Life outside quarantine

Stepping out into the real world late Tuesday morning. It seemed weird that suddenly we were just free. Free to get the groceries we want when we want it. Free to sight-see. Free to go for a walk or run. We were able to go shopping and get some clothes for the fall weather here. I might have had enough, but the remainder of my wardrobe is coming in a sea shipment that so far hasn't even left Canada yet--and the company hasn't been able to tell us when it will be. With the pandemic, as well as a strike at the Montreal port, shipping processes have been backed up, so we now might not get our warm clothes in time for when the weather turns chillier. In any case, we can at least go out to get things that we need. 

Colourful flowers at St James's Park

We went out to Westminster area on the Tuesday, walking along the Thames with a couple of little detours. I wanted to check out a street market nearby. I remembered visiting some street markets when I spent a few weeks in London over a decade ago, and they were similar to farmers' markets back home. This one ended up being a little disappointing in terms of fresh produce--there was only one venue selling that, but it was a dreamy place for international street food. The options were: Jordanian, Turkish, Thai, Moroccan, and some other Middle Eastern ones I now can't remember. All of it looked yummy, and we were a bit early for lunch, but I can see us going there for food on another day. On the way back, we walked through the edge of St James's Park, which was just beautiful and still has bunches of flowers in bloom. There were a large number of bees, and as I kept walking, I saw a pond that had a wide variety of different waterfowl as well. I can't wait to go back and take my good camera to do some birding there! Here I was so afraid that this concrete jungle of a city wouldn't have much for birding opportunities, and this is one of those times where I'm not only happy, but even excited about being wrong! 

A very gnarly tree trunk

The next day, we went to Oxford Street to do some clothes shopping. I didn't have any type of warm-wish jacket that was stylish for the chillier weather. The best I could do to keep myself warm was either a thin merino cardigan or a very warm but very casual hoodie crested with the logo of one of the schools I worked at a couple of years ago. It's just not appropriate for if we go out to dinner or something like that. It's been a while since I've been to Oxford Street and hadn't remembered what a huge shopping area it is. So we enjoyed walking around, and I did find a decent jacket, thankfully!

On Thursday, we went out to an area called Ruislip to get our bank account set up. It was over an hour away by subway, but we went to a particular branch that has a good relationship with my husband's employer because it makes setting it up much easier. We were told that usually it can take at least an hour to set up an account and that it's rather difficult to do so here, but for us, it was quite quick and painless. We walked along the area's high street, on which there were many charity shops. At home, we have Salvation Army or Goodwill, for example, but here, there are multiple charities with their own shops. There are international organisations like Oxfam to national organisations like the RSPCA or Cancer organisations to local organisation that help provide food and supplies to schoolchildren. I think I saw at least 5 or 6 of these on the maybe 6-block stretch that we walked. 

Friday was my husband's first day of work, so while he was off, I kept the home fires burning. It'll be nice to get into some type of routine, but until then, we are enjoying our newfound freedom.

Meanwhile, as I was mentioning the surprise about birding in London, I had another huge surprise just sitting on a chair at our place. I saw a bird hovering, and it turned out to be a bird of prey. It seems it was hovering because there was prey below. It suddenly dove straight down and flew off. I thought it wasn't coming back, but it flew back to the balcony across from our place to stop and have its lunch on the balcony ledge. I was able to get really good photos of it and learned that it is a female Eurasian kestrel. I was pretty excited, almost jumping for joy. In the photo, you can see her lunch! I'll have more bird photos for my bird blog when I get that up and running. It's still under construction.