By the end of the day today we had walked 18782 steps totalling a span of 3 hours and 3 minutes. How'd we manage that? I'll give you the abbreviated breakdown
1) Walked to Barclay's bank to open a bank account. The neat thing about Barclays is that they a) sponsor the Premier Football League here and b) they are partnered with Scotiabank back home so I can use my card freely at Barclays ATM machines!
2) Walked to ASDA, our grocery store which is kind of a cross between Loblaws and Walmart where we stocked up on tons of groceries and then had to carry them all the way home. We've been brining our backpacks everywhere which makes us look pretty dorky but we can shove a lot of purchases in there which helps.
3) Walked to meet up with our employer, Alex.
4) Walked to our rental agency to sign an am mended version of our contract and give bank details. The thing about the rental agency is that it's quite far away from our flat.
5) Ran to Buyology because we realized it was closing shortly and we wanted to buy a kitchen table and stools
6) Carried home a huge box containing the aforementioned table and stools. It was quite a sight as the box was very long. Gabel carried the front and I carried the back and we walked all through town and then up the infamous bridge we have to cross to get back to our flat. This bridge has 20 steps leading up it and then 20 steps leading back down.
7) After dumping the box we walked back to Asda and bought two bottles of wine, some vodka, two cartons of orange juice, sprite, and grenadine and loaded them into our backpacks.
8) With all those bottles still on our backs we walked over to the IKEA again which is always a terrible experience due to the fact that the entrance is on the like 18th level and you have to take an elevator and four escalators to get to it and also because even when we intend on being there for five minutes it takes two hours out of our day.
Anyways this is probably the funniest part. When we checked out of IKEA, we had purchased three decent sized side tables, four plants, two sets of curtains, two lamps, two lamp shades, power bars, lightbulbs, a vase, a few fake flowers, two laundry hampers and a pillow set. In my mind I assumed we were going to steal a cart as per usual but instead of taking the cart only up to the bridge, I thought we would go around the long way with the cart so we could wheel it right up to the flat. However, Gabel chickened out, saying, "nooo I've never done anything like that before, I don't want to wheel the cart through the streets, what if we get caught? etc" so we were forced with the task of carrying ALLLLL of those items through a massive parking lot, across a street, up the stairs, across the bridge, down the stairs, through another parking lot (car parks here!), and up to the fifth floor of our flat building. I can't even express how funny it must have looked our how much of a struggle it was. Out of all the plants, the biggest one was called a Ficus plant and it was only 5 pounds so I had to buy it. Gabel had pointed it out as a joke but I decided it would look great in my barren room. Anyways, I grabbed the tables and curtains, and hampers, etc, and told Gabel she would have to be the plant lady and carry the plants. Well she was certainly struggling to grab them all and called out to me, "You just had to buy that Ficus didnt you?!" which made us fall over laughing and not really get anywhere. It was a slow go because I was loaded down with about 45 pounds of merchandise and kept having to stop every few seconds. Gabel suggested shoving the Ficus in our measly IKEA bag and then she would have a free hand to hold one side of the IKEA bag if I held the other. So we started like that until she dropped her prized Cactus plant on the ground and alllll the dirt came tumbling out. This resulted in her saying, "AWWWWWWW my poor cacti!" and I said "oh now who had to have a plant!" So we rescued her cacti as best we could, shoved him in the IKEA bag and somehow got up those stairs and across the bridge. By the time we got to the flat, all my muscles were SCREAMING and I could barely stand. And it was 9:30pm. Way past dinner time!!
We promptly threw all our purchases on the ground, not wanting to even look at them and cooked up a very tasty fajita meal and poured ourselves some well earned drinks!! So there you have it. Over 18000 steps... that's how it's done!
We spent the rest of the night recuperating, having some drinks, and building furniture. We built furniture until 1:30 am and I am so proud of us for not needing any boys to put it all together. Usually Matthew always did that stuff for me so it was refreshing to know I could do it myself. Granted it was just some tables and a stool, but still!
It's now closing in on 3:30 and we've retreated to our rooms, putting up curtains and lights, and are now writing on our blogs. What we are most looking forward to tomorrow is SLEEPING IN, relaxing, and exploring on no particular schedule. I think that most of the hard stuff is done. Fingers crossed!
Cheers for now!!
Katrina/Kat/Meddy xoxoxo
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