James Street Flat

Been a hectic week. After two months, we finally moved into our flat. Really, it wouldn't have been this soon but the corporate apartment was already rented starting July 11, so we really had no choice. My guess is the work on our flat won't be finished for 2-3 weeks more (I'm loosely defining 'finished'). The shower works at about 50%, the WC - it's literally a closet with a toilet - doesn't have a working light (so we're using a candle) and one room is filled with stuff that needs to be thrown out (or "binned" - see Tiff's prior post).

The first night was difficult. We live on a small street called James Street, a half block off of Oxford Street. When empty James Street looks like a quaint little street lined with restaurants and for those of you unfamiliar with London, Oxford Street is probably the busiest shopping street in London. We knew it would be a busy area, but expected things to slow down after the shops close (which is early here - around 6 or 7pm at the latest). Wrong. I don't get it yet, but our little street is very popular late into the evening. I'm curious to see if the crowds are here once summer ends. Anyway, we were so happy to not have to worry about hearing the tube trains starting at 5am that we left the windows open. We could still hear faint sounds of the buses on Oxford Street, but that wasn't too bad. Here's the problem. We live above a Starbucks store. A Starbucks store that has its supplies delivered throughout the night. I think the milk is delivered at 3 or 4am. Pretty sure it comes in glass bottles. Glass bottles that make a lot of noise when they hit each other. The pastries are then delivered at 5am. Sandwiches at 6am. You get the picture. Not much sleep that first night. We'll see if we learn to adapt or if closing the windows helps. To top it off, we were woken up by the work crew at 7:30am. At that point, it was just funny. To me at least. Not so much to Tiff. The good news is we get WiFi reception from the store. So, 40 pounds later we have 30 days of reliable Internet.







Prior to moving into the flat, we did enjoy the weekend. For the first time, the Tour de France started in London. It was a big weekend for the city with the Wimbledon finals and the Tour. It also turned out to be nice weather finally, which may explain the turnout for the Tour. We went to watch the first time trial in Hyde Park and it was packed. It lasted 3 hours so were able to get a spot along the railing after hour 2. We also took a boat along the Thames to Greenwich (as in Greenwich Mean Time). Cool to see London from the river and we went to a great restaurant in Greenwich called Inside. Highly recommend it. Make sure you get the Meantime Pilsner. A couple of these photos need some explanation. One shows Tiff simultaneously standing in the eastern and western hemispheres and the other is a photo of a garbage ship. Turns out all the garbage is taken out of London from this dock in these containers. I think the guy said that they take 14 shiploads a day and just dump it in Essex - which I guess is to London what Tacoma is to Seattle.