My week+ in England at a glance - part 1

So what the heck did I actually do while I was in the UK. Here's a quick day by day summary.

Arrive Saturday on an overnight flight from Philly to Manchester. DH was waiting for me at the airport and by 10am we were on our way to Harrogate in a rental Vauxhall Astra. My navigational expertise combined with my lack of experience on English roads took us on some slow, plodding, small road through Bradford rather than sticking to the highway. A mistake that was not repeated again. We stopped at our new English home before heading off to the B&B DH has booked us in for two nights until our stuff arrived. We walked into town for my introduction to Harrogate, had Thai food, and retreated back to the hotel early for some much needed R&R.

Sunday, after enjoying an interesting breakfast at our B&B, we took a drive into the countryside. We also spent some time at the house mapping out what furniture was going to be moved into which rooms in preparation for the movers' arrival the next morning.

Monday was moving day, and the movers were there bright and early Monday morning! That took the vast majority of the day - the two small moving dudes that were there had to deal with three floors of living space, and my constant inability to remember that in the UK, the first floor is called the ground floor, the second floor is the first floor, etc. The queen size box spring we sent didn't fit up the stairs, and neither did our Pottery Barn couch. The movers hoisted the couch through a second floor window that had a french door (I took a movie of this process, which was impressive!), but unfortunately after they left, DH and I worked together and disassembled the box spring so that it could be shoved up the stairs. Good thing we did too, since the bed frame I sent, which I thought was a full/queen frame, was in fact a twin/full frame, and so the bed is currently resting on the floor. I unpacked all our dishes and miscellaneous items while DH went out for Chinese take-out. It was a long, long day.

Tuesday was Ikea Day! We got to the Ikea in Leeds around 10am, searching for a small kitchen table and chairs, a wardrobe (there were NO proper closets in the house), and a desk, among other things. We made one pass through the store, and we had measured the backseat to ensure we could fit our purchases in the car. We had no problem with the desk and kitchen table, but realized that the wardrobe we wanted posed a serious challenge, and the chairs we wanted weren't in stock. After buying one set of things and remeasuring the car with a little different seat configuration, we went back into the Ikea, enjoyed a Swedish meatball lunch (soooo yummy) and bought the wardrobe, some other chairs, and an ironing board from the clearance section (yeah!). To make a long story short, we somehow managed to fit it all in the car (although DH noted that it was seriously unbalanced) and get home in one piece. We spent the remainder of the day assembling the wardrobe and kitchen table and chairs, and then collapsed again into bed.

Wednesday was electronics day! We visited the base commissary and base exchange for our initial purchases - including a hair dryer, which I had been without for 3 days! we bought some groceries, a toaster oven, iron, and the hair dryer, but not a vacuum or TV. We took all our first purchases home, where I discovered that I'd bought an American hair dryer! POOOP! That was going to have to go back. We then went out and visited the UK equivalent of Best Buy - Currys - to look at TVs, hairdryers, and vacuums. I found a hair dryer (yeah!) and a vacuum I liked, but unfortunately they were out of stock. More importantly (certainly from DH's point of view) I accepted that he was right and there were no TVs available that were not extremely expensive 26+ inch flatscreens. (there were little 13 inch TVs, but they were still flatscreen and ridiculously expensive as well). We stopped by Sainsbury's on the suggestion of the B&B owner and, lo and behold, found my vacuum! Hooray. We went back to the house and I vacuumed the loving heck out of our couch, which was covered in enough cat hair to build another cat! We built the desk from Ikea, and collapsed into bed.

TBC