Some More Observations on London

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Clarissa

May 8, 2012

1. The coffee is very good. This isn’t even Spain or Portugal, but already the coffee is so much better than in North America that I feel copletely in Europe.

2. Since the last time I visited, the aggravating yet quaint British faucets are gone. Now, there are regular faucets like you see everywhere else in the world have been installed. Is it like this in people’s homes, too?

3. Once again, the city is very expensive. How do the British people live here? I haven’t been to a grocery store yet, so I don’t know how much the food costs, but everything else is just ruinous.

4. The Indian food is, indeed, amazing. Even at a very small out-of-the-way restaurant, we found Indian food that is far superior to any I have eaten in North America with the possible exception of one place in Lafayette, IN.

5. I’m glad that I wasn’t planning to buy any clothes because even though there are some really beautiful things in stores, everything is in tiny little sizes. I keep wondering if I’m at a store for little girls because most of the clothes do not have the physique of an adult woman in mind.

6. I’ve gotten very provincial because the crowds of people in the street feel very unusual to me.

7. London is truly becoming a Russian-speaking city because there are more Russian-speakers here than even in New York. I now have to watch what I say, which I’m not used to doing after 14 years of living in countries where nobody understands me.

I’m blogging from the hotel computer, so I can’t post any photos. But I promise that photos are upcoming.

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6 responses to “Some More Observations on London”

the twisted spinster

May 8, 2012

One thing I miss about living in MIami is the Cuban coffee you can get just everywhere, and it’s cheap (or it was). I mean, there were little cafes everywhere with the open window and counter with the cooler full of ice water, and that is where you’d order your Cuban coffee. When I moved to Orlando it was like moving to a caffeine desert, and there I met my first adult who never drank coffee — they drank diet Coke instead. (And it’s strange, because there are plenty of Hispanics in Orlando, including Cubans, but they don’t have the coffee culture up there. There were hardly any Cuban restaurants!)

When I went to England (way before you did the first time) my mother actually had to put cream and sugar in her coffee. At home she drank it black. I wasn’t a coffee drinker then — I drank tea instead. I had trouble getting the tea to be the strength (or rather lack thereof) I liked — the British like it strong so they can add milk.

Agree about the Indian food. We just don’t have the large Indian community to support a network of good restaurants and good little cafes. Still, we do have an Indian restaurant here even in the small town I now live in that is quite good, though it’s not cheap. And now guess where I’m thinking of going for lunch…

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jenniagnes

May 8, 2012

1. YES. I was horrified at the coffee the first time I went to the USA.

2. Nope, we still have those in some places. But seriously, it does make sense. When you wash your hands you have to move them back and forth really quickly between the taps. But then you don’t have to wait ages for the water to run hot / cold. (Yes, I’m aware that this is ridiculous and that no one who didn’t grow up in the UK will ever agree with this. But seriously, I never even realised that have two taps was a weird thing until my first American friend had a rant about it).

3. People who live in London are either rich or spend all their money on living in a hole. There is actually a crisis at the moment – normal people who object to paying £500 a month, minimum, to live in a shared room 40 minutes from the city centre, and having to pay £70 a month, minimum, to get to said centre on the tube, are being entirely priced out.

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1. the twisted spinster
  
  May 8, 2012
  
  The thing with the two taps is you’re supposed to fill up the basin to your preferred temperature and use that. Which gets an “ew gross” response from the average American, who has been raised to think every single surface in a bathroom is covered in a thick layer of plague germs. I’m not immune — I have to buy a new toothbrush because I dropped mine into the sink. No, boiling it wouldn’t help — I’d always know that the bristles had touched the porcelain sink basin that my roommate spits into.
  
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  1. bolanja
    
    May 8, 2012
    
    Every country that I have visited (Germany, France, Spain and US) had one tap only and you could either get cold, warm or hot water from that single tap. I think the UK is quite unique in this regard. And so is Nigeria where you can find almost anything but mainly the version with just one tap and just cold water (at least according to my experience).
    
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  2. the twisted spinster
    
    May 8, 2012
    
    I thought the taps were one of those old-fashioned things the British held onto, like driving on the left side of the road, just to be different from everyone else.
    
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Mike

May 9, 2012

I very much concur on the Indian food in the UK. The best Indian food I’ve eaten, and probably the best restaurant food I’ve ever had, was at a place called The Flavours of India, in Hastings, East Sussex.

For the first time in years, I stuffed myself so full I thought I was going to vomit on the sidewalk — the food was so good, I just could not stop eating.

It was in fact so wondrous that I’ve considered flying back to the UK just to eat at that restaurant for a few days in a row. Crazy, you might say. However if you’d eaten there, it’d seem completely rational, nay the only possible choice.

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