The first week in London

 

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. 

One of the barges, in this case, carrying soil

All in all, I know that I'll enjoy my time here. I'm excited for when I can finally go out, and it seems that we can still have a bit of a life despite the Covid. Being on the river, there are pathways that I can go walking and cycling, so I'm looking forward to regular exercise to ensure I can work on getting in better health. The other Canadian staff that we've met here have been really friendly and helpful in terms of helping us get food and groceries during our quarantine right away so that we have time to set up accounts and delivery services at the various grocery stores and Amazon UK. I'd still rather go to stores to get groceries, but it's nice to be able to get the deliveries for now to start stocking up on cleaning supplies and household items that we need, as well as food.

Hotel life - Week 10

This week, we haven't done a lot in terms of being tourists in our hometown. We've really run out of things to do, and besides, there are some loose ends to tie up and certain purchases to be made, so we're focusing on taking care of those things. A few days ago, we took my husband's oldest daughter to the Clifford E Lee Nature Sanctuary for the first time. She hadn't been any of the other times we had gone, and we were hoping the chickadees would be cooperative and eat from her hand, as the rest of us have already had this experience on more than one occasion. And it's a really special experience. Chickadees are such sweet little birds, and if you get some black oil sunflower seeds, which is the kind they can shell themselves, they will come and land on your hand and snatch a seed or two. I wish I could give each of them a hug. The feeling of their little feet on your hand is so delightful. Well, they must have known this might be my last visit as they came out in full force, it seemed! My husband's daughter got to experience so many landing on her hand and feeding from it, and she seemed to love it as much as the rest of us do. She now has her own car, so I'm sure she'll be back to visit and hopefully show us more photos of her feeding them to make us homesick while we're away. The photo here in the post is from my feeding them a few weeks back, the first chance I had to feed them this year since the park was closed for a while do to the pandemic, and the couple of times we were able to go this year, it was so crowded that the chickadees appeared to be frightened away by the noise and wouldn't come out to feed.

Meanwhile, the only other thing I can report on are mundane things. Those that have been following my travel blog for a while might remember that I'm interested by the mundane. For me, being in one place long enough to sit and observe, or turn to see what's behind me when everyone else is looking at the monument or tourist attraction, is sometimes more interesting because it shows you something important you might be missing, or it at least tells you a little bit about people or their context. Here in the west end of town, where we have been staying, there are a couple of things that my husband and I have observed. One is that I have seen hundreds of gulls in the parking lots in the area. One of these flocks is the one from which I was able to help rescue that gull with the broken wing a few weeks ago (by the way, the rehab place said they expect a full recovery and the ability for him to migrate with the rest of his pals this fall!). I wasn't sure why there were so many, but I came across an article in CTV News the other day that explained it--a person who has been feeding them! What's also interesting is that my husband and I had been wondering where they breed, and apparently they fly all the way to a lake southeast of the city and fly back in to the west end every day. I guess if you're a bird, it's not so far, but it seems like there would be closer lakes to the west end that they could choose, so I just thought it was interesting that they breed at one much farther away from where they hang out.

The second thing was noticing how many RVs and trailers are often parked in the Walmart parking lots or those around it that connect to that lot. Some of them, I think, are just passing through, but there are others where I've noticed them multiple times over the course of our time staying in the hotel, and I've come to believe that these are transient people who live in their RVs or campers. Some of the transient people around the area do not have vehicles. They appear to be homeless. We even called the city's line for social service help the other day when we saw a family sitting on some blankets with a shopping cart full of what appeared to be similar to what homeless people tend to collect in a cart. There was a toddler there, and the father appeared to be bottle-feeding a baby. We weren't sure what their situation was, but with kids involved, we didn't want to take any chances, so the City sent out some workers to do a wellness check on them to find out more information. There are people with clear mental illnesses who are homeless, conversing with and yelling at people that only exist in their minds. And some of the people who at least have a vehicle, still don't sound like they're doing all that well. We walked to the Tim Horton's near our hotel one morning only to hear loud yelling and fighting between a male and female in a trailer, the door wide open. The man sounded drunk. There was a lot of foul language. One vehicle is a truck with a camper that I've noticed several times throughout the summer, and I think that's where the couple lives that drive it, though they must at least have enough money somehow to pay for gas. Another vehicle I saw for the first time yesterday, a man in a wheelchair (a nice one clearly fitted to him!), with a dog in his truck, had a cardboard sign on the back of his truck saying that he was hungry and homeless, and he had a jerry can behind his truck with a similar sign. It was really strange.

In our hotel, there have been delivery staff from a nearby restaurant breaking into the hotel (you need a key to even get inside the lobby) and delivering flyers, not wearing masks or anything. They wait for someone to come in and slip in. They can use the stairs without a key to get to each floor, and they don't get caught because the lobby is closed, and you have to get all your services and check in through the lobby at the adjoining hotel at the moment. We complained to the front desk once about it before, and it seemed to stop for a couple of weeks, but then they came again, and we confronted them once again. We decided to get a photo of the license plate so we could again notify the front desk to help them catch these people, and it turned out the license plate even had expired registration! It's not that they're doing anything violent, but they are trespassing and potentially threatening the safety of people staying here--especially as both times we saw them, they weren't even wearing masks! In any case, the RV thing is interesting. As if the news knows I'm leaving soon, too, it has been putting these articles in my news feed to explain these things I've been noticing. Apparently RVing in Walmart parking lots is actually a thing--there are even dedicated websites for it!

So we are certainly excited that this is our last week here. I can't wait to be able to cook again and finally get some proper fresh meals. I think restaurant eating would have been more exciting if the pandemic hadn't happened as we would have had more options. Take-out steak just isn't the same, so we never bothered ordering it, for example. We couldn't risk illness in case it jeopardised our ability to travel or ability to get any prep done for our travel, so we just did takeout all the time. Of course, if the pandemic hadn't happened, we wouldn't have been living in a hotel for this long, either. But such is life, as my mom always says. While I may not be updating this blog weekly anymore, I will definitely do an update next week about the travel and how we're finding our first week of mandatory self-isolation.

Hotel life - Week 9

We're at the end of week 9. It seems insance that I have lived at a hotel for over 2 months now, when you think that there are just over 4 weeks in a month. The good news, which I have already shared before, is that our time is now coming to an end soon enough. Next weekend will be my last post for hotel life updates--and I might have to start with mandatory self-isolation updates from London after that to help me find things to do during that 2 week period after we arrive 😆

Meanwhile, we found out about somewhere else we could go for a short road trip outside a city. We've been running out of ideas since we want to try to find new places and don't have the ability to stay overnight anywhere else, so we can't really go to far. But a friend of mine posted some photos from Carvel the other day, which is a hamlet in Parkland County. It looked really lovely, and as it's close to Stony Plain, we figured we might stop in at the pioneer museum to look around. Unfortunately, it ended up being closed, but we did get to see Carvel itself. We stopped in at the General Store, which we thought might still be running as a more traditional general store, given the size of the hamlet--only about 7 households lives there. But It was mainly a place to sell locally made soaps, linens, old-fashioned candies, clothing like cotton nightgowns, and a variety of interesting creations like birdhouses made with old license plates from different provinces in Canada. There was even an old, moss-covered wooden bench for sale--for only $75! I wouldn't buy that--I grew up spending my summers at my grandparents' farm and know that old wood eventually rots--moss is growing on it because it's moist, and it isn't usable other than to just watch it disintegrate. So some of the stuff for sale there was weird, but most of it was really nice. My husband decided to try a shaving cream from there that I now love as of today after he tried it. It smells so good--like freshly cut firewood that got wet in the rain, just like the outdoors, but somehow is still sophisticated. And it's subtle--not the Axe body-spray smell we've come to associate with teenaged boys that don't know any better! 

Surrounding the general store are beautiful garden--not professional type ones, but the kind you would see in someone's yard. While there appears to be a private residence area of the store, and you can tell this is someone's garden with some raised beds for vegetables, you can walk around and look at the garden. There happened to be a cat relaxing in the shade behind the garden, and when I went to try to pet it, it didn't run away like I expected it to. It seems to love people--any people! It started purring right away and nudging my hands and licking--just like my own cat does to me but would never do to a stranger. It was a little bonus of our visit to the hamlet.

About an 8-minute drive away is an antique store called Useful Things. It's not quite in Carvel but pretty close, and the mailing address is there. It was quite a lovely store--not cluttered like someone with a hoarding problem storing junk and not all real antiques. It's on the farmyard in an old barn, on a lot near the owner's house. And when you walk in, they have a number of quality pieces, but it's really well laid out, and there aren't too many thinks, just a comfortable amount so that you can really see the things. There was a lot of nice furniture there--a dining table that was sturdy and solid wood--absolutely beautiful, and only $400! If only we weren't moving!

Anyway, I do recommend taking a trip out there sometime. We didn't end up getting to see the pioneer museum in Stony Plain because it's closed on the weekends, but it was still a worthwhile drive. I'm sure the museum will still be there when we move back.

Hotel life - Week 8

I am happy to say that these hotel updates are going to stop in the near future. Our immigration documentation finally got sorted out, and we received our passports back late last week. That meant we could book our travel! Outside of all the loose ends we need to tie up here, we can actually start feeling exciting about moving to the UK. I've started to feel like this experience has been so anti-climactic because it has taken so long. My husband's post was made official in mid-March, right before the country shut down with the pandemic, and we are finally going to be departing in a couple of weeks, so almost 6 months after knowing we would be moving! 

So I might not be updating my blog as often, especially as I won't be working right away, and our travel will be limited during the pandemic, but as I'll be at home, I might get bored and write about things I'm experiencing like culture shock.

Meanwhile, one of the things that created a bit of stress are the changes that the UK gov't recently imposed on pets travelling into the country. There were already limits on when they could arrive--they had to arrive on weekdays, but now they are also limiting how many pets can enter per day, per region, and possibly per flight. It was very concerning to find this out. As a result, we will need to place ours in a kennel for at least a week after we depart as all flights with space for pets are booked up until the middle of September. I appreciate neither the cost nor the fact that it will be stressful for all of us involved--they've never stayed in a kennel or travelled before, and I'll be worried about their wellbeing the whole time until they get to us. Had we been able to travel even 2 weeks ago, this wouldn't have been the case, but everything happens for a reason, so perhaps this is all for the best somehow.

We didn't really do much that was new or interesting last week in terms of being a tourist in our own city, but I did happen to get some beautiful photos of a pelican in a park we frequent. We were there during golden hour in the evening, and the pelican was preening itself. They have such beautiful faces, and my husband mentioned how their eyes look like the wise but serene eyes of elephants. So I'll leave you with a few photos of that.

  

Hotel life - Week 7

As of today, we finally heard that our immigration documents were approved. We don't have them in our hands yet, but at least we know they're done and on their way. It was supposed to be prioritised, but it doesn't seem like that happened. So we will be in Edmonton for approximately another 2.5-3 weeks as we won't be able to book our travel until we get those. But at least there's an end in sight!

This past week, I visited Lois Hole Provincial Park with my aunt, who had come in from Northern Alberta for a visit. And because she was here, my other aunt stopped by on her way home from an event she was at in Ponoka, so it was a nice visit. We were able to stay out in the open and physically distance ourselves, even with our dinner--we did takeout separately and found a nice, big picnic table where we could be out in the open and sit to visit and eat but also stay apart safely. It was wonderful to visit them before I move away for a while. You always hope family will come to visit you when you live overseas, but time and money often prevent those. No one except one friend from Europe visited me while I lived in Mexico for a couple of years. Many people wanted to come, but almost no one actually did, so you just never know. In any case, I didn't get any good photos from Lois Hole PP because there wasn't a whole lot going on, but I got a bunch from the U of A Botanic Garden, where we went a week later.

I've loved the U of A Botanic Garden for a long time. My brother had his wedding there, and as he doesn't live in Canada, I got to be the on-the-ground person organising it, which meant that I got to visit there as often as I liked for planning purposes. I don't think I actually abused that, but I did need to go there quite a bit, so I was not unhappy to take extra time to walk around and enjoy as I could get in for free--technically paid for by the cost of using it as a wedding venue, but I could make unlimited visits. It was wonderful. I should have mentioned, when I posted photos from the St. Albert Botanic Park that one of the reasons I love gardens so much is that I find them to be places of solace for me. There were certain family challenges growing up, and gardens were spaces of peace and solace for me. My grandmother had a gorgeous garden that was hidden behind a hedge of overgrown caragana and through a doorway that was a small, white-picket gate. There were lots of roses and delphiniums, particularly. That's mostly what I remember was because I was still young when it got razed accidentally when an arborist company came to tear down some trees that were very tall and in danger of destroying the house if they should every fall from being hit by lightning. And as I grew up, my mom's perennial garden grew and matured, and it also became a place of solace. So I can't wait for a home again where I can make my garden and build it and enjoy it as it matures when I'm back from England.

Hotel life - Week 6

The rose garden

This past week brought us to the St Albert Botanic Park. I had come across it in an article I read online, and I hadn't heard of it before, but the photos were beautiful, and it looked like somewhere I wanted to go. The gardens did not disappoint! My only regret was that I missed peony season, but it will be something to look forward to someday when I'm back in Edmonton. There was just so much to see there that I barely wanted to close my eyes, and the rose garden was lightly scented with the many roses. What I also love about this place is that it's totally volunteer-run, so entry is free. It's an unbelievable place to visit for free! 

I also wish I had known about this place when I got married. We found a decent place with some trees near our venue, but the botanic park here is actually relatively close to our venue and would have been much more suitable for wedding photos--but you can't know everything! I took a lot of photos, but I've only included a few here. Make sure you click on them so you can see them larger rather than the thumbnails I've included here.

    

Hotel life - Week 5

I seem to manage to find adventure no matter what I do. In terms of discovering new places during the past week, I visited Paul Kane Park. It's a little park in Edmonton. It's named after a well-known Canadian painter who was in part known as one of the earliest people to document the lives of First Nations peoples before colonisation had taken place. I didn't really know much about him other than having just heard of his name before.  

In any case, as he was a landscape artist, this park was designed as an art park to pay homage to his landscapes and has a man-made pond and water feature that trickles water down into a very shallow stream that runs into the pond. The stream has benches on either side of it, and at some points it's close enough where you can take your shoes off and just let the water run over your feet. As we went on a super hot day, this was a refreshing activity, and it also reminded me of Heritage Days when I was little, and my parents would also stop at this little creek that would trickle water into the man-made pond at Hawrelak park. We would take our shoes off and cool our feet in the water after walking around for hours in the heat. The stream sometimes is dry now, but when it's not, it always seems to be muddy there, and the rocks covered in that slimy green plant, so it's not a good place for that anymore. I know with Paul Kane Park, I won't have to worry about that happening, and it's definitely a place I want to return to!

The beginning of the stream

 In other news, I ended up rescuing another animal--in this case, a German shepherd puppy! We noticed this puppy in a red and white t-shirt on the street corner, trying to chew on a straw from someone's discarded Slurpee container, and I wanted to get the straw out of its mouth as it seemed very dangerous--not to mention the fact that the puppy also was just out with no apparent owner in sight. So I looked for a tag on his collar, and luckily it had one of those kind with his name and a phone number. It took me a while to get the phone number because, being a puppy, he was super silly and playful and kept jumping around and play biting, and I was trying not to allow his teeth to sink in too much. Anyway, I was able to finally get the number, and the person I spoke with seemed really surprised that I was calling about his dog. Within seconds, a girl of about 12 or so appeared from the house right next to where the puppy was! It seems that their gate somehow got open, and out went the puppy to explore the big world outside! I was really glad I was able to help out, especially a dog of that breed being very susceptible to theft, and if he'd been any bigger, it might have been too dangerous to approach him, and he would have been take by the City. The owners would have paid a hefty fine to get him back since he is unlicensed! So apparently animal rescue is my new thing... hahaha