Worth The Weight In Pounds?

Soon we will have wireless access at the flat and our writing will hopefully pick up. So far we have been tethering our cell phone to James' phone in order to access Twitter, Facebook and Google+, and write the occasional travel update via statuses there (and mess around on Twitter, of course), however it just doesn't cut it. We haven't done as much writing about travel as we'd like, even though we have access to electricity now. Then again we pretty much just got over the jet lag, hopefully. We slept for over 18 hours, combined, on Saturday night (we arrived with James on Friday afternoon). We don't recall it being this much of an issue last time we traveled abroad.
Today we went to a local wireless shop and picked out the plan we will use for wireless, both on our mobile phone, and in the flat. (James' house, our temporarily residence for at least the next month)

You would not believe the deal on mobile phone packages they have here. Astounding, really.

But first, to provide some perspective, it's damn expensive in England, in general. The exchange rate on the dollar is terrible. One American dollar is worth .64 pence (basically the cents equivalence in British Pounds [£]) meaning, as of this writing you have to have $1.66 USD to have 1£ (The Canadian Dollar is, currently, damn near on par with the American dollar, so same goes for that currency). We exchanged $237 dollars upon arrival and got just over £150, to last us at least until the middle of next month. (Did we mention this trip is on a severe budget?)


Food in the grocery store, while of very good quality (from what we have experienced so far) is a bit higher in price. The prices listed, if they were in dollars, as is the case with almost everything here, looks pretty spot on, but when converted to pounds, well...add .66 cents to each dollar. Crap.
With that in mind, the mobile and wireless services are SO inexpensive.


The plan we will be purchasing tomorrow is a rollover monthly (month-to-month contract) for £25 which includes the following: 5000 same network minutes, 2000 other network minutes, 5000 any network text and unlimited data (that can be tethered to a laptop, or other mobile device). For less than the equivalent of $40 a month. No real contract. Unlimited data - that means all internet, including streaming, downloading, and Skype. No hidden fees either! No service charges. No 911 access free, none of that crap that sometimes adds $8-10 to your monthly plan. Glorious.
We know this isn't the travlouge entry you hoped for, but we're not really on vacation here, not yet anyway. We'll be living here for over a month as a resident, experiencing day-to-day life as a Brit. Fun times.

In other news, we've gotten the electric on, and the heat. Unfortunately due to our modest budget the heat is only on every few hours, so in the living room we can still see our breath on occasion, driving us to hang out in the bedroom where the space is smaller, and therefore the heat can be contained better. Also, because of the cost of running the shower - yes, the shower is actually run by electricity in James' flat, and uses electric to heat the water it uses because it is not hooked up to the main boiler that provides the steam heat, like the taps in the shower, sink and kitchen, are - we resort to washing with a washcloth daily, a bath every other day or so, and a shower once a week.


Look how European we are! Or rather...smell...:-s