House Locating

We found and settled on a house. I went with the relocation agent on Thursday and looked at 11 houses (it should have been 12, but one rented before I could see it). WOW! I was absolutely spent by the end of the day, but had narrowed it down to three. Interestingly, I ended up with three different neighborhoods, three different price points and three different sizes. Maddie and Skip and I looked at all three and ended up deciding on the smallest one because of its downstairs layout of a kitchen that opens into a living space that opens into a garden with actual grass. This house is actually going to be smaller than our German house, but Skip won't be working out of it and it just has a nice feel to it. We think we're going to really like it.

After two days of house hunting, we had a really fun day for my birthday. We met up with Mikki from Dusseldorf and her husband and their son, Masaya, who was in Maddie's class last year at ISD. They moved to London a month ago and are living not too far away from where we are.

Then Skip's co-worker and wife have a little girl who is the same age as Maddie and will be going to the same school next year. They kept Maddie for us while Skip and I headed to the National Portrait Gallery (yes, there are so many museums here that there is one that just houses portraits of people) for the special exhibit of photography from Vanity Fair. It was amazing to see how many iconic images of famous people we have in our heads first appeared in the pages of Vanity Fair (there was the picture of Nancy and Ronald Reagan dancing and the infamous Demi Moore pregnancy pose to name a couple). Then we went to Harrod's Department Store (the largest one in the world) and had dim sum in their famed Food Hall.

Skip got me this great leather purse and a new pair of sunglasses. I've never had a purse this nice or a pair of sunglasses that costs over 10 bucks, so I'm feeling pretty high brow right now. Fancy purse, exploring the big city, cool sunglasses. Living the dream.

London is certainly not as clean nor are things as in good working order as they are in Germany. After living in Germany, you just have to accept that everywhere else is going to look at least slightly shabby. But there is so much to do and the people watching simply can't be beat. I have already had the best time riding the Tube (the subway) here. In Germany on the train, everyone pretty much has the same body language, the same expression and there's even a fairly standard mode of dress. Here, all bets are off.

We head back to Duesseldorf today with a long to-do list for the next month-and-a-half.