Day #13: The one with Ben & Margaret

Saturday was moving day!  What is a move, without a trip to IKEA.   Oh IKEA, what a love/hate relationship we have.  The Love comes from the cheap furnishings, the simple/sleek designs, and the quality swedish meatballs.  The Hate comes from the self assembly, the mobs of people, and the 2.5 hour round trip transit time (including foot, tube, bus & taxi transfers) to get to/from your closest location in London.  Note: This 2.5 hour transit time does not include the time spent shopping.  We were amazed the people made this trek, and still walked out of the storm with 1 toilet brush and a new table top Ficus.  Was it really worth the trip people?

We ended up finding a couple great items for the flat, and also stumbled upon a 'Tesco Extra' which is the closest thing the UK has to a Super Wal-Mart.  Minus the children with no shoes, and large amounts of visible plumber's crack. We literally maxed-out our carrying threshold, and snapped a few photos on the tube/bus/taxi ride home.  We were quite the traveling circus.  Either way, we got some base necessities for the flat, and a good laugh out of the whole experience.

We raced back to our corporate housing, and got ready to meet our new friends Ben & Margaret who just arrived from NYC (thank you Chase!).  They came over to check out the flat, and we raised a plastic glass to the new adventures ahead.  We told a few of our favorite Chase Thompson stories, and then we took them to the King's Head for a little flash mob operatic theatre.  We found a great little place to eat a few blocks from our place, and experienced the joys of warm meat pies (Shepherd's Pie & Guinness/Ale Pie) for the first time.  There's something homey about gravy, meat, and mash.  We even tried the mushed peas.  We found our way to a local bar (called the Slug & Lettuce) which we call a bar because they were open until 1am.  Definitely a rarity for the Pub scene (as most close up around 11pm), so we figured it must be a bar.  We enjoyed the great music stylings of the 90s, and watched Marg sip her wine glass cosmo, and Ben bust out some bar stretching exercises & classic dance moves.  We are definitely going to need some practice before our next adventure.  Cheers to Chase & Eric for introducing their great NYC friends.  It was at some point during our discussion of our custom meat pie shop, that we knew we had some fast friends. Let the good times roll!

Lesson(s) learned:  1) Tiger beer is good, 2) Ben is extremely flexible, 3) IKEA is really really far away, 4) It's much harder to transport do-it-yourself furnishings on a bus/subway.