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| The sad but not entirely indecent dinner |
We arrived Tuesday morning after a fairly uneventful journey. I'd like to say that we had lots of room on our Toronto flight, but it was fairly full. The London Leg was probably just over half full, and while we were originally assigned seats on both flights in the middle and aisle seat on the left of the plane, having someone next to us at the window both times, we were able to switch to the middle section of the plane on the London leg and have the whole row to ourselves as there were a few of those that were empty. Apparently they are not allowing that too much right now because they want to ensure they do accurate contact tracing, should someone end up contracting Covid-19, so you can't just go and sit somewhere else without permission. So we felt really grateful they allowed us to get that other row to ourselves so we could spread out a bit and also try to sleep a little bit more comfortably, if we were to hope to get any sleep at all on an airplane, given the general difficulties that situation naturally presents under any circumstances, let alone a pandemic. The food that you get is no longer heated. The dinner they served was eggplant parmigiana, but it was cold, so the cheese was a bit hard and rubbery. The flavour was good but just would have been so much better warmed up. And since there are no options, you get a vegetarian meal because it's one meal for everyone. The breakfast was a little lighter than I hoped, with a croissant instead of a muffin, and a yogurt. At least they still serve coffee and tea, and you can get pop, but not juices, and it seemed that alcohol was only served on the international flight to people in business/first class. The one thing we did get that was really welcome was a baggie with a little bottle of water, latex disposable gloves, a disposable mask, and a travel-sized bottle of hand sanitiser. Even though we had brought both disposable and cloth masks and sanitiser for our trip, it was actually really nice to have these extras. Even if we didn't need them for the trip, we'll make use of them in the future, I have no doubt.
We got SIM cards at the airport and then took a taxi to our flat. It was recommended to us to get SIM cards at the airport since we'd have no other way to get connected once arriving at our flat due to the mandatory 14-day self-isolation period for those entering the country from Canada. It was great to get connected right away and also get a plan that is much better than what we get in Canada--more data for much cheaper. I anticipate having to use Google Maps a lot once I can go out.
First impressions of our place were that it was a bit narrower and smaller in some areas than I expected, and the shower is really small. I'll need to look at getting an electric shaver for my legs since a person of my size will have a hard time bending to shave, and there is no tub in the flat. It was removed to make way for putting the washer and dryer in the guest bathroom since those usually take up valuable storage space in kitchens in the UK. But the views are as outstanding as we expected. Right now, there is some construction on the bridge near our place, so we get some noise and views of cranes and other machinery, but if the windows are closed, it's not too bad for noise. I also get a lot of great views of water fowl and have already seen various gulls that are different from home as well as a black cormorant, a swan with her babies, and grey heron! I never expected I'd get to do birding right from my window!
Other things I've noticed so far is that there is often a police helicopter hovering nearby across the river, and that eggs seem to most commonly come in a half dozen size. If you want more, they then come in a 10-pack rather than a dozen like at home--at least in terms of our online options. We have to order groceries online since we can't leave our place, so I'm noting differences in grocery practices. I would rather get a dozen at a time, but because you don't refrigerate eggs here, they don't have a long shelf life, just a week. Otherwise I would just buy 2 packs at a time. And given the wait times for grocery delivery due to the pandemic, this could pose a problem, but I think it will be fine once I can go out and buy things in person. One of the Canadian couples in our building kindly got some groceries for us so we'd have something right off the bat when we got here and wouldn't have to wait for our first grocery delivery, and one thing I learned is to really read the labels on things that I buy. I had asked for this yogurt--what I thought was yogurt, but when we opened it up, I saw that it was plant-based--i.e. soy yogurt. Whatever you do, do not be fooled by this yogurt! It neither looks nor tastes like yogurt. It's basically bean curd with fruit sauce, and it both looks and tastes like bean curd. Perhaps the inventors of it are taking advantage of the fact that lots of Westerners might not have had bean curd before, so they get the sensation that it's like yogurt, but it is nothing like dairy-based yogurt.
Another thing that I find interesting is how the Thames is still commonly used for transportation. I think this is also true of large rivers like the Mississippi, and I believe I've also seen cargo being transported on the Ohio when visiting my brother, but certainly at home, our river is not used for this purpose anymore. I think that practice mostly died after bridges were built, and there was an ability to transport goods by road. But here, there are barges heading up and down the river, carrying sea containers, soil, and who knows what else? That's just what I've seen being transported so far, as some barges have been empty when I saw them.
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| One of the barges, in this case, carrying soil |
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