Straight to Summer

It seems like I brought the LA weather back with me when I came back to a sunny and warm London!

This May was shaping up to be the worst May in decades (weather-wise), but in a complete 180, the last week has been amazing with temperatures in the mid-twenties and sunny skies. It's some consolation for the fact that J and I had to cancel our big Italian tour due to J being busy at work. *tear* To be honest, I was more than fine with cancelling as I had been traveling for the last one and half months and I was ready to come back home and stay put for a while.

Of course, we had to try to spend as much of it as possible outside while the sunshine lasted.

We had lunch at Pizza Express and then hit up John Lewis on Oxford Street to buy a food processor. Exciting times, I know. A little reminder that the Queen's Diamond Jubilee is coming up soon...

And we walked around Hyde Park where pretty much everyone was out enjoying the weather. I didn't know that you could go swimming in Diana's memorial! Sweet!

I felt kind of bad for dragging J on a long walk through the park on an extra hot day so I bought him a burger at Bar Boulod at the Mandarin Oriental in Kensington to make up for it. I got the Yankee burger - I couldn't figure out what was so Yankee about it though...

Now that I'm back at home and gainfully unemployed, I've been keeping busy with a massive spring clean (a wee bit late, I know), working out, and making healthy meals from scratch for J. So far, I've made the following at his request:

Grilled Salmon w/ Chickpea Salad

Curried Chicken Korma w/ Swiss Chard

And last night, I made some Potato and Quinoa Croquettes w/ Sour Cream, but it got inhaled before I could snap a pic of it.

I seriously think it's harder being a housewife than going back to work. Slaving over a stove on a hot day is not fun - I ended up cooking dinner in my sports bra while trying to avoid getting hit by any rogue oil splatters. It may be time to head back to the office soon...

There's No Place Like Home...

Or should I say, I have no place to call home? Corporate housing is just that - an impersonal space that offers all the necessities of everyday living without any of those "offensive" personal touches. I'm not complaining, this place is like a freaking palace compared to some of the places we saw yesterday that were charging obscene amounts of money that almost made me cry.

For anyone thinking LA real estate is bad, London is oh so much worse. How much worse, you ask? Well, you can have the grand privilege of paying over $5k US per month for 900 square feet of outdated living. Honest to goodness, I saw a wooden tub. Honestly, who lives here? The queen?! Well, yes, yes she does, along with a bunch of other aristocrats that own a lot of the property around the nice part of London. Thank you very much, Duke of Buckingham!

So J and I set out on our second day of house-hunting today. We crawled all around Marylebone yesterday and viewed a couple of properties and came home disappointed and exhausted. After a 4 hour power nap (hey, we're still trying to recover from jet lag), we resumed the search online and came up with a few properties we wanted to look at in Kensington.

I did a ton of research before we got here, and that's how we narrowed our search down to Kensington and Marylebone, but I figured you could only know for sure after actually visiting the neighborhoods in person. Google Earth can only do so much.

After having explored Marylebone for a day, we were ready to move onto Kensington today. Just in case, we paid another visit to the estate agent in Marylebone and he showed us two(!) amazing spaces that were just too good to be true. I can't describe it here since I don't want to jinx it - but I've got my fingers breath and J is waiting with breath that is bated.

Marylebone Village, Photo by: Stephen McKay

 Anyway, we then moved on to Kensington, and the feeling was all just wrong. We walked into a couple of estate agents and made appointments to view properties later in the afternoon, but after walking about a bit, it just couldn't compare to Marylebone. We ended up sitting on a park bench in Kensington Gardens (Kensington Palace was behind us, and a Spanish band was singing - you can't make these things up), and canceling our viewing appointments.

Kensington High Street, Photo by Thomas Blomberg

So all of our eggs are in one basket, and we're waiting to hear back on our offer.

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Some English things I did today:

1. Ordered a cheeseburger without cheese at Mark & Spencer's food hall in Kensington - I was told that I couldn't order a hamburger, which wasn't on the menu, but had to order a cheeseburger without cheese. Um, okay.
2. Went grocery shopping at Waitrose, bought their reusable grocery bags, and bagged my own groceries