Our next stop - London

Hmm, 4 am wake up and into the taxi by 5 am! After a very wild drive around the back streets of New York, picking up many hapless early risers, we arrived at JFK at 7 am in time to check in for our flight which departed at 8.55 am! Again the security staff were thorough but friendly - an unusual combination at international airports. We were one of 16 jets queued for take off so despite taxiing out 10 minutes early we lost the advantage by having to queue! BA not as good as Cathay but the food was fine. Had all sorts of plans to watch lots of movies but slept for three hours instead! Arrived a little early with the help of a 220km/hr tail wind towards the end of the journey! On approach to London Heathrow we had to circle waiting for a spot to land.

Safely survived the taxi ride to Kensington, much calmer than the ride to JFK thank goodness. Our home for the next 10 weeks is awesome. Just as we'd hoped. Such a great location to London and with every convenience including a dishwasher. With four levels we discovered early to remember what needed to be downstairs and what needed to be upstairs! The bus stop is right outside and two tube stations a short walk on either side.

Sunday we thought a trip to Notting Hill for the market might be a good idea. We weren't sorry.

An interesting clothing shop with an amazing collection of hundreds of treadle sewing machines

After a heavy session of retail therapy at Tescos to stock up the pantry, we were amazed at the reasonable prices of goods. Two stand outs were bananas and tomatoes. 99p and one pound 40p respectively. As for meat, Tescos had a deal 'buy any three for 10 pounds'. We selected bacon, pork fillets and chicken fillets. For the equivalent of $A16 we took home eight pieces of pork fillets, four chicken fillets and at least 16 slices of bacon. The meat was beautiful.

The next thing to organise was communications! With my iPhone and MacBookPro bereft of internet access and Laurie's iPad in the same boat we felt rather isolated! O2 seemed to offer the best deals with 100 minutes of international calls and 500 mb of internet access for 15 pounds keeping me quiet. The little USB modem we borrowed was another win with 2gb of download for 15 pounds also. A five pound micro sim giving 1 gb of access for Laurie's iPad meant we were set to go with keeping in touch with everyone far, near and dear.