Moving day #1

Today began much like the others before it. We got up, took a shower, and went down to the hotel restaurant to eat breakfast (beans on toast for me, of course!). What came next was not quite as relaxed as those other days. We had attempted to contact the porter of our short-term apartment intermittently over the past few days. No luck. Now, it was the morning of our "check-in" day and we had no keys, no way of getting into the apartment, and no more days left at the hotel. The pressure was building. We had left messages for Ambi (the porter) to meet us there at Noon. At 11:15, we left our packed bags in the hotel and headed over to *hopefully* meet him and get into the flat. We waited outside the building, frantically calling Ambi and the flat manager trying desperately to contact at least one of them. Finally, we noticed a gentleman exiting the building and stopped him. He was kind enough to give us Ambi's mobile number. Success! We reached Ambi on his mobile and agreed to meet him there in an hour.

We hopped back on the Tube over to the hotel, arranged for them to hold our bags a bit longer, and returned to the building just in time to meet Ambi. We had the keys, we made sure there was no one else in the apartment (Ambi thought the previous tenants were still there; yikes!), and we went back to pick up the luggage. Whew! We had a place to stay for the night. Thank goodness!

After settling in a bit, we realised we were hungry and there were no groceries. Off to the market... but where? M&S just food (located IN the Tube station) was our first grocery shopping experience. It took us forever to find the eggs. Check the refridgerated section, you say? Try on the top shelf of what was essentially an end-cap. Lovely.