A Weekend in Praha

We finally were able to take advantage of London's proximity to other European countries by traveling to Prague for the weekend.  The weekend started with a 3:15am wake-up alarm.  After a cab ride to a bus stop and an hour bus ride, we arrived at Luton airport.  It definitely made me miss DIA and the fabulous economy parking lot within walking distance of the airport.  We traveled to Prague via the Hungarian low-cost airline WIZZ Air.  Yes, the airline was as bad as the name makes it sound.  On the positive side, we were in the city center ready to begin exploring before noon.

Most of the sights in Prague are close to the city center making walking the main form of transportation for tourists.  They do have an extensive tram and subway system as well, but we only used the tram once during our trip.  Prague was relatively untouched during World War II so a lot of their amazing historic architecture was preserved.  Some of the main sights we saw included Prague Castle, Charles Bridge, Old Town Square, Tyn Church, Saint Nicholas Church, Wenceslas Square, and Old Town Hall with the Astronomical Clock.

We had a couple of traditional Czech meals during our trip.  We heard the front desk worker at our hotel describe Czech food to another couple as "like other European food but more fatty."  This was actually a pretty accurate description.  Things like goulash, dumplings, fried pork, and sausages were staples on the menus.  Definitely not something you would want to eat very often.  On a side note, this same couple also was really excited to try out the KFC in Prague which we found to be quite funny.  I guess we shouldn't laugh as we did make a stop at a TGI Fridays for one lunch which was probably one of the best meals we have had in the past three months (London food leaves a lot to be desired).  The best part of the Czech cuisine is by far their beer.  The most famous/popular brand is Pilsner Urquell.  The original Budwieser is also brewed in the Czech Republic.  We had many a half liter of Czech beer on this trip.

David and I agreed that Prague is one of our favorite European cities.  All the locals were really friendly and more than willing to speak English.  There were plenty of playgrounds in the city for Colin to burn off steam and most of the restaurants were very child friendly.  Prague does have a reputation for having a high number of incidents of pickpocketing so we were really careful with our possessions at all times and didn't have any problems. Below are a few photos from the trip.

Tyn Church and Old Town Square

Old Town Square at Night

Prague Castle

Old Town Hall and the Astronomical Clock

David at the top of Old Town Hall

Charles Bridge

Missing the USA

We recently returned from our first trip back to the US.  We visited the Outer Banks in North Carolina for a week to spend some time with David's family and attend his cousin Erin's wedding.  My parents were able to make it out there as well so it was great to spend some time with them too.  London is great but being back in the US made me realize how much I miss certain things at home.  I thought I would write a quick blog post on 10 things I miss.

1.  Family and friends - Of course, this one goes without saying.  Once again, we have an extra bedroom and bathroom at our place, and Colin and I would be more than happy to be your tour guide if you came to visit us in London!

2.  Target - Everyone who knows me, knows that Target is my favorite store. I insisted we stopped at Target shortly after our arrival in the US.  David said he was lucky to get out of there with a $200 bill.  This was mostly because I didn't have any room in my suitcase to buy anything else.  I think we are making up a lot of the money lost by me being a stay-at-home mom by not having a Target in London.  If I was a stay-at-home mom and had Target at my disposal, it would not be pretty (evidenced by the crazy amounts I spent there during my three months of maternity leave last year).

3. US Size Appliances - As I mentioned in one of my previous posts, our washer and dryer is TINY and barely works.  It took me three days and 12 loads of laundry to get caught up after being on vacation for a week.  I do feel fortunate as our apartment is one of the few we saw with a US size refrigerator/freezer.  A lot of our friends here have dorm style fridges.

4.  Television - The TV shows here are AWFUL.  We have spent a lot of time watching reruns of shows such as "Friends" and "Two and a Half Men" since we have arrived.  Fortunately, we got a Slingbox hooked up with my sister and brother-in-law so now we can at least record our favorite shows and watch them through the computer.  It isn't exactly the same quality but much better than the TV schedule here.  On the positive side, I watch way less TV here.

5.  Sports - I am sorry but European football (soccer) and cricket are the two most boring sports in existence.  I miss my Badger and Packer football.  Checking the scores first thing when I wake up in the morning to see who won is a sad way to follow a season.  My poor sports fanatic husband is really suffering (I guess this is a positive too as we aren't stuck watching ESPN non-stop).

6.  Clothes shopping - I now see why Europeans come to America and spend a ton of money on clothes.  The shopping here is awful.  Everything is super expensive and/or not our style.  I can find some stuff for myself, but it is especially bad for men's and boy's clothes.  Everything is super tight.  I am not sure David or Colin are going to get into the skinny jeans look anytime soon.  It was heaven going to an outlet mall when we were back in the US.

7.  Cooking - Cooking is quite difficult here.  I am always on my computer looking at metric conversions.  Some things are a complete guess.  Butter comes in a 250 gram block so trying to figure out what is a 1/2 cup or other measurement is impossible when it isn't in the easily measured stick form.  Plus, our oven has some sort of fan that makes it super hot so I can't just convert the Fahrenheit temperature to Celsius or our food gets burned.  I have to subtract a certain amount of degrees - I have yet to find the proper adjustment for this so my cooking has not been the greatest.  Just when I thought I got rid of one problem living in Denver (I never figured out cooking at an altitude), I traded it for another.

8.  Customer Service - There seems to be a general lack of customer service here.  I am not sure if it is because the standard tipping is so much lower (10% at restaurants and nothing at pubs) so employees don't have an incentive to treat their customers well.  Everything moves really slowly.  I guess this is nice if you want a leisurely meal but not nice when you dine with an impatient 19 month old.

9.  Restaurants - The food at restaurants is mostly terrible.  I am sure there are exceptions to this (probably nice restaurants that don't welcome children).  I keep hearing "but the Indian food is fantastic."  The problem is that neither David nor I can stand the thought of eating Indian food again after our extended stays in India for work.  Steak is especially bad here.  I don't think we will make the mistake of ordering steak at a restaurant here again.

10.  Cost of Living - Everything is CRAZY expensive in London.  I find for the most part that things cost the same amount of pounds here that they would cost in dollars at home.  The problem is that one pound is 1.6 dollars so this means that everything is 60% more expensive.  This is not counting housing which is even more insane and around three times what we paid at home.

Don't get me wrong, I love living in London and feel very fortunate that we get this experience.  However, I think I will be happy when we return to the US in two years.  I will have to refer to this blog post then when I am missing London! 

Here are a few pictures of Colin from our trip to the Outer Banks.

Cheese!

Yummy ice cream!

Beach Bum

Olympics & Paralympics

Now that the Olympics and Paralympics are officially over with, I thought I would do a quick post about our experience and share some of our pictures.  We were nervous about moving to London right before the start of the Olympics not knowing how it would impact our apartment search and how crazy the city would be.  It didn't seem to have an impact on our apartment search at all.  Most landlords were not interested in renting out their places to short-term tenants here for the Olympics even if it meant a lot of money for a few weeks.  It wasn't worth the hassle to them.  The city did not seem significantly more busy either.  There were warnings to avoid public transportation and tourist sites during the Olympics.  However, David had no trouble at all getting to work during the Olympics.  Most business actually complained about business being down over the Olympics as locals were too afraid to come out due to all the warnings and the tourists were here simply for the Olympics, not to spend a significant amount of time sightseeing or shopping.

We were fortunate to secure tickets to a Team USA vs. Turkey Olympic volleyball game and a session of Paralympics swimming and athletics.  Before we moved here, a lot of tickets were given out in a lottery type system.  However, the official ticket site held on to some blocks of tickets that were released randomly.  The lower priced tickets also had options to buy child tickets for significantly reduced prices.  We were able to get Colin these tickets for swimming and athletics which was really nice considering his attention span usually means we only see about an hour of each event.  Our volleyball event was outside of Olympic Park at a venue called Earl's Court that is normally used for concerts and exhibitions.  The swimming was at the Aquatics Centre and athletics was at Olympic Stadium, both within Olympic Park.  We were super impressed with how organized everything was.  You had to go through airport style security but all lines went extremely fast.  Buggy parks were set up to leave our stroller before going to our seat.  If anything, we noticed there were too many volunteers; a problem I am sure they were happy to have.

Olympic Park was really nice and there was quite a bit to do outside of going to events.  We enjoyed walking around to see all the venues and trying some of the different food and drink options.  It should be interesting to see what happens to the area now that the Olympics are over.  A lot of the venues were temporary and will be taken down; others have been sold.  There was quite a bit of infrastructure built around that area (a giant shopping mall, various hotels, extended transportation links) so time will tell what happens with those things.

I am glad I can now cross "Go to the Olympics" off my bucket list!  Here are some pictures from our Olympic and Paralympic Events.

At the OLYMPICS!!

Ready to watch Olympic volleyball

USA vs. Turkey Women's volleyball

At the Aquatics Centre for Paralympics swimming

Waiting for swimming to start

Olympic pool and diving well

Family photo at the Aquatics Centre

Colin and I in front of the Orbit

Watching Paralympic athletics

Paralympic athletics at Olympic Stadium

Family photo in front of Olympic Stadium

London Living

We are getting more and more settled by the week in London and falling into a pattern of everyday life.  Now that I have more of a feel for living here, I thought I would write a post about some of my likes and dislikes of London living.

Like - Online Grocery Shopping
Why would I start out my list by discussing grocery shopping?  The discovery of online grocery shopping was like heaven after close to a month of walking to the grocery store with Colin and stroller in tow, fighting my way down the narrow aisles while Colin attempted to pull items off of shelves, and realizing I could only get about 10 items before I couldn't carry anything more.  I would then have to do the whole thing over again the next day (and the next and the next....).  I know online grocery shopping exists in the US, but it is rarely used.  In London, all of the grocery store chains deliver, and I see a truck from one of the chains going to almost all of my neighbors' houses at some point of the week.  It take a little more organization but in the end I think I spend less because there isn't the impulse shopping that occurs when walking down the aisles of the grocery store (hmmm...I am starving, better throw some cookies in my cart!).  The main problem is not understanding metric measurements so ending up with products that are either way too large or too small.

Dislike - Apartment Living
As I wrote in an earlier post, we pay an insane amount each month to live in a small apartment.  You would think we would be living in luxury for the crazy amount we pay.  I can't complain too much as I know our place is nicer (and larger) than the vast majority of homes here, but it is still a big adjustment coming from our nice (built in 2010) house in Denver.  I think the top three things that drive me crazy about this place are: 1) No window screens which means either the windows stay shut all the time (which is awful when it is 85 degrees out, and we have no air conditioning) or we have bugs in our house.  I would prefer the windows shut over the bugs.  David the opposite.  They also make me SUPER nervous as Colin could crawl right out.  I have barricaded the window in his room so I think the chance of him getting to it and opening it are slim, but they are definitely not up to child safety standards in the US.  2) Tiny combination washer and dryer.  The washer/dryer is located in the tiny kitchen, and takes 4 hours to do one load of laundry.  After this 4 hours, our clothes are still damp to wet and need to be hung up on the clothes rack for 4 more hours before putting them away.  So, 8 hours per tiny load of wash.  I need to do 1-2 loads per day to stay caught up.  I miss my full size front loading washer and dryer so much!  3) Lack of closets.  Oh, how I miss my walk-in closet!  We are lucky and at least found a place with built in wardrobes, but they are still jammed full.  This is after giving away at least half of our clothing before we moved here.  After we move back to the US, I am sure any place we live in will feel like a mansion. 

Like - Abundance of Parks
Most people are familiar with the large parks in London - Hyde Park and Regent's Park are probably the most famous.  However, London has a ton of smaller parks most of which have playgrounds.  I am glad Colin isn't older as the playgrounds here are crazy (think super high climbing structures with no rails).  I would have loved them as a kid, but they make me cringe as a parent.  Apparently, there isn't the worry about lawsuits from injury here.  We live right across the street from a 27-acre park called Paddington Recreation Ground which has younger kid and older kid playgrounds, soccer fields, tennis courts, a full track, gym (where I take yoga and other classes), basketball courts, a cafe, etc.  We are also within walking distance of two of London's larger parks - Regents Park (which has the London Zoo that Colin and I got a membership to) and Queens Park.  We are a short bus ride from Hyde Park; the Princess Diana Playground there is a favorite.  There are a number of other smaller parks within walking distance as well.  Having all these options to burn off 18 month old boy energy is great. 

Like - Free Kid's Activities
Although the parks are great, there is only a certain amount of time I can spend each day trying to prevent Colin from doing something dangerous on playground equipment before needing to find another activity.  Fortunately, there are a lot of Children's Centres (usually my British English)  and schools near our house that host free drop-ins for children under the age of 5 most days.  They generally host both a morning and afternoon session.  Afternoon sessions conflict with Colin's nap, but we try to go to at least one of the morning drop-ins every week. They have free play with tons of different toys and stations set up that vary daily with different activities (play-dough, water play, painting, pizza making, etc).  The sessions usually end with a snack of fruit and group singing and story time.  Did I mention they are free?  There are also three or four libraries within walking distance that have free story times.  We have went to a couple, but Colin is at a age where he has a really hard time sitting still so we probably will do this more as he gets older.  I am trying to mix these free activities with a few classes that we have to pay for (this fall we are doing music and swimming) as both of us go crazy if we hang out at home too much.

Like & Dislike - Public Transportation
You can get almost every where in London using public transportation.  This is a definite "Like", and I certainly don't miss driving one bit.  However, using the Underground (aka "Tube") is next to impossible when I am alone with Colin.  We have a Tube station right across the street from our house which is great for David going to work and on the weekends when we go places as a family.  However, taking the Tube alone with Colin during the week is extremely difficult as the vast majority of Tube stations are not handicap accessible.  Carrying a stroller with an 18 month old down stairs is awful when alone.  So during the week, I only use the bus.  I am glad I have this option, but the bus is generally slower than the Tube and more difficult to get to places far from our house.  The other issue with the bus is that only two strollers are allowed on at once.  Last week when I was leaving the gym, three buses flew past me since they already had two strollers before I was able to get on one.  Not a huge deal at this time of the year, but it will be a major pain when it is winter and freezing or raining.  I am glad we have the bus as an option though.  I joined a gym with a daycare (called a "creche" here) that is a bus ride away so we use it quite a bit during the week  I just wish London had the accessibility rules of the US so we could use the Tube.  I am sure this is really frustrating for those that have a handicap.  They are slowly changing some of the stations to being handicap accessible, but this is a huge project as most of the stations are very old and in the middle of crowded areas making construction difficult.

We FINALLY got out and saw the main sights of London last weekend so will end this post with a few of the pictures from this trip.

Big Ben and Houses of Parliament

London Eye and River Thames

Checking out a London phone booth

A Visit to Colin's Future College

This past Monday was a Bank Holiday in England so we took advantage of the long weekend for David by taking a day trip to Oxford on Saturday.  Oxford is a short train ride from London and home to the University of Oxford.  We started our day by taking a double-decker sightseeing tour of the city, which gave us some background of the University.  The University of Oxford is the oldest university in the English speaking world with evidence of teaching dating back to 1096.  The University consists of 36 self-governing colleges.  The Rhodes Scholarship is an international post graduate award allowing foreign recipients to study at the University of Oxford and is widely known as the world's most prestigious scholarship.  Former President Bill Clinton was a notable Rhodes Scholar, and we saw a few references to his days at Oxford around town (see picture below).

After our bus tour, we checked out Christ Church College.  Christ Church College is one of the largest colleges of the University of Oxford and appears to be most well known at this point as being the setting of various scenes in the Harry Potter movie series (i.e. use of its dining hall).  We walked past a few more sights (Bridge of Sighs, Radcliffe Camera) and made our way to a tourist attraction that couldn't be missed, the track where the first sub-four minute mile was run.  This was on David's must-see list.  I don't think it was on any one else's as we were the only people at this track (other than people who were there to work out). 

We were rained out most of the afternoon so spent the majority of the time enjoying some Pimm's and beers at a local pub while Colin napped.  Here are a few pictures from the day:

David in front of Christ Church college

For the Harry Potter fans (Christ Church dining hall)

An exciting attraction

Colin trying to run a sub-four minute mile

Some Bill Clinton history at the pub where we stopped for drinks







Escape from the City

We took our first trip out of the city last Saturday.  We figured we would start our European travels with an easy day trip to Brighton.  Brighton is a seaside resort village in South England.  Trains to Brighton leave from London frequently and take about an hour to make the journey south.  Colin was excited to ride on the train (or as he calls it a "choo choo"), and the trip there went fast between looking out the window, eating snacks, and watching Elmo on the iPad. 

We headed straight to the Royal Pavilion when we arrived to take a tour.  We were the first people in line for the day (a benefit of having a small child who does not sleep in).  The Royal Pavilion was the seaside palace of King George IV and later of Queen Victoria.  The palace has an Indian style exterior (looks a bit like the Taj Mahal) while is decorated indoors in a Chinese style and is known for being both unusual and luxurious.  After our history lesson, we headed down to the beach and took a spin on the Brighton Wheel (a giant ferris wheel), put our toes in the ocean, and had some lunch.  Colin took a nice long snooze in his stroller while David and I checked out the pier, did some shopping, and enjoyed a few drinks by the ocean.  When Colin woke up (and after a quick trip for some gelato), it was back to the train station for our journey back to London.

Brighton was a fun day trip but not a place that I think we need to return to during our time here.  It kind of reminded me of Atlantic City without the gambling aspect.  We had to laugh as it was in the high 60s and there were a TON of people laying out to work on their tans and swimming in the ocean.  It was one of the warmest days of the year there but felt way too cold for us to think about swimming.  I guess you have to take advantage of decent weather when you can in the UK.

Here are a few pictures from the day.

Colin & I on the train

Brighton wheel

Waiting to board the Brighton Wheel

Enjoying the ride

Testing out the water

London Apartment

We moved in to our apartment three weeks ago today and are starting to feel more settled here.  Our shipment from the US arrived last week.  Since we were limited to 1,000 pounds of shipment weight (which goes much faster than you would think), we basically brought over only clothes and Colin's toys.  It is still nice to have some of our own stuff.  I was getting really sick of the clothes I had in the suitcase I was living out of for almost a month and poor Colin was so bored without his toys.  Our apartment was semi-furnished.  We had to make a couple of trips to IKEA to get the remaining furniture that we needed (baby furniture for Colin, couches, a desk, etc.) and everything for the kitchen.  We didn't want to buy anything too nice as we will have to try to sell or give away everything in two years since we have the same shipping restrictions when we move back to the US. 

The neighborhood we live in is called Maida Vale.  It is in west London and about a 30 minute commute for David to get to work.  I think it will be a good fit for us as it seems to be a really family friendly neighborhood.  We live right across the street from a 27 acre park called Paddington Recreation Ground that we go to almost daily.  London also has quite a few free activities for kids under 5 so Colin and I have been checking a bunch out to see what we like best.  I will post more soon about what we have been up to.  We finally have Internet now (it took over two weeks to get set up) so will try to update this blog more regularly.

Here are some pictures of our apartment.  The first one is the outside view.  We live in a Mews style home.  This is a British term for rows of stables that host carriage houses below and living quarters above.  Our home is actually a replica of a Mews and never would have been used to hold carriages or horses.  According to our relocation assistant, this house is a "modern build."  I think this must mean anything less than 100 years old as this place is not modern at all.  Definitely a different standard than the US.

Front of our mews home

Living room

Dining room (we eventually got rid of that awful table and light fixture)

Tiny kitchen (a very difficult adjustment)

Master bedroom (calling this a master is a stretch)

Colin's room

Guest bedroom/office