to finish off our day.  It was a cool property, but pretty far from transportation...it's still in the running though.

Saturday night we decided just to go to sleep when we were tired and ended up being around 9.
We had a pretty good sleep that night actually...we figure because of 3 things. Melatonin, being absolutely exhausted, and because Sunday was a relaxing day because none of the agencies were open.
So Sunday was wonderful...I woke up at 6 (a solid 9 hours isn't bad) and Sam made it to 8 (woot! 11 hours).

We took our time getting ready, then headed out to be tourists.  Our first trip on the tube

as we headed up to London Bridge (is falling down...) walked along the river for a bit because apparently London Bridge isn't really near London Bridge Station, who knew?  So we wandered along the Thames, past the Tower of London

saw a building that looked like an armadillo

a tall, long triangle

and the bullet building

...very cool mixture of modern and old buildings here.

And finally got to the bridge. 

Didn't walk across this day, but went under and took pictures. Then it was time to head to Big Ben to meet Meghan (a fellow Canadian teacher friend from school...she's been here since September with another friend of ours). 

We got there a bit early so we wandered a bit, got some food and tried to get wifi.  When we met up with her we walked past Big Ben, the parliament buildings, and Westminster Abbey...all very old, very cool looking buildings.

Then did a long lap around, and ended up walking past the London Eye and even further up the Thames to a coffee shop to sit and have a good chat.
It was a much needed relaxing day.  We got home, sent a few more emails, set up some viewings for the next day and went to sleep.

Today was not a very good day.
It started with a meeting at Barclays Bank to open accounts (which was the highlight of the day).  So we are now proud owners of UK bank accounts, woot.

Happy us at the beginning of the day. First Class Train Car

After this everything went downhill...
We had viewing set up for after our bank meetings, and both cancelled last minute. We decided to make an offer for the first one we saw Saturday and had a meeting set up for that, we set up a viewing for 6:30 at night (bad call...it's dark out) and a bunch for the next couple days just in case.  I wish we could say we didn't need the "just in case" but we did.  As we showed up for our meeting we saw that he was with a couple, so we walked past joking that it was probably our flat that they were making an offer on...and we were right. We sat down and he told us he was sorry but they had made an offer so it was off the market unless the offer was rejected (which is unlikely).  So crap...back to square 1.
Well at least we had a viewing in a couple hours...during this time we looked at and emailed another 100 places (no idea how many exactly but that feels low) and booked some more viewings.  We headed out to our viewing that night and what do you know...it had started to rain and was currently pouring (with thunder).  We were definitely not prepared for this so had to stop at a dollar...sorry 99 pence store to pick up a couple of umbrellas.  We were also starving so decided that we'd make a quick stop for some food.  Bad decision.  We ordered a pizza, was supposed to take 5 minutes.  After about 15 we decided to ask...apparently our pizza was burnt and another was being made. We did not have another 10 minutes.  We ended up running out with a burnt pizza in a box.
It was pouring rain, dark, and we had no idea where we were going or how far it was.  We ended up being a minute or 2 late (EEEKKK!!! Not a good thing for either of us when we're already stressed out) and then not knowing exactly where to meet this agent because there were 2 entrances to the station we were supposed to meet at, and the flat was just across the street (above a garage or little store, we aren't sure).  So we waited 25 minutes then finally gave up and headed back to our little room to eat our now cold, burnt pizza, figure out our plan of action for tomorrow, and cry ourselves to sleep.

Just kidding.

End of the day...really not so happy.

We are excited to be in London on our adventure and know that we'll find a place soon...we hope.

Keep you posted,
Lisa and Sam.

We out.