Settling into Notting Hill

We arrived in London first thing in the morning on Tuesday and took the train and taxi to our accommodations for the next two weeks: a 2 bedroom/2 bath "garden flat" in Notting Hill.

(our flat is down the stairs behind the yellow sign)

Garden flat means that we take a flight of stairs down from the sidewalk to enter our door. It also means that we have a small patio in the front and a larger patio in the back -- the front has very little privacy but the larger is more private (other than the upper apartments being able to look down on us).

We are renting an AirBnB from a family of 4 that split their life between New York and London. They clearly are book and music lovers because there is a huge expanse of books and music CDs that line the long hallway.

I think we should be quite comfortable here and we are only 10-15 minutes walk from grocery stores and tube stations, restaurants and pubs!

Chuck and I were determined to stay awake until a reasonable London bedtime, so we walked adn walked around Notting Hill and soaked up the sunshine and the sights. Notting Hill is an interesting neighborhood that seems to be a mixture of wealth and bohemian chic - it is known for its flea market stands along the length of Portobello Road.

It is also known for the charming Hugh Grant/Julia Roberts movie called Notting Hill, which Chuck and I watched in the airplane to refresh our memory of it. The movie is set in The Travel Bookstore where Hugh Grant works. We believe we figured out that the inside and outside of the bookstore are actually in different locations, that this is the outside view of the bookstore

and this is the inside.

We were both quite proud of ourselves to stay awake all day, hopefully giving ourselves the chance to adjust to our new London time zone!