It was a fairly uneventful flight and drive (car service- yay!) to our apartment.  Fortunately Dave was waiting for me outside since I (or the driver apparently) would have never found the apartment from the address.  The address was the actual apartment number in the building (the building was something like 14-50 Wharf Road) and not the building number itself.

Dave let me take a shower before running off to the market in town and other errands such as the library.  By the time we got back, I was ready for dinner since lunch didn’t really happen.  We quickly learned that nothing is open for dinner until at least 5:30.  We didn’t quite end up at the curry house Dave wanted but it was still fantastic.

16 December 2007

I was slowly recovering from the jet lag but that was okay since there isn’t much open on Sunday.  We did go to the Tesco Home store to pick up a few things.  No tree like we were planning on.  So we ventured out to the nearest Costco just to look around.  It was the first time we were able to use our new GPS unit, which is the best thing we have ever bought.  I can’t even imagine trying to negotiate roundabout directions from something off the internet.

Costco is set up just like the ones here but with different products.  We picked up slippers for me, an unsmoked gammon joint (a type of ham) for Christmas dinner, and a few other odds and ends.  We ate lunch at Costco because you can’t pass up a cheap cottage pie and chicken bake.  The next stop was B&Q, a Home Depot like store, where we purchased a live potted 3 foot tree for £5 ($10).  Dinner was just eating in that night.

17 December 2007

Dave went to work while I just slept in.  Sleeping in involved getting up pretty late and taking a bath.  All in all, I ended up doing a whole lot of nothing until Dave got home from work.  Since he was taking Friday off (the traditional half day), he left a little earlier to compensate for the time adjustment for the half day.

The first errand was the bank.  I think we spent forever at the bank trying to get me added to his account so I could have my own debit card.  It did pretty much take up the rest of the afternoon.  Dinner that night was our leftover Indian food and some prepared curry sauces we bought at Tesco.

18 December 2007

Today was another shopping day for me to pick up odds and ends for the apartment.  As people have noted, the apartment is kind of sparse.  All this time, I’ve always thought the clutter issue we have sometimes was more on Dave’s end then on mine. After this trip, I’m not so sure!  But there were things that were needed to make things easier in the kitchen and to organize stuff around the apartment.  (Just so everyone doesn’t think that I’m being unnecessarily mean about Dave’s clutter tendencies, I invite you to look at his closet in the US because you can’t even tell he is gone.   That is how much stuff is in there.  And that’s with twice the storage space I have and some things that hang in my closet too).

I also picked up my own library card to make life easier.  Today also involved doing more laundry again.  I should have taken a picture of the machine so you can see how small it is.  You can fit half the normal load in there and it doubles as a purported dryer.  50 minutes of drying gets everything down to semi damp.  I experimented with the settings but never got it work better than that.  I probably could have brought half the clothes I brought with me since everything was continually being cleaned (I didn’t even bring that much to begin with).  In the end, all the clothes end up on the drying rack.  That can be challenging because they need about 24 hours there before drying and if you have multiple loads, it gets bad.

Dave was home a bit later that night but it didn’t matter since we were staying in to pack for our trip and decorate the tree.