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Blair's Official Everything London Thread
As I have been living in the UK now for nearly two weeks and getting fairly well settled I thought I would create this thread to share with you all about my adventures, challenges and discoveries about living here in Greater London. This will be where I will post my car spottings along with any other interesting sites I come across in my daily life, I just need to get that phone out and start taking some pictures to share. The first couple weeks have been really good though, with doing lots of stuff around the house and still shopping for housewares and furniture to get our place a little more comfortable and lived in.
We selected the area of Bromley as it was the same area my wife’s office would be and thus having a short commute for her was our first priority. Overall we are very happy with the area having a mall and high street with the majority of major shops and an even closer village to home with some small local shops to grab quick things. The main train station has regular trains that go directly into Victoria Station in central London which allows for a nice escape from the craziness that can be downtown London, but you can get there anytime you like without much hassle as the train is usually direct and takes about 17-20 minutes and from there you can get into the tube network. Thus you can get anywhere it is just a matter of how much time it all takes, for example friends of ours that we had not seen in a while and live in Wales were at Heathrow on Sunday before going on a trip and we decided to go meet them for dinner, the result was 2 hours travel in each direction, however that was what we had expected when we decided to go.
Therefore daily life can be fairly exhausting here as getting somewhere takes a fair bit of time and nothing is ever quiet, trains and buses are always fairly full no matter what time of day you are on them. Having no car adds to this as whenever you get groceries or anything you need to carry it on the transport system and then eventually home adding to the tiredness factor. We actually went to Ikea yesterday and it is fairly far away but decided to book a minicab for the to and from journey, costs more money but saves time and is cheaper than regular black cabs, plus the Passat wagon had enough space for our purchases.
With the Olympics starting this week it will be very interesting to see how things are like as they are preparing Londoners for the thought that each day will see 1 million extra people using transport compared with an average of I think about 3 million a day normally. This and Games Lanes on the roads has seemed to scare many people and the thought of going into the city during the games is frightening to many. We however will be going in a few times I think, we usually like to hit the city for some shopping on Saturdays and I was actually able to get Olympic tickets for women’s volleyball on Friday August 3rd which should be pretty awesome. I went to an Olympic hockey game in Calgary back in 1988 so I can say I have lived in a city during the games and went to an event for both Winter and Summer Olympics.
The costs of things here are not so bad, especially when you move past housing and cars and get to the day to day amounts. Things like a new release DVD are usually around £10 ($16 Cdn) and Blu-ray is not that popular before you all comment, but that is cheaper than Canada, HMV has some newer movies at two for £10 as well. Cell phones as discussed elsewhere is way cheaper here than in Canada and they get releases pretty fast, Galaxy SIII for instance was released here before anywhere else in the world. Delivery is so fast too, I decided I wanted a new case for my phone Monday morning did some research and picked a case on Amazon, free shipping and it was in my mail Tuesday morning. Food is very reasonable and produce is way fresher than at home so you buy for the next couple days and go, and things are often grown locally for instance I had strawberries and raspberries this morning grown in Kent, I live in Kent and I just got them at the local supermarket. The pre-prepared food selection is pretty awesome too as they cater to such a busy lifestyle so you can find lots of nice quick meals and some fairly healthy too and lots of promo pricing too.
Well I think that is a good summary of my first impressions, but so far I am not really missing Calgary much at all, a few food items that differ here I would like but nothing too major. I am still adapting to the garbage and recycling methods too, as they even collect food waste here and the schedule varies each week. I have been looking into travel options as well and hopefully going to Cardiff in August, Paris in October and looking at a winter holiday in Dubai for January, some are cheap some not as much but just so many options to look at.
Well please feel free to make any comments or ask any questions and I will do my best to keep this thread updated regularly, especially with some photos and hopefully some amazing car spottings too!
We selected the area of Bromley as it was the same area my wife’s office would be and thus having a short commute for her was our first priority. Overall we are very happy with the area having a mall and high street with the majority of major shops and an even closer village to home with some small local shops to grab quick things. The main train station has regular trains that go directly into Victoria Station in central London which allows for a nice escape from the craziness that can be downtown London, but you can get there anytime you like without much hassle as the train is usually direct and takes about 17-20 minutes and from there you can get into the tube network. Thus you can get anywhere it is just a matter of how much time it all takes, for example friends of ours that we had not seen in a while and live in Wales were at Heathrow on Sunday before going on a trip and we decided to go meet them for dinner, the result was 2 hours travel in each direction, however that was what we had expected when we decided to go.
Therefore daily life can be fairly exhausting here as getting somewhere takes a fair bit of time and nothing is ever quiet, trains and buses are always fairly full no matter what time of day you are on them. Having no car adds to this as whenever you get groceries or anything you need to carry it on the transport system and then eventually home adding to the tiredness factor. We actually went to Ikea yesterday and it is fairly far away but decided to book a minicab for the to and from journey, costs more money but saves time and is cheaper than regular black cabs, plus the Passat wagon had enough space for our purchases.
With the Olympics starting this week it will be very interesting to see how things are like as they are preparing Londoners for the thought that each day will see 1 million extra people using transport compared with an average of I think about 3 million a day normally. This and Games Lanes on the roads has seemed to scare many people and the thought of going into the city during the games is frightening to many. We however will be going in a few times I think, we usually like to hit the city for some shopping on Saturdays and I was actually able to get Olympic tickets for women’s volleyball on Friday August 3rd which should be pretty awesome. I went to an Olympic hockey game in Calgary back in 1988 so I can say I have lived in a city during the games and went to an event for both Winter and Summer Olympics.
The costs of things here are not so bad, especially when you move past housing and cars and get to the day to day amounts. Things like a new release DVD are usually around £10 ($16 Cdn) and Blu-ray is not that popular before you all comment, but that is cheaper than Canada, HMV has some newer movies at two for £10 as well. Cell phones as discussed elsewhere is way cheaper here than in Canada and they get releases pretty fast, Galaxy SIII for instance was released here before anywhere else in the world. Delivery is so fast too, I decided I wanted a new case for my phone Monday morning did some research and picked a case on Amazon, free shipping and it was in my mail Tuesday morning. Food is very reasonable and produce is way fresher than at home so you buy for the next couple days and go, and things are often grown locally for instance I had strawberries and raspberries this morning grown in Kent, I live in Kent and I just got them at the local supermarket. The pre-prepared food selection is pretty awesome too as they cater to such a busy lifestyle so you can find lots of nice quick meals and some fairly healthy too and lots of promo pricing too.
Well I think that is a good summary of my first impressions, but so far I am not really missing Calgary much at all, a few food items that differ here I would like but nothing too major. I am still adapting to the garbage and recycling methods too, as they even collect food waste here and the schedule varies each week. I have been looking into travel options as well and hopefully going to Cardiff in August, Paris in October and looking at a winter holiday in Dubai for January, some are cheap some not as much but just so many options to look at.
Well please feel free to make any comments or ask any questions and I will do my best to keep this thread updated regularly, especially with some photos and hopefully some amazing car spottings too!
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