London Calling

Funky ride
Originally uploaded by Nyx.

So in an effort to get away from my partner for a few days, blow some cash and hang out with a girlfriend (all for the sake of boy-girl diplomatic relations...what with this heat and both of us now loitering round the apartment *teeth grinding*), I decided to take a quick jaunt over the channel and spend the weekend in London.

Ahhh, London. Where people apologise for the mere possibility that they might have almost got in your way, where drivers stop to let you cross the road even if you don't have right of way...Makes a nice change from getting perpetually whacked in the solar plexus by enormous briefcases carried by completely oblivious businessmen, and run down on pedestrian crossings when the walking man is green.

(This could be a gripey post, someone downstairs is renovating an apartment, and I've had a constant whack whack whack whack background noise all day)

London was great though, we had brilliant weather (the start of the latest heatwave), got a sunburn, burnt a hole in my wallet, visited the markets, went to Kew gardens, watched BBC, went 'how much?!' a lot, spoke nothing but english for 2 and a bit days. Lovely.

Got back, happily exhausted, only to find Ben had locked us out of the apartment (we only have one 'uncopiable' key, and the inevitable 'locking it in the apartment' finally occurred). Ideally I'd have preferred this didn't have to happen after I'd spent 8 hours on a bus though...(post travel serotonin wearing off as need for shower and bathroom facilities becomes more and more pressing).

So after a call to a locksmith, an industrial strength grinder, an annoying downstairs neighbour looking up at us through her door, window, window, door, clutching her child like WWIII was about to start (call it revenge for the number of times the little person has woken us up at 3am), a conversation with the across the hall neighbour whose boyfriend wanted to scale the wall over to our open kitchen window (ie kill himself), and about 2 hours, we finally got inside. Luckily we were able to do the standard 'the burglars tried to get in' declaration and claim it on insurance, because I don't want to scare non francophile readers into knowing how much that sort of business costs. But it's at least as much as a plane ticket to the other side of the world (always a viable plan B if you couldn't face the cost I guess).

The only other major news is that there isn't any. We're still in major indecisiveness territory about where we're going and what we're doing. Toulouse is still an idea, but so are a few other locations - including Bens hometown of Lille (which I also quite like, though the weather isn't exactly south of France). In the end, I probably will refrain from discussing anything more on the subject until we have made a firm decision.