Kiwi Roaming

Steve’s never lived in a big city so when our lovely lovely friends offered us the use of their apartment for 3 months while they put it on the market we jumped at the chance. We’ve stayed here many times, Don stayed here when he first moved to the UK as well – so it’s served us well.

We landed into Heathrow after 22 hours of flying and jumped on the Elizabeth Line which took us all the way to Canary Wharf where we took a short bus ride, collected the keys from the concierge and set about cleaning and making our bed – before a long afternoon nap which was very much in order.

Isle of Dogs – The apartment is right on the Thames in the Isle of Dogs. Part of the council area called Tower Hamlets in East London which was once all docks and ports, controlled by the mob and very very dodgy. Today with the massive financial powerhouse of Canary Wharf here, it’s a peninsula of apartments and businesses – there are 0 houses – it’s all apartment blocks, low rise through to skyscrapers. The permanent population out here is over 40,000 with an additional 70,000+ people travelling into Canary Wharf for work every day.

The views from the apartment are amazing! across the Thames to the city in one direction and back towards the towers of Canary Wharf in the other direction. We are very spoiled.

Our payment for the stay is preparing the place for sale so we got to sugar soaping and taping walls day two, starting to paint on day 3. Paul, Karen and their new pēpē (baby) came to visit and discuss decoration plans. They got here, said hi, introduced us to their pēpē – who is just 2 weeks younger than our mokopuna but so very different – and left us to babysit which was fun.

In our first week we’ve pretty much stayed in the apartment prepping and painting. We’ve made about 5 trips to Asda now, walking in one direction and busing back with goodies. The weather has been all over the place, was pushing 30C when we arrived then a storm came in and temperatures have dropped significantly. We’ve had significant rain and impressive thunder and lightening.

I headed into the city to meet friends one evening, we had an amazing time at the Royal Opera rooftop terrace bar, then a fantastic rooftop Italian restaurant. It was the night Arsenal lost to PSG but also the day before the big Arsenal parade so the city was heaving with fans. You’d think they won with the singing and chanting. All round very happy people.

If you want to charge your electric car here just plug it into a street light pole. Also just along the Thames Path we came across this monstrous cruise ship one evening, looking back across to Greenwich.