ten thousand leagues across the sea

And we're here. Well-steeped in understanding of tube navigation, experienced in pounding the apartment-hunting pavement (by which I clearly mean 'flat-hunting pavement'), and finally clear on what a quid is. Speaking of which, I will now embark on the rant that has been bubbling and brewing over the last week. My god, London is expensive. I know, everybody told us that before, but nobody said it was actually completely unaffordable. We've done expensive. We've done New York, San Francisco, Palo Alto, Santa Barbara... some of the least affordable places in the world. I mean, if Oprah lives there, it's probably expensive, and somehow we pulled it off. London, on the other hand, is a completely ridiculous real estate bubble. Even people who've lived here for years are surprised every now and then when they check rent prices. They have this fabulous scheme going where they charge rent by the week, so you don't quite realize that you're expected to hand over your soul every month. But when you take £260, multiply by four and then again by two (more math than I'm used to, let me tell you), it adds up. Oh well. It could be worse. I could be mutliplying by ten.

That said, we're not homeless (yet), Aunty is keeping us housed (bless her), and we're working out the logistics of moving to what was our back-up but may now be our best hope. That place, which we'll call 'bay house' for ease of reference, is in Stockwell which is south of the river. It's very close to the tube (~25 minutes to work) but not particularly close to anything else. It's pretty cheap, compared to the other options. The people sound super-friendly - older than we are but a laid-back group of friends who've figured out that they can afford better housing together than alone and happen to have an extra room. Thank goodness. The organizers are out of town on holiday until Friday, so although we've been in email contact we can't have a proper phone conversation or a room viewing until then. We'll let you know how that works out.

Other things we've done... Walked along parts of the Thames, past Whitehall, Westminster, the Old Scotland Yard, the London Eye, various museums I didn't pay enough attention to seeing as I can't remember their names, the Houses of Parliament, Big Ben, Buckingham Palace... a lot of walking, basically. We've sat in a number of parks, including St. James Park and Hyde Park. We've taken pictures of ducks. Okay, so I took the pictures of the ducks and Joey stood around and indulged me because he had to because I had the map. We've eaten fish & chips, steak & kidney pie (Joey), steak & ale pie (me) (priorities) and cornish pasties. We've obtained mobile phones. They're mobile phones on this side of the ocean, not cell phones. If you'd like to talk to us, email us and we'll tell you our numbers. You have to work for it. We've figured out how to work the many transformers and converters we need to work our small appliances here (Joey) and blown a few small fuses (me). We've learned to say a few enjoyable sentences with a cockney accent. We've seen a friend or two.

As soon as we're set up and have a wireless internet connection, we'll plug in the VOIP phone so we can be reached on our regular phone number. The Santa Barbara one. It will be great to hear from all folks across the water (but only if you call at decent hours given the time difference, otherwise we'll say one of our new cockney sentences and then hang up). We're 5 hours later than east coast time, and 8 hours later than west coast time, which basically means that late morning/early afternoon over there is late evening here.

Hopefully we'll find the stamina to keep this blog going, pictures and all. Feel free to send words of encouragement, pictures of miscellaneous things, news, etc. Stay tuned!