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.

Last quarantine post

Unless I have to travel somewhere with quarantine requirements or go on vacation somewhere that the UK requires quarantine upon return, this should be my last quarantine post ever. Other than not being able to go for walks or exercise when it's nice out, the period hasn't been too much of a hardship. I think the toughest day was the one before we got our first grocery delivery that we ordered ourselves because I hadn't realised that delivery slots are not quick and that you usually have to book them at least 4-5 days in advance, which means planning for what you think you'll need even if you already have it in the house. So we didn't get groceries until a week after we arrived (a Canadian couple in our building did our first order for us so it would arrive when we got here), and I had started to ration milk and cream and a couple of other basics as a result. But outside of that, we have a really great place with balconies to at least get fresh air, and some of the other government people who have moved here don't have that, so their quarantines were perhaps more difficult than ours were. Having said that, we are also grateful that that period is almost over. As of Tuesday, we'll be able to go out and about--into a Covid-filled environment where numbers are skyrocketing again and where the country is rumoured to possibly have to have a second shutdown. My main concern is groceries because I read in the news that people are starting to panic-shop again, and we are still in the midst of building up our staples in the house again, so I'm hoping this is short-lived. I mean, didn't people learn last time that there was no need to hoard?

Meanwhile, a couple of interesting experiences since last writing. Today we saw what's called a "flypast," where some WWII era planes flew in formation over London. The RAF marks the anniversary of the Battle of Britain each year with this event, and we were able to watch WWII Spitfires fly overhead for a few minutes, monitored by the ever-present Met police helicopter (there is probably one in the sky every day or every other day on average). it was pretty neat to see those planes as they can still fly and still look quite impressive.

Imagine there being hundreds in the air to fight off the Germans. Right now, the 4 planes we saw were impressive, but if you had lived during that time, the hundreds of planes in the air probably would have been terrifying. Anyway, today was the 80th anniversary of that battle, and as they do this every year, I guess we will see this in the coming years that we are here as well. It's something to look forward to, especially so that I'm more camera ready than I was this time, although I still got some half-decent shots.

Later, my husband was watching a show on TV, and I couldn't understand why the background music sounded like stereotypical music that Hare Krishnas tend to make because it didn't really match with what the scene was in the show. I mentioned it to my husband, who decided to look outside for the source, and he said it was coming from a Viking boat! He called me over to look. When I saw who was on the boat, I discovered that it was indeed a group of Hare Krishnas boating down the river, playing music as they went along! I had to look this up, and sure enough, this is actually a thing. They're called Harinama boat trips, and they seem to do these all the time, playing kirtans (a type of musical storytelling) on these boats. I couldn't get a great photo with my phone, which was the handiest thing to use at the time, but it gives you an idea. There's no lack of interesting things in this city! 

New experiences

One of the things I enjoy most about travelling is having new experiences. Of course, I'm technically not travelling to the UK as I am living here for a few years, but whether travelling to or living in a new country, you can be guaranteed to have experiences you couldn't have at home. That includes exploring new flavours. Some flavours I'm not interested in exploring are blood sausages, nor cow tongue "luncheon" meat, which is what we call lunch or deli meat. But other flavours I'm game to try. Yogurt tends to be a product that has varied flavours in different countries. In Mexico, I really enjoyed coconut and pineapple coconut yogurts because the ingredients seemed to fresh, and you'd get satisfying shreds of coconut and chunks of pineapple in your mouth. In Indonesia, I tried aloe yogurt, which I found boring. You could barely taste the flavour at all, which made me wonder why it was even used. Perhaps because aloe has certain nutritional value, that was the main attraction. Here, it was rhubarb yogurt. I love rhubarb, and having moved in with my husband last year, I didn't have a garden to harvest rhubarb from. I really enjoyed the yogurt! It was not tart and actually very mildly sweet. It was quite enjoyable, and a flavour that I anticipate getting time and time again!

Another experience was discovering the tides of the Thames. It wasn't until I few days after we had been here that I realised that the little beaches on the side of the river were covered up with water. I searched Google to find out that the river has these tide tables. London is inland enough that I would never have expected it to have tides, but apparently it does. And my husband researched more on tides and found that pretty much all water has tides, but that depending on the type of body of water it is, the tide might be so slight as to be imperceptible. The tides don't really affect me that much, personally, but I realised that certain boats would need to know this information to know if they could clear their cargo under a bridge, as many bridges here aren't that high to begin with. In addition, it really affects how work is done around the river. As you might have seen in the photo from my last post, we do have some bridge construction happening outside our place right now. On Tuesday morning, I noticed that the tide was really low, and as a result, the construction crew were able to place digging machines on the ground (using cranes to lift them), and they could dig into the soil to lay down whatever it is they're laying down there. I can't see what they're doing with the rods and posts they're sending down from my window because there walls and platforms in the way, but evidently it's something they can only do for certain times of the day. It teaches me about how construction on the water can be done, and if you know me, I love learning new things!

What other new things have we discovered in the week we've been here? Bacon has to be bought with the label "streaked" to get any amount of fat on it. Ours stuck to a good quality non-stick pan because we assumed the bacon would cook in its own fat--and it was really thin as well, just slightly thicker than prosciutto. We had another grocery delivery yesterday, and 2/2 times, our cream has leaked. It comes in containers like we get individual yogurts at home, a plastic cup with a foil lid that you peel off. The cream containers are larger, but the tops work the same, and they easily get punctured and broken when bagged with other groceries. It's something we'll be careful of when we are finally able to go out and get our own groceries at the store.

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.