By looking at the post code for a place in London, you can tell approximately where it is located in the city. For instance, EC indicates East Central, SE tells you that area is located in the South East portion of the city.
We arrived at the Belsize Park tube station at 7:30 Saturday morning. Belsize Park’s post code is NW3, so it is in the North West of London.

Belsize Park is a leafy, somewhat upscale neighbourhood that is made up of large mansion style row houses. My guess would be that they date from the late 1800’s, but I could be off by a few decades. Think Mount Pleasant and Eglinton in Toronto, but older.

Right across from the Belsize Park tube station is the wonderful, non-historical Bagel Stop café. Wonderful because we were finally able to build a fort out of our mountain of luggage, sit down and decompress. After waiting until they opened a half hour later, Jo and I fortified ourselves with toasted bagels and strong coffee. It was a relief to sit down and not have to lift luggage for a few minutes.

After eating and collecting the keys for our short-stay accommodations, we walked down Belsize Avenue, cases in tow, to our flat. The flat is located in a converted mansion. What the English call a mansion block. Essentially a formerly grand house cut up into lots of little flats. Think Parkdale.

I ran in, unlocked the door and came back out to the sidewalk. “Is it horrible?” Joanne asked.

At that moment, I could see by her face that if I had said yes, she would have likely dropped everything, turned around and gone back to Canada. Fortunately, it was ok. Small, Spartan and clean. With a contained kitchen and bathroom. Heaven! We now had a start on getting settled.