Week 3 in London

Week 3: 20 - 26 April 2015

Having now secured a home, things were looking much easier. Unfortunately we had to stick out another week of a house with a hole in the middle, but it was fine because we knew we had a definite end in sight.

Less than a week into work, Roslyn coordinated her first event at Blenheim Palace in Oxford, the venue for Sylvester Stallone’s wedding and around an hour and a half out of London. She also had her first fast train experience, and was also surprised to discover that the English countryside is as close as only 30 minutes outside of London, whereas in Sydney or Melbourne (and even Canberra!) you would still be in the ‘burbs.

On Friday night we went to a Kiwis in London event at a bar at Clapham South, which coincided with the birthday of one of our fellow London-based-Aussie-Contiki-travellers. After a few beers, reminiscing on Contiki misadventures and sighting no Kiwis, we ended the night next door at a Shisha bar.

The weekend was filled with house-related activities, such as shopping for bed linen, small appliances, and pot plants to make our new flat (they don’t call them apartments over here) more homely. We spent out first ANZAC day abroad running around trying to get everything sorted for our move that afternoon and unfortunately missed the BBQ at the nearby Australian pub.

After the bags were unpacked on Sunday, we started the interview process for our new flatmates. We had 7 appointments scheduled, however (luckily) 3 cancelled on the day and we met 4 potential applicants. With the shoe on the other foot now, we decided that we weren’t going to waste our own or anyone else’s time and planned to make a decision by the next day. Stay tuned for the Week 5 blog post, where we can introduce our new flatmates, a Kiwi couple from Auckland.

Highlights for the week:

- Continued living in a construction site

- Roslyn went to Blenheim Palace

- Shisha

- Celebrated ANZAC Day abroad by moving house

- Discovered the click-and-collect store, Argos

- Made our patio less grey with the help of gardening Sunday
- Ran “interviews” for potential housemates