Our Little Corner of London

We've been in London for about four months, and in our flat for three. We are just about completely settled (I'm wondering when I'll feel confident enough to say we're truly completely settled). So I thought it was time for a peek at our London digs . . .


Upon arrival in our neck of the woods this is what you're most likely to see, the sign on the platform at the St. John's Wood tube station


Then you'd step onto this street


After ringing up to our flat to have us buzz you in, you'd reach our door a couple of levels up


You are greeted by the entrance hallway with the kitchen, guest bedroom with bath and laundry room down the hallway off to the right, a guest WC right next to stroller parking straight ahead, three bedrooms and two baths behind the door straight ahead, and two reception rooms off to the left. Got all that?


Hallway off to the right of entrance hallway leading to kitchen, guest bed and bath and laundry room. As you can tell closests do not abound here, so thus the loaded coat rack.


This laundry room may not look like much, but it's a rarity in a London flat, so is the dryer. Most flats here only have one combo unit and it's located under the counter somewhere in the kitchen. Our machines may be small, but we're so glad to have them!


The guest room doubles as a project area for the kids until guests arrive.


The kitchen as you first enter


The view onto Madeleine's school from our kitchen window (can you see the school security guard?)


Kitchen


Kitchen


The guest WC back in the entrance hallway that we affectionately call the airplane lavatory


Bathroom with small shower in the main sleeping quarters


This bathroom is oddly right next door to the bathroom shown above. It has a tub and separate shower (wedged behind the door), but we really wish they would have knocked down the wall and traded the two narrow bathrooms for one large one!


Trev's room


Dallin and Madeleine's room


We gave Dallin and Madeleine what is supposed to be the master (although aside from the guest room, none of the bedrooms have en suite bathrooms) so they would have more room to play


The "master" bedroom


First of the two rooms in our flat's double reception (living rooms are called reception rooms in the UK)


Despite the fact that London is rather gloomy we do get decent natural light in part because of these large windows (although the exposure in these shots renders things a bit brighter than normal!)


The second of the two rooms in our flat's double reception, our dining room


Chaise lounge a la Ikea in the dining room


Dining room


A view of the entirity of the double reception

And that concludes our tour! Oh, Happy Thanksgiving! Today is Thanksgiving, right?

Fairy Dust

This morning we woke up to snow. It didn't last long and it didn't stick well, and soon after I snapped these shots as evidence fairy tears had washed it all away.

Sun Was Here

Proof that the sun made a London appearance! The beautiful blazing red (unphotoshopped) sky tonight as the sun set over the buildings west from my kitchen window.

Legoland Windsor

Our trip to Legoland was actually a month or so ago. With one kid who's been coping with pneumonia, and two others who are hopefully only battling colds, things have been a little challenging around here. Thus I'm woefully behind on all sorts of things, including blogging. At any rate, Legoland here in the UK is about 45 minutes from central London in the shadow of the queen's castle in the charming town of Windsor. Legoland Windsor is pretty much no different from its San Diego counterpart, save for the castle backdrop. I'm convinced that the British are seeking to die a greasy death. For a nation who struggles in the gastronomy department, it's no shock that theme park food would barely be edible. The stale tasting, greasy fish and chips was no surprise. But what really caught my attention were the sausages. Bangers and mash, sausage and mashed potatoes that is, is a big dish here. I'm not a big sausage person, but I can on occasion appreciate a particularly good one. What I cannot fathom is why one would want to consume one battered and deep fried, but if this sounds good to you head over to Legoland Windsor!










A scene of Paris


I could resist this one, a scene of Abba performing in Sweden

Werewolves in London

To say that the spookiest day of the year isn't as celebrated in the UK as it is in the US would be a vast understatement. This was no more clearly evidenced than when our building's porter indicated to us that trick-or-treating was simply not permitted in our building. Bah, humbug! Killjoys aside, we quite enjoyed our first London Halloween. In fact something about this city flows naturally into the perfect backdrop for this holiday. Gratefully we happen to live in a special pocket of London, sort of an American microcosm, which does its best to embrace this day of ghosts and goblins. We quickly learned this corner of town is no secret as droves of taxis deposited eager trick-or-treaters like cruise ships unloading passengers into port (and I'm not kidding, one house we know reported over 800 sweet-seekers). Because we had joined up with London veterans for our trick-or-treating outing we knew to hit the sugar route early. We began at 4:30, which was clearly none too early, as we were finishing up our candy quest just as the streets were becoming too crowded to navigate and our fingers were becoming ice-lollies. We didn't make it to Kate Moss's house or to Ewan McGregor's, or the many other notables who live in our area, but we did see a whole lot of unbelievable, star-worthy London homes on our treat tour. To finish off the festivities our group gathered at our place to survey the loot and to, of course, enjoy a Monroe-family Halloween tradition, pizza! Dallin, Madeleine and Trevon dressed up as a Harry Potter-themed trio, Harry, Hermione and Hedwig. Hedwig was happy so long as a lollipop was hanging out of his beak. He and I joined some friends at a toddler party earlier in the day, where the day's sucker drool marathon began. Later in the day Madeleine had fun marching in a Halloween parade at her school as a princess before she became Hermione for the evening.


Ghost Bowling


Spider suckers!


Sucker #2


The Princess at her school Halloween parade (check out the lion digging for gold)


Trick-or-Treaters


Harry and his red-haired friend


Madeleine and Madeleine (seriously, and their moms both chose the same tricky spelling for the same reason, and they were born the same year within a couple of months of each other, and they both go to the same school, and they're both in the same primary class)


Harry and Hermione


Hedwig (sucker #3) and his falconer










Checking out the stash