After driving in the car about 45 hours across country, visiting family, we were finally ready to fly to England. We flew from San Antonio to Detroit to Paris to Newcastle, UK. We rented a car from the Newcastle Airport to drive into Durham (our final destination). We didn't take very much with us - mostly clothes and a few other items. We didn't ship anything either, so we showed up with just our backpacks, 5 large suitcases, and a few carry-on sized suitcases. We planned on buying everything we needed once we arrived.
The flights were smooth, with no delays and no extra drama. We were just exhausted by the time we got to England! We arrived on Friday afternoon, with only one thing that we absolutely had to get done before 5:00 that day - our biometrics at the post office downtown. We didn't have flexibility on that because we only had a certain time frame to do that and we were headed out for vacation on Sunday evening. So we were stressed out trying to get that accomplished. We did make it, but not without obstacles.
Our first minor obstacle was trying to fit into our rental car. There was very little space in the back, so we could only fit a couple of large suitcases in the trunk. Everything else had to be crammed in the front on top of our laps. We couldn't move at all with all the luggage piled on top. Of course it started raining as well when we were loading. Second, the rental car place was supposed to provide a GPS, but didn't have one. So we didn't have navigation - we set out not really knowing where we were going, but heading in the direction of Durham. We hadn't established our UK phone service, so we didn't have phones to rely on for directions. We were going to have to wander around (which we did). The third challenge was simply the fact of trying to drive on the left side of the road! It felt so weird being the passenger on the left side and also trying to navigate the roundabouts in the wrong direction. Alex got the "privilege" of being the driver (which left me to help figure out where to go, and I'm terrible at it even when I have Google Maps in front of me.) It was crazy!
However, we didn't actually get very far from the airport when the trunk popped open, dropping 2 bags out on the road. Luckily we weren't on the freeway yet and not going fast. No damage was done to our bags or the car behind us. I quickly ran back to retrieve the bags (after managing to slide out from under the bags on my lap...) But upon trying to put them back in the trunk, we couldn't get it to latch. We ended up pulling off into a nearby neighborhood, off the main street, trying to get the trunk latched. No matter what we did, it wouldn't latch. We tried to find the owner's manual for the vehicle, thinking there was probably some button that we needed to push. The manual was no help. We knew we would have to try to call the rental car place, but again didn't have phone service. Alex managed to figure out some temporary service on the phone, so we finally got a hold of the rental car place (and try to figure out where we were located). But despite being only a mile or so away, they told us they couldn't send someone out for a couple of hours! We kept messing with the latch, and Nathan finally did something that allowed it to stay. We don't know what he did, but after an hour, it finally stayed closed. We were on our way again.
Somehow we were able to find our way to where we needed to be in Durham - at least a parking lot (there aren't places to park near anything downtown), so we had to find a lot and walk in to the post office (maybe a half mile?). We hadn't thought about paying for parking though and had NO British coins yet to pay for parking. Thankfully, a kind soul let us borrow change for parking. All of the kids had to go with us to do our biometrics, so we all trudged into the post office (completely exhausted).
After our biometrics, we immediately went in search of setting up our phones. The problem was that we couldn't set up a phone service until we had a UK bank account. And when we talked to a bank, they said we couldn't set up a bank account until we had a place to live (which we didn't have yet)...
We were able to get a phone card that you keep re-filling every month. We actually ended up using those the whole time we were in England instead of signing up for a yearly service. Phone service was cheap over there - we paid just $15-20 a month for cell phone service (and we used our phones in other countries too.) Alex and I ended up paying either $7.50 or $10/month each for those phone cards, keeping our same phone number the whole year.
Our other major obstacle was that we hadn't secured a place to live - we had been searching all summer for a place, but were limited on what we could find. We didn't have a chance to do a house-hunting trip, so we were just relying on finding something on-line and trying to coordinate with rental agencies via e-mail. Most of the places required a viewing, so we had to ask someone from our church there to look at places on our behalf. Thank goodness for church connections! We didn't know or hadn't met them before, but were able to connect with people from our church to help us. Anyway, we had found a place, done the viewing, paid the application fee, and were just waiting to sign the rental agreement. The rental agency took their time getting all that ready and didn't have papers for us to sign until a few days before our arrival. We signed the agreement and were getting ready to e-mail it to them, but noticed we had another e-mail. The rental agency said to disregard the agreement because we wouldn't be able to move in until about a week later! We were shocked, because we were planning on having a place when we got there (and we had established our move in date about 3 weeks prior). They said there was still some maintenance to be done, so we couldn't move in yet. They had already had at least 3 weeks to get everything ready. We asked about being able to store some of our luggage in the place, but they wouldn't allow that either. We were confused. So here we were, just a couple of days from flying out, and we didn't have a place to live on arrival or anywhere to leave most of our extra luggage for our scheduled vacation (for which we needed to pack really light.)
We were able to scrounge up a motel at the last minute for Friday and Saturday night, which turned out to be really hard - almost everything was booked. We found 1 night at a motel 20 minutes north of Durham for Friday night. Then we found an Airbnb that was 30 minutes east of Durham for Saturday night. We also had to pay for a storage place for our luggage for 10 days. Pretty frustrating.
Out of curiosity, we did drive by our rental place on Saturday, just to see the neighborhood and what it looked like. When we got there, we noticed the door was open - we peeked inside and they were painting the place! They never bothered to mention they still hadn't painted. They had asked about painting, and we were happy to have a freshly painted house. But they said nothing about that when they were telling us there was a "maintenance issue" - they must have been embarrassed that they had 3 weeks to get it ready and were just starting painting. The painters allowed us to come take a peek, since we had never seen the place. We weren't impressed with what we saw... we were hoping to find another place to live that weekend, since we hadn't actually signed the rental agreement yet.
We did look at some other places, but couldn't find anything with the right price or location. We found 1 place that we liked better, but weren't able to get a showing until Monday - too late for us, because we were headed out on Sunday evening... that alternate one ended up getting snatched before we could do a video showing. So we were basically stuck with the first one. We had nothing else and no time or ability to do all the necessary paperwork and such. We were pretty mad about the whole situation. The one thing that worked out in our favor was we were able to get them to change it to an 11 month lease instead of a year. (That made up for our having to pay for motel accommodations and luggage storage.) I think they were a bit desperate too, since they were planning on us as renters and we were dragging our feet on signing the agreement. We really wanted to back out, but we didn't have anything else.
We finally signed the agreement after we got back from our vacation at the end of August. That's next!
First flight - still smiling...
Savannah's first flight(s) ever - she had never flown before! The boys were excited/anxious too since they were too little to remember when they had been on an airplane.
I think the photo with Weston and the plane was the Paris airport. It was kind-of fun to watch the planes coming and going while we were waiting.
So tired.... I thought it was cute how Savannah set up a little bed and water for her bear! She was about the only one that slept a little bit on the long flight. The kids did great flying - movies and food kept them busy. But no one slept much on the long flight. We were pretty much all snoozing on the flight from Paris to Newcastle.
Such an adventure - right from the start!
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