The Move - Bucharest Preparation and a Quick Dash Back To London

We took the liberty of giving ourselves a very small lie-in.  We still woke up before the alrm, though, so were eating breakfast by 9am and checking out of the hotel by 10am.  With us came the final two bags we'd brought over from Doncaster, which we again dumped unceremoniously in the living room of the house.

The first job was to finish building the furniture.  By this point it was only Leila's toy chest and the garden table, and we finished both in less than an hour thanks to our highly tuned IKEA-building skills.  This was followed by sorting some of the smaller things in the house, before we started to feel like getting some lunch.  Once again we took a taxi to Baneasa Shopping City, but this time ate in the food hall.

On our list of things to do was to look into mobile phones and internet connections, and it turned out that there was a shop in the mall that could sort both.  It took over an hour of contract signing and other faff to prepare the paperwork for the TV/phone/internet package and my new mobile phone contract, but considering I just walked in off the street and left with a new mobile phone contract and arrangements for connections at home it was impressive.

While I was sorting this, mum started yet another shop in Carrefour, this time focusing on stocking up on food.  It's now become clear that it's impossible to identify and buy everything you need to fully kit out a kitchen in one shopping trip, but the fact that we did this trip certainly laid some excellent foundations for what Alice and I have done since.

Back at the house we did lots of sorting a moving of furniture to get the house as ready as possible for Alice and Leila's imminent arrival.  At 6pm, however, I needed to say goodbye to mum.  I needed to get to the airport, as I was flying back to London in order to accompany Alice and Leila on the flight to Bucharest the next day.  I'd arranged for a taxi to pick me up from the house, but he struggled to find the exact location which highlighted that in future we'd probably need to get taxis from the end of the road.

This was the first time I'd ever flown without a single piece of luggage.  I didn't even take my keys as mum would be staying in Bucharest and Alice and the Ps were in the house in London.  All I had was my wallet and boarding pass.  I also chose not to take a sweater, since I wouldn't need it when I was back in Romania and I'd only be in the UK for a few hours.  A sweater would just have been another item I'd have to pack into our already overflowing bags.

The flight to Luton was almost full, but travelling solo I was easily able to find a seat close to the front of the plane.  On arrival in the UK I was one of the first off, so sped through customs and on to the shuttle bus to the station.  It set off only 2 or 3 minutes after I boarded, and I knew the next one wasn't for another 15 minutes.

At the station I only had 5 minutes until my train to St Pancras arrived, so if I hadn't been sat at the front and made it on to that first shuttle bus I would have been at least another half an hour arriving into London.  Net also kindly came to the station to pick me up, which again saved me waiting for connecting trains to Harringay, so having touched down at 9.05pm I was inside the house at 10.30pm...and went straight to bed!