London-Luton-London: There and Back Again- A Canadians Tale

Hello from across the pond to all my followers (which may be no one, or just Jordann Pool)!



Wow! These last few days have been crazy but everything is coming together.



After a 7 hour flight, that left at 8pm Canadian time and arrived at 8am England time, Sarah and I were exhausted to say the least. We lugged all our baggage from south of London to north of London (where Luton is) on a train and made our way to our hotel, which was interesting... I can now honestly say never judge a hotel on its reviews. When deciding our hotels, there was some cheap locations right in the downtown of Luton but the reviews were AWFUL. Then there was our hotel....the reviews were great and the pictures looked awesome. We got to Luton and told the taxi driver where we were staying and he was as close to laughing as possible without laughing; as did every other  driver. As we got closer to the hotel we realized our hotel was in a predominate middle eastern community. The hotel had no one, ZERO, people staying at it other than us and they still charged us 15pounds to check in early. The rooms were quite nice and large but being at a hotel in a community where you don't speak the language or understand the customs is at times nerve racking to say the least. When I asked about restaurants near the hotel, the lady at the desk told us we had to cab into town because there was nothing we would like anywhere near our hotel. The most terrifying was that we were alone in the hotel, we both slept with one eye open in case our trip was going to start reflecting TAKEN...no joke. Essentially, our first day in Luton we slept all day (or tried too) with the assistance of Gravol because of the jet lag.

The goal of our trip was to find me a place to live...and we succeeded! The first day, before sleep was induced, we went to one estate agent (in the UK--or at least Luton---instead of signing leases and viewings with a single landperson, the landperson signs up through an agency that manages all the properties. it is a much safer and reliable way to rent housing). The first estate agent was a bust---they had zero 2 bedroom properties.... There was a solid 18 hours where I thought I had made the biggest mistake of my life, but have no fear, I am highly optimistic now. Saturday we went out again looking at places to live and found a great 2 bedroom house, a little further from the school than we had hoped but its great and a great price too! We saw some interesting places though---a few were run down, most were extremely small and one had cockroaches---overall they were DUMPS! The company we signed with was amazing too! They were so helpful in finding a place and getting everything set up plus giving us tips on restaurants, shops, etc. They even drove us back to our hotel so I could pick up a suitcase and drop it off at the house before we headed to London for a few days. Such great people!

We enjoyed a nice pub dinner downtown Luton as our first meal in 2 days (jet lag messed up our appetite the most), where Sarah got some delicious fish and chips. We had to ask the security at the front how to order---apparently at pubs in Luton you order at the bar and then sit at your table (food included)…who would have thought! I guess after we sat there long enough they would have started taking bets as to how long we would wait for a server to come.

Once we had a property picked out and a lease signed, we knew we wanted to come to London stat! We started our journey early in the morning Sunday (today) and after an hour delayed train and a re-routed Underground we made it to the hotel. The worst part about travelling in the UK is that most of the stations don’t have elevators or escalators…my body hurts from lugging all that baggage around everywhere. Once we dropped our baggage off at our new hotel---right near Oxford street in the heart of London (Oxford is the best shopping street in London) we hit the shops! Surprised? Our hotel here is very nice and there are MANY people staying at it…hopefully we will have a good night’s rest tonight! The rooms are small but it doesn’t matter, we won’t be in them much anyways!

 
Tomorrow we plan on hitting the sights and seeing the area around Buckingham Palace followed by hitting up the theatre for a show called Let it Be—a Beatles tribute.


I hope people are actually reading this and that you enjoy my updates! Post again soon!