It's been such a long while! I've been wanting to write since Sunday but I never find time for it, and when I have had time I've always forgotten! (It's so typical...)
So hello again. I hope you are ready for a (long?) breakdown of the past week - moving to a new country and getting to know the city of Southampton a little better!
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| I'm ready to check out the city! |
You all know what happened Tuesday so I'm gonna go straight to Wednesday. On this day we had a viewing booked with
Marques Letting Agency and when we got there at noon, a slightly pale faced agent welcomed us to sit down and tell us that they almost didn't have Anything suitable for us three girls, which would be; central, furnished and 3 bedrooms. Luckily, going through their list of what they still had available, there was 1 house suitable for us, about 10 mins away by car, in Shirley, and long story short - we took it!
We didn't get to move in, until Monday this week, though. But we have a apartment, I'm sorry, a HOUSE!, which means we didnt' have to stress the rest of the week, instead we could enjoy exploring the city!
My mom and I walked for miles during the next days, around 8000-11000 steps (she had a step counter along with her, just for fun). We walked countless times up and down the High Street and we explored Ocean Village, the area around the Civic Centre/Guildhall/Central Library and Bedford Place. The pics under are from High Street. To the left you see one of the Titanic memorials, with me standing on the left, Torun on the right, and Unni in the middle.
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| Walking towards the old town. |
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| High Street, heading north. |
We did a lot of shopping of course, and we were at the hairdresser
Sanrizz, me coming out looking like Jesse J, and my mom having a completely new, modern haircut of the decade! We also treated ourselves with some Tropical Paradise Pedicure at
Vikki Pink Beauty saloon. That last one right there... It was magical!
The saloon was down in Ocean Village, the high-end part of the city. It's very pretty there, and not so much people like in the city centre. We had a glass of very good white wine that I unfortunately don't remember the name of, at
Banana Warf before we headed north again to the beautiful and relaxed Oxford Street, not far away from Ocean Village. Here we had yummy lunch at
Olive Tree.
During the week my mom and I went to many different restaurants and learned that there's lots of great places to dine out in Southampton. Here's a quick recap for you if you ever visit the city; go to
Zen for fantastic Japanese cuisine (as mentioned in my previous post). For sensational Italian food you go to
Lupa, and trust me; you'll get blown away. At
Coriander you'll get, just, breathtakingly good Indian meals, while at City Beijing in High Street they have tasty chinese cuisine.
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| Indian. YUM. |
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| Here is a very delicious white wine we had to the Indian, at Coriander. |
Up in Bedford Place there is also a delicious Mexican restaurant,
Cantina. Personally I recommend all of these places. Which one to pick really just depends on what cuisine you prefer. At Sunday we came back to Cantina to celebrate Unni's birthday with good food and drinks.
Later in the week we learned that every Thursday to Saturday or Sunday there is a marked in High Street, Above Bar. Here you can find many different snacks, or meals if you would like some Thai for instance. There's also many booths with clothing, flowers, books and other stuff that usually is useless or in poor quality. But it has a great charm and it was nice to walk around and try some of the home cooked food and look at the goods and chattels. On Saturday me and my mom went up to Shirley to see the house again and check out the walking distance and area from the house to the high street. Shirley is its own little part-of-the-city centre and we have all facilities that we need here for when we move to our new place.
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| In front of our house! |
What I've learned so far living here for a week, is that it's perfectly normal to have pink hair, 70% of the people in Shirley are polish (and so are the supermarkets), Always look to the right when you want to cross the road unless you have a deathwish and for crying out loud - stand on the left side of the road when you're waiting for the bus too!
There are also palms this south on our planet; we have proof in our backyard, everyone is so friendly and more outgoing than Norwegians, they even interupt conversations when asking other strangers for directions, and finally the food is three times cheaper than in back home in Norway.
I think I'm going to like it here. So far, so good.
- vic -
