Drum roll please....our flat has been secured!!! After two weeks waiting with crossed fingers, and sweating the strange business practices of the UK, we finally signed our tenancy agreement and received the keys to our flat. For those of you that would like to update your address books, we can be reached at:
Flat 1, 24 Almeida Street London N1 1TB
This is the lower basement unit that we described during our previous post, and we are so excited to start getting set up. Visitor central is now officially open for business. We are thinking the Singleton Inn sounds very british. We were going to go with the Ye Olde Singleton Inn, but it turns out you have to have been in business prior to 1600 to qualify for such a title. So the Singleton Inn it is. Your stay will come with a quality double decker air mattress, complete with freshly laundered linens. Access to our pint sized mini-fridge, kettle made instant coffee, and the potential for a flash mob opera happy hour. All are welcome, rent is free. Payments will be accepted in the form of laughs, beers and hugs.
We spent the early afternoon with Trevor, our friendly maintenance man. He showed us the ropes at the new digs, and completed our walkthrough paper work. He also enlightened us to the joys of the London bus system. Moment of silence needed (slight re-group required). Adjectives to describe said bus experience: sticky, crowded, diverse, conspiratorial*, slow, painful, nauseating**, and jizdanky***.
* As evidenced by the random woman accusing Shayne of practicing satanic worship for wearing a Tiffany's star pendent necklace - seen here. Crazy bag lady.
** Similar to riding the Star Tours ride at Disneyland (shout out to one Seamus Keith)
*** A word coined by Shayne and Jake to describe the insidious smell that only non bathing individuals can create. May also be used as a noun, verb, or past tense description. See various forms: Jizdanky, Jizdankified, Jizdanking, Jizdanked, Jizdankification. Wouldn't you know it, the urbandictionary.com references are still available. Might have to make an addition.
We decided to hit the town on Friday night to celebrate our new home away from home, and met up with Jake Plumer at the Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese (yes, this place actually qualifies to use the Ye Olde title as a pub has been in this location since 1538, and the current building was built in 1667 just after the great london fire of 1666. See more detail here. A big thank you to Suzanne Respess for such a great recommendation. A fantastic historic pub with winding staircases, nooks & crannies galore, dark wood, guestbooks dating back over 100 years on display (of course, they had the great Walt Disney as a patron in 1985), and so much history on the walls. A truly original place, and we highly recommend a visit. Shining moment of our time spent there was Shayne's dousing of the British lawyer who took up residence on the other side of our table. Let's just say he wasn't quite thrilled with the 'Americans' spilling beer all over his suit. As Shayne offered multiple apologies, and tried to towel him off (yes, she actually attempted this with a bar towel), he grabbed his backpack and vacated the premises (pause here for suit/backpack fashion choice). His lawyer buddies got a huge kick out of this whole scene, and we smoothed over the US/UK relations over a couple more rounds.
We headed down the road to SoHo, and ended up at Waxy O'Connor's pub. We knew we were right at home when we walked into a blaring rendition of Dolly Parton's 9-5, which was followed by an encore of the same exact song. They literally played it back to back. The jams kept on flowing, and we danced and shouted with the other seemingly underage Euros. Who knew everyone loved Neil Diamond. It was an extremely fun night, and as fate would have it, we missed the last train out of SoHo, and ended up back on the London bus system. The group of Italian men who were smashed into our aisle way easily qualified as being 'Jizdankies'. Another gold star for bus transportation.
Lesson(s) learned: 1) Think very carefully about using the bus system. 2) We still haven't worked up the courage to try the 24 hour Chicken Cottage restaurant (which from what we have gathered is as close to late night food as one will find here, aside from the kabob shops). 3) We still haven't forgotten the word's to Dolly Parton's classic (and neither have most of the Brits).
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