Day-to-Day Life In London

August 1

Many of you have asked “what is it like to live in London?” First, an update on our location…we moved from a very small two bedroom flat in Mayfair to a larger, two bedroom flat in Marylebone. Our new flat is in a period building within site of Regent’s Park and just a block off Marylebone High Street (the high street is like “Main Street” with all the shops and conveniences of the area). Our reception room has 12 foot ceilings and two large windows that open on to a tiny deck which is accessible from a spiral staircase in the small private patio outside of our downstairs master bedroom. We have a “proper” kitchen with a gas range, convection oven, garbage disposal, separate washer and dryer, and a small breakfast table. We feel as though we have moved into a mansion!!!

I continue with my 3 mornings a week at the gym only now instead of a 10 minute walk, I take the Tube. Rick’s daily travel time is much the same as before and he is on both the Tube and the train. I now have a regular size grocery store instead of one about the half the size of our neighborhood CVS. I have a small two wheel trolley that I use on days when I buy more than what I can carry.

Some of the things I have learned in my two months in London:
· Read the markings on the street and be sure to look in the proper direction before stepping off the pavement. Taxis and sometimes cars will stop for you to cross. Buses will never stop and motorcycles and bicycles do not observe any of the “rules of the road!”
· Prepare to be bumped into when walking. Londoners are multi-taskers and cannot agree on which side of the pavement or stairs to walk so even when you are walking on the left (which makes sense to me since they drive on the left and the signs often say: “keep left”) you will still come face to face with people and have to dodge out of the way as they are either listening to Ipods, talking on mobile phones, texting, reading newspapers or books (I can’t figure out how they manage that while walking) or in some truly amazing cases drinking coffee, smoking cigarettes and talking on the phone (how many hands do you need for that?)!
· The weather is unpredictable so always carry an umbrella or rain jacket and sometimes a sweater. We all know how the weather people in the US like to make an “event” out of every type of weather well in the UK they downplay the weather and the description often sounds like this “a few possible showers with some bright spells and later it will be fresher.” The temperature is in Celsius and I have pretty much mastered the conversion and now know that 30 is hot and 17 is cool.
· The British people and those from many other cultures who are here permanently or temporarily are civilized, polite, and proud. They will give you directions and send you off with “Cheers”, they will answer your questions and try to figure out what you want when you ask for a pound of ground meat (here it is called “minced” and they aren’t really sure how much a pound a weighs), they are patient when you try to pay for something with their 8 different coins and even if you make a mistake, they will always give you the correct change (I have learned that only 4 of the 8 are worth messing with…anything in copper is a pence or less and not worth carrying and if your purse weighs too much, you should get rid of the 5 and 10 pence pieces as well), they will always say “sorry” when they bump you, they will always ask where in America you are from but be delighted when you tell them that you live in London!

To learn more about our day to day life, you should plan a visit here as our spare bedroom is just waiting for more family and friends to sign our guest book!