Hello Everyone!
Well we've done it again...we made the move back to London.
We finished off last year's adventure with some traveling around Europe (which I'm still writing up...very slowly. It'll be up at some point promise).
Quite summary...London to Dubrovnik to Barcelona to Cinque Terre to Florence to Milan (for a day) and back to London for Sam to fly home. Matt and I continued up to Edinburgh then to Dublin to Paris to Venice to Amsterdam and then back to London to come home.
So since being home Sam and I talked constantly about coming back. We started looking into flights a bit, just to see what kind of prices we were looking at and to see if we could get the money together. We decided in December that we were for sure going to come back and started really looking at flight deals. We ended up finding a really good deal and booking it in mid-December. It was crazy busy for both of us over the holidays and moving back didn't really sink in until after New Years. We had about a week and a half to organize ourselves at home before our flight over.
Our dads were wonderful and took us to the airport. We flew out the evening of Monday, January 12 and arrived the afternoon of Tuesday, January 13. Our friends, Ben and Laura, are absolute lifesavers and have let us crash at their place until we're moved in. We took the tube in from the airport to their place and MAN was that interesting. Two 50 lb bags and two carry-ons each to carry down, onto the tube, off the tube, up to street level and down the street to their place. But we made it without any major issues. When we got here we had to make a trip to the bank and took a quick detour through Primark, then walked back to their place to set up our phones and watch a movie and try to stay awake. We may have dozed a little bit, but then Ben and Laura got back so we got to chat and catch up with them for a while and we stayed up to a good time.
Wednesday, Jan 14...Sam slept straight through the first night, which was amazing after last year. I woke up in the middle of the night and stayed awake for a while, but was able to get back to sleep, so that was good.
We emailed and called a million places to try to set up viewings. We went to see about 4 places that first night. Things were not so great...places were dirty, rooms were miniature, landlords/agents were weird/creepy/no-shows. We were starting to get frustrated already. When we got back we started making a list of all the different places that might work so that we could call the next day.
Thursday, Jan 15...I got a bit better sleep the second night. We spent the whole morning calling places, looking up other ones. We made appointments for most of that day and some for the following day. We had one in the late morning and then had a few hours before our next so we went into the Slug and Lettuce to have lunch and use the wifi. We had a bunch of viewings later that day. Again, it didn't go well. We were starting to get frustrated again because we only had a couple set up for the next day, but none of the places we saw were going to work for us.
Friday, Jan 16...We had an appointment in Tooting Bec (yes, Tooting) to view a 3 bedroom property. One room was rented out by a male, Spanish nurse. The place was really nice! It was spacious and new, but just a bit above our budget. We made an offer lower than the landlord wanted and were hoping that she might take it. We had another viewing in Kennington that evening and decided to keep it just in case. It was also great. A 4 bedroom flat with 2 British girls in the other two rooms. It's spacious and new too, in a very residential neighbourhood. After we saw it, we headed back to Ben and Laura's for a girls' night with Laura. She made an awesome meal! Gnocchi with a veggie pasta sauce, and a plum and rhubarb crumble. We watched The Other Woman, ate food, did face masks, and chatted. It was great. My throat was being weird...super dry and was losing my voice, so we got a good sleep.
Saturday, Jan 17...Laura and I got up and went for about an 8 km run in the morning along the Thames, then we picked up breakfast stuff on our way back. When we got back Ben made us French Toast and bacon. It was delicious! My voice was still basically gone so Sam and I decided to just have a chill day. We watched a TV series and made food and just relaxed. When Ben and Laura got back we watched a movie as we were falling asleep. It was an interesting movie.
Sunday, Jan 18...Laura and I got up and met her friend Natasha and we went for an 11 km run the other way along the Thames. Sam and I were supposed to meet up with our landlord to give our deposit and paperwork, but we found out that we couldn't get the cash we needed in time so ended up moving our meeting to Monday night. We headed to Meghan and Marina's for the afternoon to visit and catch up. We watched a really funny TV show called Don't Tell The Bride. Basically 3 weeks before a wedding date, the bride goes away and the groom gets £12,000 and 3 weeks to completely plan the wedding...the bridal gown, bridesmaids dresses, flowers, venue, bachelor and bachelorette parties, transportation, everything. It was hilarious to watch them struggle through. So we hung out with them for the afternoon and then headed up to Covent Gardens to meet Ben and Laura for dinner at the Maple Leaf Pub. We had wings, beer, burgers, and watched some hockey and football. It was a lot of fun and then we came back and watched Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince.
Monday, Jan 19...Today Sam and I did some running around, the bank, some printing, food. We figured that we needed to update the world on our adventures, so here we are. We are going to put our deposit on our place tonight and then we get to move into it Thursday evening. Woot!
That's all for now,
We out!
Sam and Lisa
(pictures to come)
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