Planning the London Trip – Part 1

So the flights have been booked and the flat reserved. See, I am already turning into an Englishwoman, by saying flat, not apartment. Here is the next installment of our London adventures.

 

 

1. The mobile phone data black hole.

Another random fact I remember is that one probably needs a different SIM card for overseas. And I have no idea what this last sentence means; it’s something to do with the teeny, tiny little chip thingie that goes into the phone.

I created an account on Airbnb. This is a pretty cool website. Well, unbeknownst to me, they auto-populate your choices on how you want to be contacted. So, email, text, tablet and phone was checked. I quickly found out this is what they did when I started contacting hosts and asking them questions. Suddenly, my email was pinging and my phone was buzzing and making all sorts of noises. What?????

I was able to figure out how to stop this madness. All you have to do is text, “stop” to the number. But then you get a little message saying, “beware, data charges may be incurred.” My data plan isn’t unlimited and I pay through the nose if I go over my limit. I can just see me using 5 gillion gigabytes of data with these texts. Luckily, this wasn’t the case. My head is ready to explode so I will research the new SIM card another day.

 

 

2. He said, she said.

I go into Mr. Ken’s office to ask him a question and I see him busy looking at a map. Even from a distance, I can tell that it is a map of London. I am happy because Mr. Ken is getting into the spirit of things. That is until he says, “There is a McDonalds practically next door to where we’re staying. Isn’t that exciting?” Um, no, not really. And here I thought Mr. Ken might be researching some cultural things to do in London like visit Buckingham Palace or the Tower of London. I should have known better.