Apartment Photos

No random photo today...this post will already have enough photos as it is.

First of all, sorry for the hiatus (I know you all had trouble going on with your daily lives without hearing the mundane details of ours). We've been to Canterbury and the Kent Beer Festival, the Lake District, and to Crouch End so Danny could play in a cricket match (!), so we've had no time to blog. But never fear, you'll be hearing about these various adventures shortly in a flurry of postings!

In the meantime, welcome to a tour of our apartment! First, the view from the street. As our landlady pointed out from the start, our building has the distinction of being mostly un-attached from other houses, which is uncommon in our neighborhood. We live in the basement apartment, or "garden" apartment, if you prefer, which misleadingly suggests that we have some sort of green space connected with our apartment. Our door is down to the left, where Danny is standing, and past him is the outer gate. Inside this gate is our front door, with its fun collection of knockers and bizarre placement of doorknob. The front door lock automatically, and it has become my greatest fear that I will walk out the front door and close it behind me, then realize I don't have my keys, and I will be locked between the outer gate in our front door (like when Henry traveled back in time and got stuck in the cage in the basement of the library and everyone who worked there discovered his secret. You know what I'm talking about.).

Anyway, assuming you do have a set of keys, you can then enter the "foyer". There is a hallway down to the left which is home to our coat/linen closet, and the bathroom is at the end of the hallway (which did not make the cut of interesting pictures). Straight ahead when you first walk in is the living room, which is actually very large, and has a great bay window. Thanks to this window the apartment is surprisingly well-lit for a basement, especially during these long, English summer days. As you can see, the furniture is a little retro, and the wall could use some artwork, but it's a good living space.

Around to the right and off the living room is the kitchen, which has a surprisingly large oven and refrigerator for a London apartment. In this photo you can see one of our new knives, which is a super-light, red-painted (what else?) high-carbon stainless steel Swiss chef's knife. It's pretty awesome, and apparently will cut through my thumbnail like butter.

To the left off the living room is the bedroom (a total plus, as we expected to have to live in a studio). I'm taking this picture lying on the bed (you can tell it's me by the fun socks), looking at the rest of room (behind me is just the bed). The room, conveniently, is about 6 inches wider than a queen-sized bed. But it has a sink, which is kind of fun and exciting. When the bedroom was first described to me I was told it had a "wardrobe" for our clothes, and I was expecting a big, old-fashioned wooden wardrobe, preferably with a portal to a fantastical, Christian allegory world in the back, but no such luck.


Well, that's the tour. Very good sized, especially for London, and decently furnished. All it lacks are some fluffy orange kitties lounging on the couch (which doubles as a trundle bed, hint hint, potential visitors!). But we hear they are doing very well in the capable hand of Sam and Katie, which is great. And by "doing well" of course I mean "draping themselves over every chair and desk in the apartment".