Day 1

The longest most surreal day ever. We left from Ottawa and flew backwards to Toronto which was annoying but Gabel and I went all out and had a very nice dinner in a Scottish pub in the airport. Then we took a connecting flight to Reykjavik, Iceland which was very neat. I highly recommend Icelandair. They had pillows and blankets for each passenger (which we kept because we knew that our flat didn't have anything hahaha). They also have TV screens for every passenger and interesting facts about Iceland itself (they have no army or navy, everyone calls each other by the first name - even when talking to the president - and the phone book lists people by first name, every Icelander can trace their lineage back to the first settlers, etc). Iceland is gorgeous, it's definitely going to be on my bucket list of places to visit. The airport in Reykjavik is TINY but it looks like a cross between a boutique and an Apple store with its hardwood floors and smooth white glass walls.

Anyways, we then took a flight to London and arrived in Heathrow Airport. I've heard horror stories about Heathrow but it honestly wasn't that bad. We collected alllll of our numerous suitcases and went through customs and were done in an hour from landing. I had arranged for a car company to meet us at the airport and pick us up and they were there waiting for us which was excellent. It was really neat to see a man walk into the airport holding a sign saying "KATRINA MEDWENITSCH". The driver took us to Southampton and it took about an hour and a half car ride. We were absolutely exhausted and starving at this point. We managed to grab a croissant in Heathrow but that's all we had. The driver dropped us off at a real estate agents office with our four suitcases and four carry ons, so it was a pretty funny scene. The office was right on the main street of Shirley (one of the suburbs of Southampton) and everyone was staring at us and when we wheeled all of our stuff into the office, one of the agents stood up and said, "so you must be Katrina!"

The agents were very nice and we signed our contracts and then one of them actually drove us over to our place with as much luggage as he could fit in his car. The problem was that he, like everyone in England, drives TINY cars. There's no such thing as pick up trucks or SUV's or even mid size sedans. Everything is tiny which meant he could only take half our luggage. So anyways, we got to our flat and finally got to see it for the first time!! The building is called Wyndham Court and it's a square block of buildings with a courtyard in the middle of them. It sounds much nicer than it is, but it looks kind of drab from the outside. I wasn't expecting much but was actually very pleased with the flat itself. We are on the top floor (5th), and when we walked in I saw immediately that it was two floors which is awesome. The main floor has a small entrance area where we can hang coats and keep our shoes. Then off to the left is our kitchen which is actually quite large and if you walk straight you get to the lounge. The kitchen has nice black tile floors, light wood cupboards, and modern appliances. We have a fridge, microwave, oven/stove, and a laundry machine in the kitchen. Yes, a laundry machine. This is a thing in England apparently. Instead of a dishwasher we have a laundry machine haha. Oh well with there only being two of us we won't have too many dishes and at least we don't have to walk to a laundromat. Then the kitchen has window over a counter that shows the lounge which is quite spacious. There's no furnishings in it yet but we put up some pictures. Off of the lounge is a balcony which was another pleasant surprise. The stairs for the second floor are by our front door. Up the stairs we have two bedrooms on opposite sides of the hallway. Each bedroom is the same size and MUCH to our delight, each bedroom had a mattress in it on top of a box spring!! We weren't expecting beds at all so that was such a relief. In the middle of the hallway is three doors. One door is a boiler room closet. Another door is a bathroom with a stand up shower, a sink and a mirror. Then the other door is the toilet room. It's a small closet with literally just a toilet in it. So when you go to the bathroom, you then have to walk next door to wash your hands. Pretty funny! All in all quite a decent place. There are some parts that are bit older or shabby but once we get all set up and clean it a bit, it's going to be really nice. But the BEST part of the flat is that RIGHT across from it, aka a short stone's throw away from my balcony is a SUBWAY. Not the transportation but like the fast food place. Aka my favourite place. I literally squealed when we stepped on the balcony and the real estate agent looked at me funny and I had to explain how much I love Subway.

Anyways, the agent was nice enough to go back and get the rest of our luggage and by the time he got back with it, it was just after 4pm London time. And we'd been on the go since 4pm Ottawa time the day before. Nearly 24 hours. What we really wanted to do was collapse on a couch but we didn't have one, so we decided to go out and run some errands and explore the city. It was a bit tricky because we didn't know the city at all or what shops to go to or anything but we figured it out all by ourselves and it turns out we are in a great location. About a five minute walk from our flat is the West Quay (pronounced 'key') shopping mall which is unreal. It's way better than anything back home. Our first mission was to secure internet for ourselves somehow so we could let people know that we'd arrived ok. We went to a phone store and got new SIM cards for our phones. That gave us new phone numbers and it also gave us "all you can eat internet" which means unlimited internet. That only cost us 15 pounds a month which is amazing!!! We were very excited about that. We then signed up with a company for internet within our flat. That's going to cost us 19.50 pounds a month but they can't instal it until September 25th. Our next stop was IKEA which is right across from the mall. This thing is massive. It's really common here for malls and stores to be built on top of the parking for it so it's really difficult to get into the actual stores by walking. It took us an elevator ride up a few floors and a bunch of escalators just to get into the IKEA. At this point we were giddy with exhaustion and starvation but determined to push through. It's funny because people would stop and look at us and listen to our accents with amusement on their faces. But Gabel and I get such a laugh listening to everyone else's accents and funny expressions. Anyways, we bought some essentials like pillows, duvet's, duvet covers, clothes hangers, and towels. Then we went home with our huge load and at this point it was about 9pm. So we stopped at the Subway and grabbed our first actual meal in 24 hours. For those of you interested in Subway, it's very similar to back home except they have CORN as an option which i found strange and the ham tastes better. It's smoked or something. Then we walked across the street with all our purchases and collapsed on the floor of our lounge and ate our subs crossed legged on the floor. We popped in our SIM cards so we could finally Whatsapp and text and then we learned the really cool trick of how to transfer the internet off our phones onto our laptops by creating a personal hotspot. So we were all over our computers for a bit and then put up pics in our rooms. I printed all mine and Matthew's engagement photos and put them up on the wall above my bed in the shape of a heart.

And then finally at 1am, we SLEPT. And it was glorious. All in all it was a very good day, lots of things went right for us that we weren't sure about and the city looked very nice and exciting.