Goodbye Richmond!

27 June 2008. Our last day in Richmond--last "morning" actually, since the whole place was packed up and on it's way to Ruislip by 10 am! That's kind of "leading with the punchline", but I just can't help it--I was AMAZED how fast the contents of my life can be loaded onto a truck and moved from one place to another.

This is the view from the front door of the Richmond place at 10am.


At 7:30 am, the Big Freddy, Darren, and Little Freddy arrived. The frenzy started and they had loaded 90% of the stuff by 9am. AMAZING (have I said that already?).

There was absolute chaos for several weeks before then (not to mention the "night" before, which turned into the morning...we packed until 4:30am, before having to be up and ready by 7am. Preparing to pack, actually packing, and just throwing stuff in boxes to be sorted out later!

Here are a couple of shots of the packing fun.




So, since we all know that the stuff is just being put into two bedrooms at the new house, rather than us "properly" moving in...I'm going to keep you in suspense for the pictures of the aftermath.

After Big Freddy, Little Freddy and Darren (more to come on that trio) unloaded all the stuff at the house in Ruislip, I rushed to the kitchen place to order the kitchen...they're going to start installing it next Wednesday!!!, then I rushed to Windsor to check into the temporary housing flat, then I unloaded the GIANT carload of stuff that needed to go to Windsor, then I rushed to Stockley Park (where we work) to give the car to Paulster. He dropped me back in Windsor to take a shower and relax a bit (yeah, right, I unpacked all the junk I'd dropped in earlier), so he could go pick up the Drama and Blondie for the weekend.

Truth-be-told, we'd really like to live in Windsor. It's such a lovely town...if it wasn't for all the tourists! :)

The place we're staying is a newly refurbished, really nice studio flat in the top floor of a terraced house [townhouse] in Windsor. We LOVE being back here. The shops are great, there are great restaurants and pubs, and who can beat the fact that the Queen lives here? The reasons we wouldn't want to live in Windsor follow: the parking is attrocious, the houses are VERY expensive--no way could we have afforded the place like Ruislip in Windsor, and the transport links into London are not the best (no Tube). Oh well. We're more than committed to Ruislip at this point, methinks!!!

As I was settling into the new place, I opened the windows and looked around. Here's what I saw!

Could be worse, for sure...

When Paulster, Drama and Blondie got to the house, we went to have dinner at the Viceroy, a great Indian restaurant in Windsor. We were "shattered" (as they say), but had a nice meal and then "home" to snooze.

After a decent night's sleep, we got moving about 11am and went to have some lunch (and seek out a parking spot that wouldn't result in a £50 contravention [fine]). The pub we found had been taken over about a year and a half ago from a grotty pub that we remembered. It was nicely refurbished and had a GREAT menu. It's now called The Limes.

It's close to the Barracks, and we'd missed the changing of the guard, so we expected a quiet lunch. But, we were pleasantly surprised by a passing marching band of the RTA (Royal Territorial Army)--kind of like a citizen's National Guard. We stopped eating and ran to the door to enjoy the procession.


Tomorrow, we're going swimming and meeting our friends to watch the final game of the Euro 2008 football [soccer] tournament. We're going to love our 2 weeks in Windsor...