Explaining our new location independent lifestyle to our friends and family has been a challenge. Although we have great support for our decision, some people don’t understand why we wouldn’t want to have a home anywhere to go back to. And others are excited for our year long vacation. But, unlike a lot of typical travel-the-world types that leave their cubicle for the open road, we are able to keep our jobs part-time while living anywhere in the world. We are more like hybrid travelers, which seems rare from our scouring the internet for tips on traveling the world. So, here we are, in London for our first week of living AND working abroad.
For all of our vacations, Day 1 we typically hit the ground running with a solid plan of sights to see and amazing foods to eat. However, as this is not a vacation and actually a new lifestyle, our priorities have changed. We had planned absolutely nothing. We just showed up to this crazy looking tower (called the Strata Building) in a neighborhood of London known as Elephant and Castle.
Our first day was filled with exciting tasks like grocery shopping and finding a local gym with daily or weekly passes. We were quite proud of ourselves for cooking our first dinner in our new apartment. Very simple, yet healthy chicken breasts, rice, and a salad.
But, I guess I should admit that technically our first “meal” was lunch and may have been this absolutely delicious (and not quite as healthy) duck confit burger with goat cheese and a side of chips with aioli….and a beer and a kir.
But, still, this is a huge first step for us, and we made it even better by cooking a healthy breakfast the next morning of scrambled eggs and lentils.
After taking a day to get settled, we finally got to do our first touristy activity and spent a leisurely afternoon exploring the Tower of London. Not feeling the urge to squeeze in as many sites as we can in one day was quite liberating.
The Crown Jewels were in this building
The White Tower, the old keep, was built by William the Conquerer in the 1080s:
The Line of Kings in the White Tower display the royal armories
I think the writer of Game of Thrones visited this site and saw these creepy king masks
Great view of Tower Bridge from the Tower of London walls
Took a tour by one of the Yeoman Warders, popularly known as Beefeaters, are the guardians of the tower and retired military officers
Legend has it that six ravens must guard the Tower at all times or else the monarchy will fall. Two of them happened to be on the stairwell for a quick photo op
Awesome. Great blog and looking forward to the next adventure. The duck confit burger looked delicious and the pictures of the sites and you guys were great. Very very happy for you guys and I can’t wait to see what’s next 🙂
Living the dream!
Keep having fun and celebrating life.
Congrats to you both.
Enjoyed the pictures. Food looks good too.