Hunting, chasing and finding.

There is a possibility that this sudden rise in my blogging frequency may cause Bloggers servers and readers minds to explode, but that is just a chance we have to take here. Interesting things seem to just keep finding us and I must respect the sacred oath I swore and share all the vivid details of everything with you, my beautiful readers.

The mission between 19th of August and 23rd of August was to fly to London, find a flat and fly back to Finland. Our original plan was to move in with four people: me and Sara, and our friends for many years, the Von Hermans Brothers, Jan & Johanna. This was, until we got back in contact with a friend we met last year in London, a Finnish girl named Jenni. A London Met student as well. She was also in search for a place to stay and we welcomed her in to our group of FlatHunters and alongside with two bedroom flats we were also looking for three bedroom ones now. Well, the seal to this deal was nailed in London after she met with J&J who had obviously never seen her before.

Living arrangements were not too straightforward either. We were supposed to stay with someone you may remember from the SuperFinal against Edinburgh from last season, The man with the golden touch, Don Needham. However, he was forced to fly out of the country for the weekend and we were split apart, pretty much as far as you can get without leaving Zone 1. While the Duo Hermans was staying in South Ken, we hit the bed in Old Street and stayed with Hannah. And Freddy of course. This lasted for the weekend and on Monday we got back to the original plan and reunited in Canada Water.

Our week was all about running around the Isle of Dogs and finding agencies, talking about the budget, having some fun and showing new surroundings to your Docklands newcomers. And yes, they certainly liked what they saw, as anticipated.

Let's see how it all went down.

Pret-A-Manger became pretty familiar for everyone during our stay.

Well deserved break @ Tompkins in South Quay

Trying to find agencies with my phone. Or something.

Oh Canary Wharf, how we missed you.

Our Saturday was pretty much a dead end, as all the agents from every agency were out doing viewings, which is quite obvious when in hindsight. So, we just tried to get in touch with as many agencies as possible and leave our details to random secretaries chilling about in the offices. This pretty much proved to be as useful as Sam Kelly or Carlos Davila on skates, and I think we have heard from one or two agencies out of approximately 15 after leaving our wish list over there. But because we have had the habit of being successful, our hard labor paid off Monday morning.

Before Monday it was time to crack few open and use Sunday just for chilling about, enjoying East London and eating well. Let's take a peek, shall we?

Pure class near the Old Street station. Went to check it out of course!

Oh, the beatiful Old St.!

:)

Freddy & Hannah.

Breakfast @ Pret. Again...

Some aid.

@ Greenwich park.

The Mighty @ GBK

The Greenwich University

So, on Monday we met up at our self storage in Isle of Dogs around 9am, threw our luggage in and hit the streets. After few unsuccessful/useless visits we stumbled across an agency called Square Mile, and because I recognized their logo from some website, we decided to give it a shot. And what do you know, this not so high-end, shiny and posh agency had some really promising looking places with very reasonable prices to offer for us straight away. We sealed three viewings for the afternoon and with the sweet taste of success still on our lips, we kept on going.

After being in contact Morgan Randall, Stonewater, Chase Evans, Foxtons, Elizabeth Pryce and few more, we had five viewings for Monday and at least four for Tuesday. Quite pleased with that, we went to grab a bite before meeting up with the agent from Square mile. Unpleasant fact we all had to agree with was that finding a two bedroom flat would be hell of a lot easier than finding a three bedroom place

After seeing two good places in Poplar and one decent one AMAZINGLY far away in E16, we had high hopes regarding a particular flat located very close to our former flat, at the south end of Isle of Dogs. However, it turned out that this sort of dream flat was a semi train wreck-ish and we started a fearsome thinking process regarding one of the flats seen in Poplar. After a hard five minutes or so of intense twisting of ideas, sharing opinions and me talking about beer, we decided to act fast because fast movements look spectacular, take drastic action and so to speak, grab the turkey from it's neck. So after fetching our luggage, we marched back in to Square Mile office, pulled out my Lloyds debit card and secured that we will be spending the next year strolling about Poplar, the hidden gem of E14.

Because current tenants were at home during our viewing, we didn't have a chance to take any pictures. But you can be pretty sure that pretty soon after 27th of September we will provide you with visual candies of this 2 bed-2 bathroom-2 year old-2nd floor flat, in which we, 2 couples, will be 2nd tenants ever.

Next week will be the last one in my contract for this summer, and I sure hope that we will work overtime through the weekend because right now we sure could use all the money we can get. Because us being, as Gemma put it, filthy foreigners and not working in the UK full time at the moment we have to prove that we are solvent and pay SIX MONTHS up front. That's quite a bit of green ones to hand in at one go, but it is what it is. We just have to adapt to the situation and find a way out of it.

Apart from this, I'm glad that weather in Finland is finally cooling down, but the sun is still shining and rains have not arrived. We can only hope that this will be the case in the following weeks also before we can leave Finland behind and fly back to the Island where sun shines, people are interested in ice hockey and fancy night clubs are cheap!

Wait, what?