Our London Neighborhood |
We dropped our bags in the flat and put on our exploring
shoes to familiarize ourselves with our new neighborhood for the next ten days.
I knew that a Whole Foods Market was less than a mile to the west and Harrods
food court was a mile in the other direction, but tonight dinner would be in a
local restaurant.
After dinner, our walk home in the warm London evening was
enhanced by the smiles on our faces. With all the exercise we had gotten
pulling our equipment over the Thames, we turned in early after enjoying a glass of wine on
the cozy patio.
The morning light. |
The flat is located in the basement of one of the row houses.
Because of the ground location, it has two private patios, one off the living
room and one off the master bedroom.
Morning sunshine flooding the master patio
was our morning alarm clock.
Everything was perfect, until Roger took a shower. He emerged
from the bathroom laughing, "Remember how I mentioned we were in boot camp
yesterday? Well we still are! There is
no hot water. I took a cold shower."
I jumped out of bed
and began testing all the faucets. Yep, he was right. There was no hot water. A
quick telephone call to the rental agent's office assured me the problem would
be fixed quickly.
As I was washing my face in the sink, I noticed water on the
floor. There was a leak in the master bath sink spilling out of the cabinet
onto the floor. A quick call to the rental agent was again necessary.
Then a short time later, another call to the rental agent, "This
is a basement apartment and it is a little chilly. The thermostat doesn't seem
to be working." "No problem. Someone will be over today."
The Kitchen |
Feeling confident that everything would be fixed, we began
our first walk to the Whole Foods Market to stock our kitchen. Our favorite way
of exploring cities is to go to their grocery stores. Even though Whole Foods
isn't a typical grocery store where most folks do their weekly shopping, Whole
Foods Markets are different in every country. We later found a Sainsbury's, the
second largest chain of UK supermarkets, and another favorite, the Waitrose, which
Nick, Roger's agent had recommended.
The Dining Table to Entertain Friends |
Our food shopping had dual purposes. We were cooking for
friends. After thirty years of working with Nick Peel, we'd never had the
opportunity to share our favorite hobby with him. He was coming to dinner. We
also invited friends that we'd made on the Queen Elizabeth and the Queen Mary
2. Cooking in our quirky little flat in London was going to be fun, but sharing
it with others was going to be the highlight of the stay.
The Famous Black Taxi |
Our grocery store forays had us walking for miles. When we
passed the bus stops, I always wondered how to get on a bus. How much was the
fare? How did you know where they were going? Thanks to the internet, I became
an aficionado of the London bus system.
A View from the Bus |
You can't pay with coins on London buses, you have to have an
"Oyster Card." Nick explained that once you bought the cards, you
could top them up and use them forever. We went to our local tube station,
bought two cards, looked up the routes on the internet and became regulars on
the top deck of the very clean red, double-decker London buses.
The buses were now our form of transportation and sightseeing.
When Nick said he was going to catch the bus for our dinner party, he was
surprised when I told him to catch the #74, it stopped a block from our flat.
We also caught the #74 to Westminster Abbey for the Sunday service.
Westminster Abbey |
Westminster Abbey is magnificent. The service was touching,
but the thing that interested me most were the number of women wearing burqas
sitting though the service. On Sunday's
there are no tours offered in Westminster Abbey. I surmised they realized the
only way to get into the historical church on Sunday was to attend the
religious service. They all sat quietly listening to a teaching about the love
of Jesus.
Back at the flat, things were falling apart in the old
building. I wasn't sure if we were living in a nightmare or a sitcom. It took three days to get hot water and heat.
Roger went to sit down at the dinner table the night Nick came to dinner and he
barely caught himself as the chair collapsed. That night the bed collapsed.
Now I became concerned. If a child had been in the bed, its
head might have become lodged between the board that was holding the mattress
to the frame when it slipped and fell to the floor. I was very thankful Roger's
hands didn't get caught in the collapse.
The next day, Roger flipped on the bathroom light switch, heard a pop and all the lights went out. No electric light in a basement flat can cause a lot of darkness at the wrong time of day. Another call to the agent.
The view from my desk. |
In spite of the problems, we loved shopping, entertaining our
friends and living in this quirky London flat! Every morning I would sit at the
desk working on the tour with a cup of tea to sip for those occasional breaks
to gaze out the window.
We got to the museum just as it opened and "The Last
Movie" was showing. Since neither one of us had seen it, we sat through
the rather agonizing hour and a half of the movie that got Dennis Hopper banned
from Hollywood for years. We felt we had to stay to the end. I kept hoping the
ending would be interesting, but it was worse than the whole of the movie. Now
that is about as much as a movie critic I ever want to be.
Mr. Hopper's photographs are a time capsule. There were some familiar faces for Roger. We did go back to the screening room
to watch "Easy Rider" but I insisted on leaving before Jack Nicholson
got bashed on the head with a baseball bat. I don't like dark moments.
I purposely kept the last day open, so we could have one last
romantic evening in our London home and
begin packing for our tour. The doorbell rang at 11am that day. Three
attractive ladies were standing at the door appearing surprised to see me. They
were the maids. It was our check out day! In 34 years of being a tour manager,
I have never missed a check out day!
I smiled, "Oh
there must be a mistake. Please excuse me while I call the agent." Before
the phone call, I checked my reservation papers ... yikes! I had made a mistake.
The ladies told me that all the hotel rooms in London were booked for a
carnival in Knotting Hill.
This time, my call to the agent's office was ever so humble
with a desperate plea to stay one more night. I had just put clothes in the
washing machine. We couldn't get out in an hour. The agent told me the owner
was scheduled to arrive that day, but they would call and ask him. The next
hour held emotions between total despair to optimism ... which we always try to
bring into our situations ... but it wasn't until the agent's call telling us
the owner said we could stay, that leaps of joy danced through the flat.
The Large Patio |
One last glass of wine on the patio, one last tapas meal made
in our kitchen and one last night in a flat that now had hot water, heat, a
fixed bed, a chair waiting to be fixed and memories of the time we lived in
London. We look forward to a future date of entertaining in our London home
again. Who knows who will visit us next time!
Coming Next- Boot Camp in Europe!