3 Big Suitcases, 2 Laptop Bags, 2 Barbie Bags, 1 Small Suitcase ... and a Week in London!

15 - 22 Jan 07

Our first stop - London

I had this really great and determined idea that we would only have 2 suitcases between the 4 of us (with my romantic notion that I want to be able to fit everything into the boot of a car to move off on a whim to any foreign destination at the blink of an eye... and with the very real concern that navigating the London underground with anything more that 2 suitcases would be a huge schlep!). However, come 2am, the morning we need to vacate our house, with about 7 hours remaining to fit my still mountain of "stuff" into the 2 small bags, I gave in to the fact that we would indeed require the 3rd suitcase. Colin chose the biggest mutha suitcase that he could find, and so,

here you see us at Oliver Thambo Int. (JHB International) with 2 very overweight trolleys of luggage - 3 large suitcases, 2 laptop bags, 1 small bag on wheels and 2 x barbie suitcases on wheels for the girls (oh my gosh).
Well, believe it or not, we managed underground and about 2km to the hotel without any incident (albeit very wary muscles after lugging the bags up a few flights of stairs in the underground).

Our first and biggest priority when landing in London was to go hunting for warmer clothes. Fortunately, we arrived just at the right time - post christmas sales of between 70% and 80%, so we got a few bargains (including a snow jacket for me for 3 pounds!!). The girls, without needing to say, got new pink jackets...The weather was rainy and windy - actually, a hurricane slipped passed the south of London, so let me rephrase - it was rainy and blowing a gale and the degrees centigrade had lost their foothold and started plummeting after we arrived. But, this wasn't going to deter our sightseeing or expeditions.

Piccadilly Circus (above) was one of those spontaneous stops. We had to take a detour tube as the hurricane threw some trees in the way of the one we were going to take and when we saw Piccadilly as the next stop it sounded like a good idea to go up and take some photos. The reason why none of us are wearing our hats in the arctic gale is because they were blown off before we could take the shot :)

It was however a very fortuitous stop as "Lillywhites" (a sports gear store) was having a huge sale and we walked out with more pink jackets for the girls (6 Pounds); jeans (2P); and snow jackets (3P) - what a bargain!!!

The only downside of traveling in the underground at this time of year (apart from all the soot that you blow out of your nose at the end of the day) is the extreme temperatures experienced from outside to inside the tube and you invariably find yourself frantically tearing off all the layers of clothing each time you get on the train, only to have to put them all back on again 3 minutes later (particularly having to navigate little fingers that don't like finding the sleeve holes).

By Thursday however, the news stories on TV changed from extreme weather conditions to what was happening on the local Big Brother (because the weather became fair and because big brother got really interesting). Which meant blue skies!!!! We took the opportunity with both hands and took to the skies on the London eye! And of course, no trip to London is complete without doing the Houses of Parliament, Tower Bridge and Windsor Castle.

And of course the girls had to see the queen's crown at the Tower of London.

While out and about, visiting castles and the like - you would never guess who we bumped into - they even invited us in for a cuppa tea ;)Our departure from London saw us packing once more into the wee hours of the morning after having dinner with friends. You would think we were used to fitting all our stuff in and out of our suitcases since we have packed them 3 times prior to this (from JHB; from Zim and from Sedgefield), however, we now had to fit all the extra jackets and boots and god knows what else into the already borderline 80kgs that we had and stretched to capacity suitcases. We were then up at 5am to navigate the underground once more to Victoria station. This I don't understand. A central train line that takes people on long journeys has 4 or 5 flights of stairs to navigate with luggage from the tube station to the train station - Unbelievable! We were then seen unpacking and repacking all our luggage in the middle of Gatwick terminal trying to get our mutha suitcase to weigh under 32kgs and to split the load with the other 2 already bulging cases! Needless to say, we had to pay for 9kgs of excess.

Next time we move I am going to be ruthless and keep to my 2 suitcase philosophy!

P.s. in case you were wondering what we did with all the stuff at home that wasn't sold or packed or stored ...

A big truck from one of the charities came by the next day, picked it all up and took it to homeless aids people.