Tech issues Part-1 (Infrastructure)

Everyone is aware of the most obvious tech issue with living in England: driving on the left side of the road. Since we're walking and without a car, this shouldn't be an issue for us. Another fairly obvious one is the 240 volt power plugs. The 3-prong power adapters are cheap and easy solution for many electronic devices - however a more complicated solution (power transformer) is required if the device you brought from USA is not capable of 240 VAC. It's important to carefully read the labels on every device you bring to the UK to verify it can operate at this higher voltage. 

Appliance Power Label

US Plug Adapters

 There are some less obvious ones that may take an equally long time to get used to. One of these is relearning how to use light switches when "down" means ON and "up' means OFF.  Of course making the mistake of pushing it the wrong way is not nearly as tragic as forgetting which side of the road to drive on. Still, it seems kind of crazy doesn't it?  

English Light Switches

Another difference in home design and infrastructure is the hot water heaters. Nearly every home/apartment we've seen has this kitchen appliance attached to the wall that is about the size of a dorm-fridge. These are the on-demand water heaters. Yes, on-demand systems are starting to gain popularity in the USA, but they are quite a different set-up. These "boilers" have been around a long time as a kitchen fixture.  The same boilers are used to heat the home as the hot water taps. 

Kitchen Water Heater Appliance

There are several reasons they might be difficult to get used to. For one they often don't heat the water quite as hot as typical american storage type water heaters. In many cases home showers are fitted with a supplemental heater right inside the shower that can give a boost to the temperature making it more suitable for showering. Another reason they are a bit difficult to get used to is that there is quite a bit of hysteresis in the thermostats, meaning that the output temperature goes up and down by as much as 10-15° F. So when you're taking a shower without a supplemental heater, the water temperature might go from chilly to very hot every minute or so as the heater cycles the thermostat on and off. 

Supplemental Shower Heater

It might seem odd that while standing in the shower with the water spraying, you can reach up and adjust the heat setting on an electric water heater right inside the shower.  At the same time, for safety reasons English bathrooms usually don't have any plugs, outlets or even a light switch (you can only turn on bathroom lights by pulling on a cord).  Here's an image of what's inside these little shower heaters - does this seem safe inside a shower?

Inside the supplemental shower heater. 

- David

Quarantine Activities, Day 2

 So the travel is over and now the real fun begins, 14 day quarantine! This is a time of self reflection, wondering if we did the correct thing traveling during a pandemic, a time to make sure we didn't catch anything, and a time of boredom. David and I are people who like projects and a full day so this will be an interesting time for us.

 We are in a rental that we carefully thought through before coming. We knew that we needed a place that had room to move around, a kitchen to cook, laundry facilities and most important, an outside space! So far we seem to like our choice. Here is what we hope our day will look like. First, we wake up and look at what news came on our phones and tablets over night, we then proceed to the part where we complain about the world situation and talk out loud, maybe we hope someone is listening, on how we think all these problems could be fixed or resolved. So far no one has heard us. After this important step, we move on to talk about what food we can eat during the day and at what time. We have decided to try and only have two meals a day since our stomachs are still in another time zone and we have limited food supplies. Then, we do some stretches and resistance training and a few laps around the house and up the stairs. With the exercise out of the way we can move on to brunch. 

Today we decided to try our hand at an English breakfast, since we ordered the supplies for this breakfast from the owner of the rental ahead of time. We know that it should include sausage, bacon (that doesn't look like bacon), eggs (soft fried), some kind of cooked tomato, beans (luckily we didn't have the beans), toast, and we were also given mushrooms. Here is what we ended up cooking. We decided to save the so called bacon for another morning and only cooked the sausage. We had left over chips, or fries, from our first night of fish and chips, which we cut up an made hashbrowns. I heated up the tomato halves in melted butter, soft fried some eggs and made toast. The mushrooms will be saved for something else. All in all it came out pretty good.

Now for the rest of the day? Yes, I meant to put a question mark at the end of that sentence because it is only noon and what do we do with the rest of the day. We can sit by our window with our computers and write blogs, learn French, try and get our phones working, read books, talk to the grandkids, call our family, once they wake up, and just stare at the outside window and wish we could go for a walk Once I have completed all those important activities, I will probably read a good book, take a nap, fix more food, watch a bit of t.v. and dream about the time when we get to actually hold our grandkids and hug Kenny and Kim.  

- Becky

More Travel Updates

Travelers today must realize they will encounter facial recognition technology. Some of it is designed to be covert, some is more overt. 

At Seattle airport we weren't aware of any such technology or specific opportunity to do a "capture". Yes, they do use it overtly in certain locations including the security check point, but it was just not in use today. 

However, at LAX we did encounter it even though we were already at the gate and already within the secure area. Strangely the LA Police had setup a screening point just before our gate with facial recognition cameras. It seemed odd, because they didn't ask for any ID, they just wanted all the passengers to step up to the cameras one-by-one to have their image captured. Once the camera snapped, it flashed a green light and they let us proceed to the gate. We can only speculate why the local police were using this tech at the airport, but it seems rather odd and seemed like this was a semi-permanent set-up they use frequently.

The Virgin Atlantic plane was a Airbus A350-1000 that seats between 350 and 410 and our flight had a crew of 13 and only 38 passengers! The passengers were very spread-out and only a few individuals for each cabin. We're really lucky they didn't cancel the flight as that same flight was cancelled today. Heathrow airport was a breeze and almost empty. We waltzed through immigration and customs with no waiting, no lines and completely contact-free! The only thing we waited for was baggage claim.

From the airport we took a charter bus to the train station. The full size luxury bus had only 2 other passengers besides us. We got to the train station a bit early and were able to get a train ahead of our original schedule. A few stops had quite a few high-school students, but for the most part the train was also mostly empty and everyone was wearing masks. After the train we found a taxi for our last mile to the VRBO house, which was a great blessing because each of us were pushing about 90 lbs of luggage all together. Now we begin our 14 day self-isolation period. More from Becky tomorrow.

-David

The world is waiting for us!

Today it seems like everyone is waiting just for us. Our shuttle driver picked us up and happily informed us we were their only passengers today. We had no further stops and got to the airport early. 

At the airport, we were greeted by the airline staff who welcomed us and said they'd opened a baggage drop just us - no waiting, no one else around. At the security check point, once again it was if they had opened up just for us.

The first flight was uneventful and after landing in LA we had to find the another shuttle bus to get to our terminal. Once again this full size bus was waiting just for us and had only the driver on board. LAX is almost like a ghost town, so creepy and unusual.

The shopping corridors at LAX are mostly shut down. So many "non-essential" businesses closed up. Even trying to find a decent bite to eat was difficult. No champagne and caviar for us.

Now, on to London aboard "The Queen of Hearts". I wonder if we're making them wait?

-David

England or Bust!

The bags are packed, the passports are ready, the house is clean and we are ready to go to England. It has all the potential of being an exciting vacation but this is so much different than any vacation we have taken in the past. Let’s back up, it has been our intention for almost a year that we would spend more time in England, while Kenny was deployed. We had plans to pop in and out, spending several weeks at a time, helping Kim with the boys and mostly just playing with our grandsons. Fast forward to now and the world is a different place than it was a year ago. There is no popping in and out of countries, flying around the world with carefree abandonment. Now with the Coronavirus affecting all aspects of our lives we had to rethink our strategy. So, after running and operating a B&B for 8 years we had to make several life changes. We have closed the Inn, are in the process of purchasing a small apartment, or flat, near Kenny and Kim and will spend periods of up to 6 months living in England.

This has all the makings of being a very exciting and complicated time of our lives. The complicated part will be all the restrictions that are part of living with the virus. As I type, England is under a second lockdown that will not be lifted until December 2nd , at the earliest. Once we land in London, we will have to make our way to a house rental where we will have to quarantine for 14 days before we can see any of our family. We are told we cannot leave quarantine except to get the essentials needed to sustain ourselves for the 2 weeks. Sounds like fun doesn’t it? After that we will be able to go stay with Kenny until we close on our flat. We will be joining them in lockdown so I guess it is like another quarantine, but this time we get to play with the grandkids and see family.

We have several people who have asked us to keep a blog. We tried to think of a new blog to start. Some titles we contemplated were, “the Pandemic chronicles”, “Expats in lockdown”, “COVID complications”, and “I sure hope we don’t get sick”. But, after thinking about it, we decided we wanted this blog to not just be about the pandemic but all the adventures that will be a part of our time in England. We want this to be about the adventures of buying a property overseas, being with the grandkids, moving into our flat, meeting our new neighbors and learning how to garden in a new area so we decided to resurrect an old blog from 8 years ago, Becky’s Bees and Blooms. We hope this will be a hopeful blog that life will go on, even with the struggles and complications around us. Stay tuned, the journey is just beginning.

- Becky