Goodbye Bayswater, Hello Marble Arch!

Well, I'm typing to you on my last evening as a resident of Bayswater. I'm surrounded by The (empty) Suitcases and tomorrow afternoon, with the help of a very kind and car-owning friend, I will migrate myself and my few belongings eastward to a cooler post code.

The Suitcases are empty because my aforementioned friend is bringing not only her car, but also her vacuum, so I can shrink my space bags back down and get at least some of them in The Suitcases. Of course, I have a few more possessions than I did when I first arrived here on that sunny day back in August, so I have little faith we'll get everything crammed in.

But mercifully and very-unLondonish, we will have free and very close parking in both locations, so it should be a quick move. The whole furnished flat thing is very weird, I don't even really feel like I'm moving. But I am!

I'm very excited about the new flat, but even after 6 months, I've learned a few new Britishisms these past few weeks, the hard way...and all to do with the "king" bed that my new flat has.

My bed set is for a double and I was ever so excited to have an excuse to decorate and so, of course, as soon as the flat was definitely mine, I immediately began an uber-detailed search for the Perfect Bed Set. It soon went beyond decorating and I began compiling a Dream Bed, complete with a Siberian goose down duvet (Siberian being the best, my research had told me), memory foam mattress topper and pillows, etc. I finally found a perfectly cute duvet cover (pink, of course) and coordinating sheets and, with my move-in day fast approaching, quickly ordered those and a suitable topper.

Overall, the Brits look at their bedding far differently than we Americans do. It's all very utilitarian here...decorative aspects are nearly an afterthought. So, I ended up buying my sheets from a US ebayer who was willing to ship them to me, because it seems that British stores only sell coloured sheets that are low quality. If you want really nice ones, which my Dream Bed requires, you have to go with white...or pastels if you look really hard. But if you want burgundy sheets, tough. I wanted to coordinate with the burgundy trim on the duvet and being me, I was determined.

But, Britishism #2 made my US sheet purchase a very good thing. After purchasing these three items, I learned that I don't have a king bed, I have a super king. A UK king is a US queen. A US king, which is two twin beds put together, is a super king here.

So, my sheets will fit...the nonreturnable topper and the perfect duvet that does not come in super king size, not so much. Thankfully, I got too busy and too lazy to order anything else in the wrong size.

Which moves us to Britishism #3: though they're both here in London, at courier warehouses, neither of these items are in my possession yet, nor do I know when they will be. Because here in Britain, things are delivered by couriers who require you to sign for your packages and they deliver "sometime between 9am and 5pm on weekdays." And since I was having everything delivered to my new flat and I have, you know, a job, I won't be there. Oops. It seems they won't just leave it in front of my flat door, in my secure building that has just a handful of flats.

So for now, I'll be making do with my too small and not Dream Bed worthy double set, draped over my ginormous new bed. Sometimes the cultural differences are just peculiar.

Work is a bit of a nightmare, but very last minute news yesterday hopefully means that there will be far less work drama in my life, which I would really love. Time will tell.

Other than that, in my long blogging hiatus, not much has been going on...just living my life of heaven here in London. My job may make me crazy most of the time, I may never compile my Dream Bed and I may never stop getting lost everywhere I go, but after six months and 6 days, I have a group of really cool friends and I love this city even more than I did the day I got here...and it seems that nothing will change that!

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have weekend trips to France and Italy to plan and a glass of red wine to sip ;)