We're Here!
Tuesday, 27 September:
We arrived at around 12:30 on Tuesday morning at London Heathrow. I have to say, I will be hard pressed to choose an airline other than Virgin any time soon. The food and drinks were free, the service was excellent, and they didn't charge me for the extra baggage. I got to watch three movies of my choice during the flight and they even give you a cool little goodie bag. LHR was pretty easy to navigate out of and we got our bags pretty quickly. When we got to the airport, I called AccommodationLondon.net and told them that we would be heading for the Willesden Green tube station shortly. They gave us the address of the place we would be staying and told us to call when we got there. No problem. A not so short cab ride and £50 later and we were standing outside our new temporary dwellings. Not the most welcome of places and slight problem, as there was no phone near by. I left Suzanne with Six suitcases (our entire lives at this point) and went to look for a phone box. After finding one, I called AL.net again and let them know we were now at the property and headed back to wait with Suzanne. About twenty minutes later, someone showed up to let us in. The building is an old converted house and not too much care was taken as to how the place was put together, but free internet in the lobby is pretty cool, right? Wrong, it has been more than a week and still no working internet. OK, so the flat itself is not bad, but not great. The place itself is kind of nice, but the bed is absolute crap! I think I have pierced a kidney with at least one mattress spring and now have ritual markings in the shape of my bedsprings permanently etched into my body. Also the dishes were filthy, it was as if they were put away after being wiped down, but not washed. The good news is that this is only temporaryaccommodationss. We were pretty beat, so despite a commitment to stay awake all the first day to acclimate ourselves to the time change, a nap ensued.
We got up in the early evening and decided to go get something to eat. In true British tradition, we went to a foreign restaurant for dinner, a nice Italian place around the corner that was staffed by a French waitress. We must really be in Europe. On the way to the restaurant, we started to get an inclination that perhaps Willesden Green isn't the best neighborhood when we were witness to a girl fight. The fight was between two women I don't know if I could have taken and was broken up pretty quickly. Funny, over a year of living in downtown San Diego and I never witnessed a fight, one night in London and it was between two women no less.
While sitting at the front window for dinner, we also witnessed someone throwing what looked like wet toilet paper as hard as he could at a passing car. The sound could be heard inside the restaurant, and again, I began to get the sneaking impression that we were not in the best neighborhood. We walked back to the flat and called it a night.
Wednesday, 28 September:
Our goals today are two fold. Get a cell phone and get a bank account. Once we have those, we can look for work and a place to live. We decide to go down to Queensway, an area we are somewhat familiar with and check out the Halifax branch that is there. We walked in and were ready with either the ability to wire funds, or deposit fairly significant amounts intraveler'ss checks into our new account. . . Unfortunately, the literature is true, it is a royal pain in the arse to get a bank account in the UK. We have to have proof of residence in the form of a utility bills sent in our name to the address or a driver's license with the address on it in addition to a passport. So much for goal one of two, how about the cell phones. We went into a Carphone Warehouse, and lo and behold, same scenario. Without proof of residence and a British bank card, no glory. So we pretty much were not able to accomplish either of our day one tasks. Instead we began looking around for an apartment, and found a really nice one just around the corner from the Queensway station, but want to look more before committing.
We arrived at around 12:30 on Tuesday morning at London Heathrow. I have to say, I will be hard pressed to choose an airline other than Virgin any time soon. The food and drinks were free, the service was excellent, and they didn't charge me for the extra baggage. I got to watch three movies of my choice during the flight and they even give you a cool little goodie bag. LHR was pretty easy to navigate out of and we got our bags pretty quickly. When we got to the airport, I called AccommodationLondon.net and told them that we would be heading for the Willesden Green tube station shortly. They gave us the address of the place we would be staying and told us to call when we got there. No problem. A not so short cab ride and £50 later and we were standing outside our new temporary dwellings. Not the most welcome of places and slight problem, as there was no phone near by. I left Suzanne with Six suitcases (our entire lives at this point) and went to look for a phone box. After finding one, I called AL.net again and let them know we were now at the property and headed back to wait with Suzanne. About twenty minutes later, someone showed up to let us in. The building is an old converted house and not too much care was taken as to how the place was put together, but free internet in the lobby is pretty cool, right? Wrong, it has been more than a week and still no working internet. OK, so the flat itself is not bad, but not great. The place itself is kind of nice, but the bed is absolute crap! I think I have pierced a kidney with at least one mattress spring and now have ritual markings in the shape of my bedsprings permanently etched into my body. Also the dishes were filthy, it was as if they were put away after being wiped down, but not washed. The good news is that this is only temporaryaccommodationss. We were pretty beat, so despite a commitment to stay awake all the first day to acclimate ourselves to the time change, a nap ensued.
We got up in the early evening and decided to go get something to eat. In true British tradition, we went to a foreign restaurant for dinner, a nice Italian place around the corner that was staffed by a French waitress. We must really be in Europe. On the way to the restaurant, we started to get an inclination that perhaps Willesden Green isn't the best neighborhood when we were witness to a girl fight. The fight was between two women I don't know if I could have taken and was broken up pretty quickly. Funny, over a year of living in downtown San Diego and I never witnessed a fight, one night in London and it was between two women no less.
While sitting at the front window for dinner, we also witnessed someone throwing what looked like wet toilet paper as hard as he could at a passing car. The sound could be heard inside the restaurant, and again, I began to get the sneaking impression that we were not in the best neighborhood. We walked back to the flat and called it a night.
Wednesday, 28 September:
Our goals today are two fold. Get a cell phone and get a bank account. Once we have those, we can look for work and a place to live. We decide to go down to Queensway, an area we are somewhat familiar with and check out the Halifax branch that is there. We walked in and were ready with either the ability to wire funds, or deposit fairly significant amounts intraveler'ss checks into our new account. . . Unfortunately, the literature is true, it is a royal pain in the arse to get a bank account in the UK. We have to have proof of residence in the form of a utility bills sent in our name to the address or a driver's license with the address on it in addition to a passport. So much for goal one of two, how about the cell phones. We went into a Carphone Warehouse, and lo and behold, same scenario. Without proof of residence and a British bank card, no glory. So we pretty much were not able to accomplish either of our day one tasks. Instead we began looking around for an apartment, and found a really nice one just around the corner from the Queensway station, but want to look more before committing.
posted by Unknown at 10:27 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home